Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
JOHN KEATS.

THE DIRGE

I

"SING from the chamber to the grave!"

Thus did the dead man say:

"A sound of melody I crave

Upon my burial-day.

II

"Bring forth some tuneful instrument,
And let your voices rise:

My spirit listened, as it went,

To music of the skies.

III

"Sing sweetly while you travel on,
And keep the funeral slow:-
The angels sing where I am gone,
And you should sing below.

IV

"Sing from the threshold to the porch!
Until you hear the bell:

And sing you loudly in the church,
The Psalms I love so well.

V

"Then bear me gently to my grave,
And as you pass along,
Remember 'twas my wish to have
A pleasant funeral song.

VI

"So earth to earth, and dust to dust!
And though my flesh decay,
My soul shall sing among the just,
Until the judgment day."

ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER.

Author's Note. The first of these verses haunted the memory and the lips of a good and blameless young farmer who died in my parish some years ago. It was, as I conceive, a fragment of some forgotten dirge, of which he could remember no more. But it was his strong desire that "the words" should be "put upon his headstone," and he wished me also

to write "some other words, to make it complete." I fulfilled his entreaty, and the stranger who visits my churchyard will find this dirge carven in stone, "in sweet remembrance of the just," and to the praise of the dead, Richard Cann.

THE SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN

A GOOD Sword and a trusty hand!
A merry heart and true!

King James's men shall understand
What Cornish lads can do.

And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawny die?

Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why!

Out spake their captain brave and bold,
A merry wight was he:

"If London Tower were Michael's hold,
We'll set Trelawny free!

"We'll cross the Tamar, land to land,
The Severn is no stay,

With 'one and all,' and hand in hand,
And who shall bid us nay?

"And when we come to London Wall,
A pleasant sight to view,

Come forth! come forth, ye cowards all,
Here's men as good as you!

"Trelawny he's in keep and hold,

Trelawny he may die;

But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold,
Will know the reason why!"

ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER.

IN LOVE, IF LOVE BE LOVE, FROM
MERLIN AND VIVIEN

IN Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.

It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.

The little rift within the lover's lute
Or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit,
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.

It is not worth the keeping: let it go:
But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.
And trust me not at all or all in all.

LORD TENNYSON.

EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO

Ar the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,

Will they pass to where- by death, fools think, imprisoned

Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved

So,

- Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do

With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel -Being who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast. forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, fight on, fare

ever

There as here!"

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE YEAR'S AT THE SPRING, FROM
PIPPA PASSES

THE year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven-

All's right with the world!

ROBERT BROWNING.