Sleep happy, and wake happy!" And she kept
Rocking the mighty buckler, and they slept.

At midnight, when the Bear went down, and broad Orion's shoulder lit the starry road,

There came, careering through the opening halls,
On livid spires, two dreadful animals—
Serpents; whom Juno, threatening as she drove,
Had sent there to devour the boy of Jove.
Orbing their blood-fed bellies in and out,
They tower'd along; and as they look'd about,
An evil fire out of their eyes came lamping;
A heavy poison dropt about their champing.

And now they have arriv'd, and think to fall To their dread meal, when lo! (for Jove sees all) The house is lit, as with the morning's break, And the dear children of Alcmena wake.

The younger one, as soon as he beheld

The evil creatures coming on the shield,

And saw their loathsome teeth, began to cry
And shriek, and kick away the clothes, and try
All his poor little instincts of escape;

The other, grappling, seized them by the nape
Of either poisonous neck, for all their twists,
And held, like iron, in his little fists.

Buckled and bound he held them, struggling wild;

And so they wound about the boy, the child,
The long-begetting boy, the suckling dear,

That never teaz'd his nurses with a tear.

Tir'd out at length, they trail their spires and gasp, Lock'd in that young indissoluble grasp.

Alcmena heard the noise, and "Wake," she cried,
"Amphitryon, wake; for terror holds me tied !
Up; stay not for the sandals: hark! the child,
The youngest-how he shrieks! The babe is wild:
And see, the walls and windows! 'Tis as light
As if 'twere day, and yet 'tis surely night.
There's something dreadful in the house; there is
Indeed, dear husband!" He arose at this;
And seiz'd his noble sword, which overhead
Was always hanging at the cedar-bed:

The hilt he grasp'd in one hand, and the sheath
In t'other; and drew forth the blade of death.

All in an instant, like a stroke of doom, Returning midnight smote upon the room.

Amphitryon call'd; and woke from heavy sleep His household, who lay breathing hard and deep;

"Bring lights here from the hearth! lights, lights; and guard

The doorways; rise, ye ready labourers hard!"

He said; and lights came pouring in, and all The busy house was up, in bower and hall; But when they saw the little suckler, how He grasp'd the monsters, and with earnest brow Kept beating them together, plaything-wise, They shriek'd aloud; but,he with laughing eyes, Soon as he saw Amphitryon, leap'd and sprung Childlike, and at his feet the dead disturbers flung.

Then did Alcmena to her bosom take

Her feebler boy, who could not cease to shake.
The other son Amphitryon took and laid
Beneath a fleece; and so return'd to bed.

Soon as the cock, with his thrice-echoing cheer, Told that the gladness of the day was near, Alcmena sent for old, truth-uttering

Tiresias; and she told him all this thing,

And bade him say what she might think and do; "Nor do thou fear," said she, "to let me know, Although the mighty gods should meditate

Aught ill; for man can never fly from Fate.

And thus thou seest" (and here her smiling eyes Look'd through a blush) "how well I teach the wise."

So spoke the queen. Then he, with glad old tone;
"Be of good heart, thou blessed bearing one,
True blood of Perseus; for by my sweet sight,
Which once divided these poor lids with light,
Many Greek women, as they sit and weave
The gentle thread across their knees at eve,
Shall sing of thee and thy beloved name;
Thou shalt be blest by every Argive dame:
For unto this thy son it shall be given,

With his broad heart to win his way to heaven;
Twelve labours shall he work; and all accurst
And brutal things o'erthrow, brute men the worst ;
And in Trachinia shall the funeral pyre

Purge his mortalities away with fire;

And he shall mount amid the stars, and be
Acknowledg'd kin to those who envied thee,

And sent these den-born shapes to crush his destiny."

PAULO AND FRANCESCA.

FROM DANTE.

IN THE TRIPLE RHYME OF THE ORIGINAL.

In the fifth circle of his imaginary Hell, (through which he is conducted by the spirit of Virgil,) Dante sees the souls of Paris and Helen, of Semiramis, Cleopatra, Tristan, and other personages, real and fabulous, who had given way to carnal passions. Among them he observes those of two lovers, whose tragical end had afflicted the house of his friend and patron, Guido Novello da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna. He asks permission to speak with them; and out of excess of pity at the recital of their story, falls like a man struck dead.

This is the beautiful and affecting passage in Dante, on which the author of the present volume, when a young man, ventured to found the Story of Rimini. He introduces it in the volume for the purpose of enriching his Stories in Verse, for even a translation cannot hinder it from doing that. Stories are told in many ways in going from mouth to mouth; and the reader will be good enough to consider the Story of Rimini as a detail of the particulars of a domestic event, given by a young man out of the interest which he has taken in what he has heard, but with no thought of competing in point of effect, or in any other point, with the wonderful summary, in the shape of which he first heard it.

To recur to an illustration of another sort, he will add, from his Autobiography, that the "design" of his poem is "altogether different in its pretensions." It is "a picture, by an immature hand, of sunny luxuriance overclouded; not of a cloud, no less