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She felt them coming, but no power
Had she the words to smother;
And with a kind of shriek she cried,
"Oh Christ! you're like your mother!"

So gentle Ellen now no more

Could make this sad house cheery; And Mary's melancholy ways

Drove Edward wild and weary.

Lingering he raised his latch at eve,
Though tired in heart and limb:
He loved no other place, and yet
Home was no home to him.

One evening he took up a book,
And nothing in it read;

Then flung it down, and groaning cried,
"Oh! Heaven! that I were dead."

Mary looked up into his face,

And nothing to him said;
She tried to smile, and on his arm
Mournfully leaned her head.

And he burst into tears, and fell

Upon his knees in prayer:

"Her heart is broke! O God! my grief,

It is too great to bear!"

'Twas such a foggy time as makes

Old sextons, Sir! like me,

Rest on their spades to cough; the spring Was late uncommonly.

And then the hot days, all at once,
They came, we knew not how :
You looked about for shade, when scarce
A leaf was on a bough.

It happened then ('twas in the bower
A furlong up the wood:

Perhaps you know the place, and yet
I scarce know how you should),—

No path leads thither, 'tis not nigh
To any pasture-plot;

But clustered near the chattering brook,
Lone hollies marked the spot.

Those hollies of themselves a shape
As of an arbour took,

A close, round arbour; and it stands
Not three strides from a brook.

Within this arbour, which was still
With scarlet berries hung,

Were these three friends, one Sunday morn,
Just as the first bell rung.

'Tis sweet to hear a brook, 'tis sweet

To hear the Sabbath-bell,

"Tis sweet to hear them both at once,
Deep in a woody dell.

His limbs along the moss, his head
Upon a mossy heap,

With shut-up senses, Edward lay:
That brook e'en on a working day
Might chatter one to sleep.

And he had passed a restless night,
And was not well in health;
The women sat down by his side,

And talked as 'twere by stealth.

"The sun peeps through the close thick leaves,

See, dearest Ellen! see!

"Tis in the leaves, a little sun,

No bigger than your ee;

"A tiny sun, and it has got
A perfect glory too:

Ten thousand threads and hairs of light,
Make up a glory, gay and bright,

Round that small orb, so blue."

And then they argued of those rays,
What colour they might be:

Says this, "they're mostly green;" says that,

66

They're amber-like to me."

So they sat chatting, while bad thoughts
Were troubling Edward's rest;

But soon they heard his hard quick pants,
And the thumping in his breast.

"A Mother, too!" these self-same words
Did Edward mutter plain;

His face was drawn back on itself,
With horror and huge pain.

Both groaned at once, for both knew well
What thoughts were in his mind;
When he waked up, and stared like one
That hath been just struck blind.

Q

He sat upright; and ere the dream
Had had time to depart,

"O God, forgive me! (he exclaimed)
I have torn out her heart!"

Then Ellen shrieked, and forthwith burst

Into ungentle laughter;

And Mary shivered, where she sat,

And never she smiled after.

Carmen reliquum in futurum tempus relegatum. Tomorrow! and To-morrow and To-morrow!

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"Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;

And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!

We shall have a deadly storm."

Ballad of Sir PATRICK SPENCE.

I.

ELL! if the Bard was weather-wise, who
made

The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick
Spence,

This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon clouds in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Eolian lute,

Which better far were mute.

For lo! the New-moon winter bright!
And overspread with phantom light,

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