Right to Solidor, past Grève, And there lay them safe and sound; Keel so much as grate the ground— Why, I've nothing but my life; here's my head!" cries Hervé Riel. VIII. Not a minute more to wait!_ "Steer us in, then, small and great! Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief. "Captains, give the sailor place! He is admiral, in brief." Still the north wind, by God's grace; See the noble fellow's face As the big ship, with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound! IX. See, safe through shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock! Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harbored to the last, And just as Hervé Riel hollas "Anchor!"-sure as fate, Up the English come, too late. X. So the storm subsides to calm; They see the green trees wave On the heights o'erlooking Grève; Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. "Just our rapture to enhance, Let the English rake the bay, Gnash their teeth and glare askance As they cannonade away! 'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!" Now hope succeeds despair on each captain's countenance! XI. Outburst all with one accord, Let France, let France's king, Thank the man that did the thing!" As he stepped in front once more, In the frank blue Breton eyes- XII. Then said Damfreville, "My friend, Though I find the speaking hard; France remains your debtor still. Ask to heart's content, and have! or my name's not Damfreville.” XIII. Then a beam of fun outbroke On the bearded mouth that spoke, Since on board the duty's done, And from Malo Roads to Croisie Point, what is it but a run? Since 't is ask and have, I may— Since the others go ashore Come! A good whole holiday! Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!” That he asked, and that he got-nothing more. XIV. Name and deed alike are lost; Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; On a single fishing-smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. XV. Go to Paris; rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank; You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel. So, for better and for worse, Hervé Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife, the Belle Aurore! ROBERT BROWNING. E CXV.-YOUTHFUL FRIENDSHIP AND MILIUS GODFREY! forever holy be the name! a boy when we were but a child-when we were but a youth, a man. We felt stronger in the shadow of his arm-happier, bolder, better in the light of his countenance. He was the protector-the guardian of our moral being. In our pastimes we bounded with wilder glee-at our studies we sat with intenser earnestness by his side. He it was that taught us how to feel all those glorious sunsets, and imbued our young spirit with the love of Nature. He it was that taught us to feel that our evening prayer was no idle ceremony to be hastily gone through--that we might lay down our head on the pillow, then soon smoothed in sleep-but a command of God which a response from Nature summoned the humble heart to obey. 2. He it was who forever had at command wit for the sportive, wisdom for the serious hour. Fun and frolic flowed in the merry music of his lips-they lightened from the gay glancing of his eyes-and then, all at once, when the one changed its measures, and the other gathered, as it were, a mist or a cloud, an answering sympathy chained our own tongue, and darkened our own countenance, in intercommunion of spirit felt to be, indeed, divine! 3. It seemed as if we knew but the words of languagethat he was a scholar who saw into their very essence. The books we read together were, every page, and every sentence of every page, all covered over with light. Where his eye fell not as we read, all was dim or dark, unintelligible, or with imperfect meanings. Whether we perused with him a volume writ by a nature like our own, or the volume of the earth and sky, or the volume revealed from Heaven, next day we always knew and felt that something had been added to our being. Thus imperceptibly we grew up in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer moral and religious air; with all our finer affections towards other human beings, all our kindred and our kind, touched with a dearer domestic tenderness, or with a sweet benevolence that seemed to our ardent fancy to embrace the dwellers in the uttermost regions of the earth. 4. No secret of pleasure or pain-of joy or grief-of fear or hope-had our heart to withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw it as it beat within our bosom, with all its imperfections-may we venture to say, with all its virtues. A repented folly-a confessed fault-a sin for which we were truly contrite-a vice flung from us with loathing and with shame-in such moods as these, happier were we to see his serious and his solemn smile than when in mirth and merriment we sat by his side, in the social hour, on a knoll in the open sunshine. And the whole school were in ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his genius; even like a flock of birds, chirping in their joy, all newly alighted in a vernal land. 5. In spite of that difference in our age-or oh! say rather because that very difference did touch one heart with tenderness, and the other with reverence-how often did we two wander, like elder and younger brother, in the sunlight and the moonlight solitudes! Woods into whose inmost recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, in his company were glad as gardens, through their most awful umbrage; and there was beauty in the shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts-in whose lonesome thunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, we durst not, by ourselves, have faced the spray-in his presence, dinned with a merry music in the desert, and cheerful was the thin mist they cast sparkling up into the air. 6. Too severe for our unaccompanied spirit, then easily overcome with awe, was the solitude of those remote inland lochs. But as we walked with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet the calm of both blue depths!— how magnificent the white-crested waves, tumbling beneath the black thunder-cloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed on it along with his, at the beginning or the ending of some sudden storm, the Apparition of the Rainbow. Grander, in its wildness, that seemed to sweep at once all the swinging and stooping woods to our ear, because his too listened, the concerto by winds and waves played at midnight when not one star was in the sky. 7. With him we first followed the falcon in her flighthe showed us on the echo-cliff the eagle's eyry. To the thicket he led us, where lay couched the lovely spotted doe, or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing on the glade with her two fawns at her side. But for him we should not have seen the antlers of the red-deer, for the forest was indeed a most savage place, and haunted-such was the superstition at which those who scorned it trembled-haunted by the ghost of a huntsman whom a jealous rival had murdered as he stooped, after the chase, at a little mountain-well that ever since oozed out blood. What converse passed between us two in all those still shadowy solitudes! Into what depths of human nature did he teach our wondering eyes to look down! |