ABOUT AND ROUND ABOUT (continued 3)

272. "These Strong and Fair...."

And here is another poem by William Barnes which I have ventured to spell not as it appears in its original dialect, but in the usual way:

273.

I remember actually coming upon this poem (in Mr. Nahum's second book), and how I twisted my head and looked up at the quiet dark-socketed skull in its alcove in the turret room. It had no alarm for me then, though I can recall cold moments of dread or confusion, when I was a boy, at the thought of death. Then—or was it some time after?—I turned the page and found the following poem by Thomas Campion, and, in Mr. Nahum's writing, this scrawl at the foot of it: "Yes, but the vision first."

" ... Yet suffer us, O Lord, not to repine, whether in the morning, at noon, or at midnight, that is to say, in our cradle, in our youth, or old age, we go to take our long sleep; but let us make this reckoning of our years, that if we can live no longer, that is unto us our old age; for he that liveth so long as thou appointest him (though he die in the pride of his beauty) dieth an old man...."

274. "Adieu! farewell Earth's Bliss."

This solemn dirge was written in "time of pestilence,"—such a time as Daniel Defoe tells of in his "Journal of the Plague Year." The Elizabethan poets brooded endlessly on the mystery of death. A music haunts their words like that of muffled bells, as in John Fletcher's poem:

And in William Davenant's:

275. "I who loved with all my life Love with all my death."

And this reminds me of an epitaph I chanced on in the graveyard at Manorbier whose ruinous castle towers above the green turf of its narrow ocean inlet, as if it were keeping a long tryst with the clocked church tower on the height:

And then there are these two unforgettable fragments, the one from the Scots of John Wedderburn (1542), and the other of a century before, its authorship unknown:

Who's at my Window?

The Call.

277. "Hark! now everything is still."

"'Tis now full tide 'tween Night and Day." (line 17)

278.

Of the Lyke-wake Dirge is known neither the age nor the author. The body from which the "saule" or spirit within is fled away lies in its shroud, and the dirge tells of that spirit's journey. Its word "sleet," says Mr. Sidgwick, means either salt, for it was the custom to place in a wooden platter beside the dead, earth and salt for emblems, the one of corruption, the other of the immortal; or, as some suppose, "sleet" should be fleet, meaning embers or water or house-room. "Whinnies" means gorse. To explain the full meaning of Bridge of Dread would need many pages—but does not much of that meaning haunt in the very music and solemnity of the words?

279.

Next this poem in Mr. Nahum's book was "Lead, Kindly Light," and there was a strange picture for it hanging in the round tower—the picture of a small becalmed ship, clumsy of rig and low in the water which was smooth and green as glass. In the midst of the ship there was piled high what might be taken for a vast heap of oranges, their fair reddish colour blazing in the rays of the sun that was about to plunge out of the greenish sky below the line of the west. But what even more particularly attracted my eye at the time was that ship's figurehead—a curious head and shoulders as if with wings, and of a kind of far beauty or wonder entirely past me to describe. Many years afterwards I read that this poem was written by John Henry Newman (one who even in his young days at Oxford was "never less alone than when alone"), when his mind was perplexed and unhappy, and he himself had time to ponder awhile, because the boat in which he was sailing to England had been for some days becalmed off the coast of Spain.

281. "Fear no more."

284. "All the Flowers."

" ... But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three—that is, burnet, wild thyme, and watermints. Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread."

An Essay on Gardens, Francis Bacon

The very names indeed of the aromatic herbs seem to "perfume the air"—bergamot, lavender, meadowsweet, costmary, southernwood, woodruff, balm, germander. And flowers even though dead remain sweet in their dust, as every bowl of potpourri proclaims. To have "a repository of odours" always with them, when streets were foul and pestilence was a peril, gentle-people would in old times carry fresh nosegays or pomanders. The pomanders were of many kinds; an orange stuffed with cloves, etc., for the hand; or—for pocket or chatelaine—some little curiously-devised receptacle of silver containing tiny phials of precious essences—possibly no bigger than a plum. Or they might be compounded of rare ingredients: "Your only way to make a good pomander is this. Take an ounce of the purest garden mould, cleansed and steeped seven days in change of motherless rose water. Then take the best labdanum, benjoin, both storaxes, ambergris, civet, and musk. Incorporate them together, and work them into what form you please. This, if your breath be not too valiant, will make you smell as sweet as any lady's dog."

285.

I have pondered over the thirteenth and eighteenth lines of this poem, but am not yet certain of all that they were intended to convey. But what scope for the imagination is in it! The next epitaph is by Stephen Hawes, whose Passetyme of Pleasure or History of Graunde Amoure, and La Bel Pucel, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509:

And the lines following are said to have been found between the pages of Sir Walter Raleigh's Bible in the Gate House at Westminster, having been written by him, it is surmised, during the night before he—an ageing man of sixty-six—was beheaded:

286. "Sidney, O Sidney is dead."

"Sir Philip Sydney, Knight," says John Aubrey, "was the most accomplished courtier of his time. He was not only of an excellent witt, but extremely beautiful; he much resembled his sister. He was a person of great courage. Among others Mr. Edmund Spenser made his addresse to him, and brought his Faery Queen. Sir Philip was busy at his study, and his servant delivered Mr. Spenser's booke to his master, who layd it by, thinking it might be such kind of stuffe as he was frequently troubled with. When Sir Philip perused it, he was so exceedingly delighted with it, that he was extremely sorry he was gonne, and where to send for him he knew not. After much enquiry he learned his lodgeing, and sent for him, and mightily caressed him.... From this time there was a great friendship between them, to his dying day.... His body was putt in a leaden coffin (which after the firing of Paule's, I myself sawe), and with wonderfull greate state was carried to St. Paule's church, when he was buried in our Ladie's Chapell. There solempnized this funerall all the nobility and great officers of Court."

Here is part of a letter written to him, by his father, Sir Henry Sidney, in 1566, when Philip was a boy at Shrewsbury School:

Son Philip.... Above all things, tell no untruth. No, not in trifles. The custom of it is nought: and let it not satisfy you that, for a time, the hearers take it for a truth; yet after it will be known as it is, to your shame. For there cannot be a greater reproach to a gentleman, than to be accounted a liar.... Remember, my son! the noble blood you are descended of by your mother's side: and think that only by virtuous life and good action you may be an ornament to that illustrious family; otherwise, through vice and sloth, you may be counted labes generis, "a spot of your kin," one of the greatest curses that can happen to man.

This next fragment is from a letter written on October 18, 1580, by Sir Philip Sidney himself to his younger brother Robert (then seventeen). This Robert six years afterwards fought with him at Zutphen. He grew up a gallant gentleman, was created Earl of Leicester, and in his leisure wrote words to fit the music of John Dowland—afterwards lutenist to Charles I.

My Dear Brother,

For the money you have received, assure yourself (for it is true), there is nothing I spend so pleaseth me; as that which is for you. If ever I have ability, you shall find it so: if not, yet shall not any brother living be better beloved than you, of me.... Look to your diet, sweet Robin! and hold your heart in courage and virtue. Truly, great part of my comfort is in you!.... Be careful of yourself, and I shall never have cares.... I write this to you as one, that for myself have given over the delight in the world; but wish to you as much, if not more, than to myself.... God bless you, sweet Boy! and accomplish the joyful hope I conceive of you.... Lord how I have babbled! Once again, farewell, dearest Brother!

Your most loving and careful brother,

Philip Sidney

And here in a few words is a fleeting glimpse of this renowned man as he appeared amidst the splendour and magnificence of the Tournament, during the Anjou Fetes in London, in 1581, five years before his death:

"Then proceeded Master Philip Sidney, in very sumptuous manner with armour part blue and the rest gilt and engraven.... He had four pages that rode on his four spare horses" (richly caparisoned in gold and pearls and feathers of silver) "who had cassock hats and Venetian hose all of cloth of silver laid with gold lace and hats of the same with gold bands and white feathers: and each one a pair of white buskins." ... There followed him in as rich and splendid array his gentlemen, yeomen, and trumpeters.

287. "His Picture in a Sheet."

Of John Donne's Book of Poems there was nothing in Mr. Nahum's first volume, much in the others. But what I then read of them I little understood. It is a poetry that awaits the mind as the body grows older, and when we have ourselves learned the experience of life with which it is concerned. Not that the simplest poetry will then lose anything of its grace and truth and beauty—far rather it shines the more clearly, since age needs it the more.

"His Picture in a sheet" refers to a drawing (prefixed to Donne's Poems') of his stone effigy. This shows him draped with a shroud, and may now be seen in St. Paul's Cathedral, of which he was the dean, and in whose pulpit a few days before his death he preached his last valedictory or farewell sermon.

"Living to Eternity."

Sir Thomas More was such a man. On Monday, July 5th, 1535, the night before he was beheaded, he wrote ("with a cole") this letter of farewell to his daughter Margaret Roper. He had seen her for the last time when she openly met and kissed him in the midst of his enemies and of the throngs on Tower Wharf, as he came from Judgment:

"Oure Lorde Blesse you good daughter, & youre good husbande, & youre lyttle boye, & all yours, & all my children, & all my Godde chyldren and all oure frendes.... I cumber you good Margaret much, but I would be sory, if it should be any longer than to morow. For it is saint Thomas even, & the utas of saint Peter: & therfore to morow long I to go to God: it were a day verye mete & convenient for me. I never liked your maner toward me better, than whan you kissed me laste: for I love when doughterly love, and deere charitye, hath no leysure to loke to worldlye curtesy. Farewell my dere chylde, & pray for me & I shall for you & all youre frendes, that we maye merilye mete in heaven...."

288. "Do Thou the same."

So too Walter Savage Landor:

290. "A pretty Bud."

"To die young," in William Drummond's words, "is to do that soon, and in some fewer days, which once thou must do; it is but the giving over of a game, that after never so many hazards must be lost."

291. "A-left asleep."

293. "Sunk Lyonesse."

There is a legend—recorded in an ancient monastic chronicle—that in the days of Arthur there stretched between Land's End and the Scillies a country of castles, of fair towns, and landscapes, named Lyonesse. When the tumult of the last great Arthurian battle was over, there befell a cataclysm of nature, and in a night of tempest this whole region was engulfed beneath the seas.

What truth is in this legend no certain history relates. But when the vast Atlantic breakers begin to lull after storm, to lie listening in the watches of the night is to hear, it would seem, deep-sunken belfries of bells sounding in the waters, and siren-like lamentations. I have myself heard this, and fantasy though it may be, if the ear is once beguiled into its deceit, the bells clash and chime on and on in the imagination, mingled with the enormous lully of the surges, until at last, one falls asleep.

299. "Sing no sad Songs for Me."

—and here is another such happy and tender word of farewell—but from one unknown:

302. "Readen ov a Head-Stwone."

This poem, again, is spelt as the words would be pronounced by the country people of Dorset, the country in which William Barnes was born and lived nearly all his long life. Their way of speech is slower than in common English, and the words, especially those with the two dots, or diaeresis, over them, should be lingered over a little in pronouncing them.

Londoners have a way of being scornfully amused at country speech—in their ignorance that it is older and far more beautiful than their own clipped and nasal manner of talking. But half an hour with the great Dialect Dictionary will prove how inexhaustibly rich the English language once was and still is in words made, used, and loved by folk unlearned in books, but with keen and lively eyes in their heads, quick to see the delight and livingness of a thing, and with the wits to give it a name fitting it as close as a skin.

303. "Care is heavy."

304. "Mother, never mourn."

"It was my own mother (wrote Thomas Cantimpratanus about 1260) who told me the story which I am about to relate. My grandmother had a firstborn son of most excellent promise, comely beyond the wont of children, at whose death she mourned ... with a grief that could not be consoled, until one day, as she went by the way, she saw in her vision a band of youths moving onwards, as it seemed to her, with exceeding great joy; and she, remembering her son and weeping that she saw him not in this joyful band, suddenly beheld him trailing weary footsteps after the rest. Then with a grievous cry the mother asked: 'How comes it, my son, that thou goest alone, lagging thus behind the rest?' Then he opened the side of his cloak and showed her a heavy water-pot, saying: 'Behold, dear mother, the tears which thou hast vainly shed for me, through the weight whereof I must needs linger behind the rest! Thou therefore shalt turn thy tears to God: then only shall I be freed from the burden wherewith I am now grieved.'"

But not all dreamers are so rebuked or so comforted. St. Augustine, a loving son, pined in vain:

"If the dead could come in dreams," he wrote, "my pious mother would no night fail to visit me. Far be the thought that she should, by a happier life, have been made so cruel that, when aught vexes my heart, she should not even console in a dream the son whom she loved with an only love."

310. Tom o' Bedlam.

This poem has been at hide-and-seek with the world for many years past. Mr. Frank Sidgwick has now played Seek, however, and has tracked it down in the British Museum in a manuscript, No. 24665, inscribed "Giles Earle—his book, 1615." In this manuscript the poem consists of eight stanzas of ten lines each, with a chorus of five lines. The version in this book is only of twenty-five lines, as they were arranged by Mrs. Meynell in her beautiful Anthology, The Flower of the Mind. Here are the chief differences which Mr. Sidgwick has very kindly allowed me to collect from his account of his search:

Line 1, "moon" is morn. Line 2, "lovely" is lonely, "marrow" is morrow. Line 10, "rounded" is wounded. Line 16, "a heart" is a host. And line 21, "with" is by. It is a happy exercise of the wits to choose between them and to find reasons for one's choice. When and by whom the poem was written is not yet known. It remains a shining jewel in the crown of the most modest of all men of genius, Mr. Anon.

314. "What's in there."

This far-carrying rhyme belongs to the ancient and famous game of Dump. "He who speaks first in it," says Dr. Gregor, "or laughs first, or lets his teeth be seen, gets nine nips, nine nobs, nine double douncornes, an' a gueed blow on the back o' the head."

The faht and fahr, I suppose, are the pleasant Scots way of saying what and where.

316.

So may the omission of a few commas effect a wonder in the imagination. To the imagination indeed there is nothing absurd in, "I saw the sun at twelve o'clock at night"—for one can actually see in the "little nowhere of the mind" both burning sun and black night together: as once in a dream I myself was enchanted by three moons in the sky, shining in their silver above waters as wide as those of Milton's curfew. So, too, even mere day-by-day objects will take on themselves a strangeness and beauty never seen or "marked" before, if (like Marcus Aurelius and his loaf of bread) we will only "glut" the eye on them. "I see a rose," said an old woman on her deathbed, "but if, in childhood and youth, I had seen it closer, what a rose on the threshold it had been!"

Here is another old nursery "nonsense" rhyme that makes almost as lively pictures in the mind:

319. "It Had Become a Glimmering Girl."

"The Tuatha De Danaan—the divine Children of Danu which forgotten centuries ago invaded Ireland—can take all shapes, and those that are in the waters take often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, in Galway, says, 'There are more of them in the sea than on the land ...,' and another Galway woman says, 'Surely those things are in the sea as well as on land. My father was out fishing one night off Tyrone. And something came beside the boat that had eyes shining like candles. And then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a minute, and whatever was in the wave, the weight of it had like to sink the boat. And then they saw that it was a woman in the sea that had the shining eyes. So my father went to the priest, and he bid him always to take a drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in the boat with him, and nothing could harm him.'"

W. B. Yeats

321. "One Without."

325. "Broome, Broome on Hill."

The story is of how a bright lady comes to keep her tryst with a knight-at-arms in the golden broom of Hive Hill. She finds him under a charm, an enchantment, asleep; and having left her ring on his finger for proof of her coming, she steals away. Presently after he awakes—her presence gone. To leave a quiet and happy room vacant at night is sometimes to have this experience, as it were, reversed. There comes a feeling that you being gone, gentler visitants may enter and share its solitude—while its earthly occupant sleeps overhead, and one by one the stars sink to their setting.

326. "The Changeling."

329. "Mariana."

It is difficult to read this poem slowly and intently enough if one is to experience to the full the living things and sights and sounds that by its words are charmed into the mind—the hushed solitude, the desolation. Take even, of all there is, but the "peering mouse" in the sixth stanza—his sharp nose sniffing the air beneath the small wooden arch of his dark-glimmering mousery, where miche and shriek and gambol his fellows behind the mouldering wainscot. Or stay for a moment looking down on the "marsh mosses" in the third stanza—of a green as lively as a fairy's mantle in the sunlight, gilding the waters of the blackened sluice. So piece by piece the words of the poem build up in the imagination this solitary house with its forsaken Mariana, whom Tennyson himself had seen in the dream conferred on him by another poet, Shakespeare, in Measure for Measure:

332. "Yes Tor."

Turn your back on Okehampton and break out due South into the wilds of Dartmoor, and there, "summering" together "beneath the empty skies," lie titanic Yes Tor and High Willes, rearing their bare vast shapes 700 yards into the air.

333. "To heare the Mandrake grone." (stanza 2)

Of the dangerous plant Mandrake ("its root in something the shape and appearance of a man") is concocted Mandragora, one of the "drowsy syrups." "The leaves and fruit be also dangerous, for they cause deadly sleep, and peevish drowsiness." The fruit is "of the bigness of a reasonable pippin, and as yellow as gold when it is thoroughly ripe": fair without, ashes within. It is said that the mandrake's screams, when it is dragged out of the ground, will send the hearer mad. So the gatherer should first seal his ears, then tie the plant to a dog's tail and hike him on to haul it out of its haunt! "Avicenna the Arabian physician asserts that a Jew at Metz had a mandragore with a human head, and the legs and body of a cock, which lived five weeks, and was fed on lavender and earthworms, and, when dead, was preserved in spirits." Even up to the nineteenth century dreaders or wishers of witchcraft were wont to carry these monstrous little Erdmannikens in bosom or pocket for an amulet or charm.

The "Basilisk," old books maintain, is a fabulous beast whose icy glare freezes the gazer, and is mortal. Approach her then with a mirror; and courage be your guide!

"Hemlock, Henbane, Adders-tongue." (line 10)

Hemlock is that tall, dim-spotted plant of a sad green colour, and of a scent "strong, heady and bad," which is "very cold and dangerous," especially when "digged in the dark."

Clammy henbane is woolly-leafed, with hollow dark-eyed flowers of a purple-veined dingy yellow. "It lusts to grow in rancid soil, To 'stil its deadly oil."

Moonwort is the meek-looking little flowering fern that has the power to break locks, and to make any horse that chances to tread upon it cast his shoes.

The livid-flowered, cherry like-fruited dwale, enoron, or nightshade is the most "daungerous" plant in England. While leopard's bane—though it bears a bright-yellow daisy-like flower, and witches are said to fear sun-colour—is venomous to animals.

I am uncertain of adder's tongue, for the fern of this name cures sore eyes; and cuckoo-pint which is also so called, is "a remedy for poison and the plague"!

Of these six insidious plants only one is openly mentioned by Shakespeare, and they appear to have few country names, unlike, for example, the purple orchis, "which has so many," says Nicholas Culpeper, "that they would fill a sheet of paper": long-purples, dead-men's fingers, crake-feet, giddy-gandy, neat-legs, geese and goslings, and gander-gooses, being a few choice specimens.

334. "The Raven."

"Seventeen or eighteen years ago," wrote Coleridge in 1817, "an artist of some celebrity was so pleased with this doggerel that he amused himself with the thought of making a Child's Picture Book of it; but he could not hit on a picture for the four lines beginning, 'Many Autumns, many Springs.' I suggested a Round-about with four seats, and the four seasons, as children, with Time for the shew-man."

335. "A thousand darling Imps." (stanza 19)

"Aeriel spirits," says Robert Burton, "are such as keep quarter most part in the air, cause many tempests, thunder, and lightnings, tear oaks, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it rain stones, ... wool, frogs, etc., counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises, swords, etc."

Nothing vexed Linnet Sara more than to be asked if there were any such darling imps or spectres or ghosts or blackamoors in Thrae. All such to her were nothing but idle fiddle-faddle. But Reginald Scot, who wrote The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), had another kind of kitchen company when he was young.

" ... Our mothers maide," he says, of his childhood, "so terrified us with ... bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, sylens, kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changlings, Incubus, Robin goodfellowe, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hellwaine, the fierdrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob gobblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we were afraid of our own shadowes: in so much as some never feare the divill, but in a dark night; ..."

There seems to be no mention here of the salamander—a creature at least as rarely seen by mortal eyes as the puckle or firedrake.

"When I was about five years old," says Benvenuto Cellini, "my father happened to be in a basement-chamber of our house, where they had been washing, and where a good fire of oak logs was still burning; he had a viol in his hand and was playing and singing alone beside the fire. The weather was very cold. Happening to look into the fire, he espied in the middle of the most burning flames a little creature like a lizard, which was sporting in the core of the intensest coals. Becoming aware of what the thing was, he had my sister and me called, and pointing it out to us children, gave me a great box on the ears, which caused me to cry with all my might. Then he pacified me by saying, 'My dear little boy, I am not striking you for anything that you have done, but only to make you remember that the lizard you see in the fire is a salamander, a creature which has never been seen before by any of whom we have credible information.' So saying he gave me some pieces of money, and kissed me."

"Bell and Whip and Horse's Tail" (stanza 22)

—such in old days was the Witch's vile punishment if she escaped drowning: to be whipped, tied to a horse's tail, and rung through the crowded streets.

"Agramie," I suppose, is agrimony, which, if worn by the wary, will enable the wearer to detect witches. Their eyes too will betray them, for there you will find no tiny image of yourself reflected as in the eyes of the honest. And if you would be rid of their company, pluck a sprig of scarlet pimpernel, and repeat this charm:

"Say this fifteen dayes together, twice a day, morning earlye fasting, and in the evening full."

Indeed, at last, whatever the peril, a quiet heart and heaven's courage, are charm enough:

336. "The Water Kelpy" (stanza 8)

is a fiend that haunts in rivers and desolate waters. It is of horse-shape, and the sound of its neighings is a boding of death to the traveller.

"Thus did the evil creatures often press me hard, but, as was meet, I served them well with my war-sword; they had no joyous fill by eating me, wicked destroyers, sitting round their feast nigh the bottom of the sea; but in the morning, wounded by the sword, slain by the dagger, they lay up along the sea-strand, so that they could never more hinder seafarers on their course in the deep channel.

Light came from the east, the bright beacon of the Lord; the waves were stilled, and I could descry the sea-headlands, those wind-swept walls."

Beowulf, translated by C. B. Tinker

"'And what is the sea?' asked Will.

'The sea!' cried the miller. 'Lord help us all, it is the greatest thing God made! That is where all the water in the world runs down into a great salt lake. There it lies, as flat as my hand and as innocent-like as a child; but they do say when the wind blows it gets up into water-mountains bigger than any of ours, and swallows down great ships bigger than our mill, and makes such a roaring that you can hear it miles away upon the land. There are great fish in it five times bigger than a bull, and one old serpent as long as our river and as old as all the world, with whiskers like a man, and a crown of silver on her head.'"

Robert Louis Stevenson

341. "The Wandering Spectre."

" ... The usewall Method for a curious Person to get a transient Sight of this otherwise invisible Crew of Subterraneans, ... is to put his left Foot under the Wizard's right Foot, and the Seer's Hand is put on the Inquirer's Head, who is to look over the Wizard's right Shoulder ... then will he see a Multitude of Wights, like furious hardie Men, flocking to him haistily from all Quarters, as thick as Atoms in the Air.... Thes thorow Fear strick him breathless and speechless."

So says "Mr. Robert Kirk, Minister at Aberfoill," in his Secret Commonwealth of 1691.

Of these invisible wights the womenkind "are said to Spin very fine, to Dy, to Tossue, and Embroyder, but whether only curious Cob-webs, impalpable Rainbows ... I leave to conjecture."

343. "And Clootie's waur nor a Woman was." (stanza 19)

A strip or patch of wild weedy uncropped ground (like the Sluggard's garden) that in England is called No Man's Land, the Scots country folk call Clootie's Croft (or Clootie's little field). They hand it over by name, as it were, to the Fiend, hoping that he may rest content with its harvest of nettle and bramble and burr, and not range elsewhere. It is an old belief that if, like Christian, the wayfarer meets Apollyon straddling across his path, he may have to withstand him not only with sword and staff, but with his wits. Just so, too, in old times, sovereign princes would test strangers with dark questions and riddles. In this ballad the Fiend disguised as a knight comes wooing at a Widow's door, in the next he is abroad on the high road. Jennifer and the wee boy kept up their hearts, their wits about them, their eyes open, and "had the last word"; which, says Mr. Sidgwick, is a mighty powerful charm against evil spirits—as against Witches are the herbs vervain, dill, basil, hyssop, periwinkle and rue. Iron, too; the cross, and running water.

Here is another such encounter from The White Wallet—packed with poems new and old. You can almost hear the voices of the two speakers standing together in the quiet and dust of the morning road:

Meet-on-the-road.

And here, for titbits and bonnes bouches, are Seven Ancient Riddles from Popular Rhymes—in case:

i.

ii.

iii.

iv.

v.

vi.

vii.

Answers.

i. 1¾ cakes each; since, if Mr. Piper marries, his wife will be Mr. and Mrs. Fiddler's dear daughter-in-law. ii. Smoke; iii. Ice; iv. A Star; v. The poor soul in the coffin was by trade a dyer; vi. Snuff (!); vii. A Chimney (in Days of Yore).

344. "The Fause Knicht."

Such visitants, it would appear, have marvellous power even over faces or shapes in stone:

Wrang-gaites must mean widdershins, left to right, West to East, the opposite to deiseal (deshal)—to the right, Sunwards.

Here is another such visitor—one who considerately intrudes not all at once but little by little, bone by bone:

The Strange Visitor.

345. "Christabel."

I have included only these few stanzas of this familiar magical poem because a book is but one book, and to print everything as lovely or almost as lovely would need many.

In reading it, as Coleridge explained, all that is necessary to ensure its lilt and cadence is to remember that every line, however few or many its words or syllables, has four accents, and that these fall in accord with the meaning of the lines as one reads them with clear eyes, attentive ear, and understanding. In his tale of Genevieve there is yet another false and lovely Fiend:

"A Toothless Mastiff Bitch."

Here is a description of one with teeth—a dog seldom seen now. It is taken from a German book on husbandry, translated by Barnaby Goodge, and is quoted in Animal Lore:

"First the mastie that keepeth the house: for this purpose you must provide you such a one, as hath a large and a mightie body, a great and a shrill voyce, that both with his barking he may discover, and with his sight dismay the theefe, yea, being not seene, with the horror of his voice put him to flight; his stature must neither be long nor short, but well set, his head great, his eyes sharpe, and fiery, ... his countenance like a lion, his brest great and shaghayrd, his shoulders broad, his legges bigge, his tayle short, his feet very great; his disposition must neither be too gentle, nor too curst, that he neither fawne upon a theefe, nor flee (fly) upon his friends; very waking, no gadder abroad, not lavish of his mouth, barking without cause. Neither maketh it any matter though he be not swift: for he is but to fight at home, and to give warning of the enemie." And his name is little Bingo!

347. "Once a fair and stately Palace."

The radiant palace of this poem is indeed far away—the other side of dream and night. Its monstrous word, Porphyrogene, means a prince, a child-Royal, one born in the chamber of some Eastern palace walled with rare porphyry.

350. "Sweet Whispers are heard by the Traveller." (stanza 6)

352. "My a Dildin."

This, 353, 355 and 356 are four more Singing-Game Rhymes, worn down into almost nonsensical jingle by multitudinous tongues in long long usage. (See No. 41, page 36).

And—since in my humble opinion it is not easy to get too much of this kind of good thing—here is another:

352a. "We are come to court."

And here is a Bride of Elizabeth's day whom I chanced on in that packed and inexhaustible book, Shakespeare's England. When "buskit braw," she must have been as lovely to see as a hawthorn in May or a wax candle in a silver shrine:

"The bride being attired in a gown of sheeps russet, and a kirtle of fine worsted, her head attired with a billiment of gold, and her hair as yellow as gold hanging down behind her, which was curiously combed and pleated, according to the manner in those days: she was led to church between two sweet boys, with bride-laces and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves.... Then was there a fair bride-cup of silver and gilt carried before her wherein was a goodly branch of rosemary, gilded very fair, hung about with silken ribands of all colours: next was there a noise of musicians, that played all the way before her: after her came all the chiefest maidens of the country, some bearing great bride-cakes, and some garlands of wheat, finely gilded, and so she passed to the Church."

As for the silken ribands they may have been of Drakes colour or Ladies blush or Gozelinge colour or Marigold or Isabel or Peas porridge tawny or Popingay blew or Lusty gallant, but they were certainly not Judas colour, Devil in the hedge, or Dead Spaniard.

355. "And feed Her wi' new Milk and Bread."

357. Quoth John to Joan.

This old song, which was set to music in the reign of Henry VIII., comes (like Dallyaunce of No. 35), out of a Morality Play, Lusty Juventus, the author of which is said to be one "R. Wever," whose body has now for many a century been slumbering on in its cocoon.

358. Milk-White Fingers, Cherry Nose.

This is the only poem I have ever seen in which the midmost feature of a pretty face is compared to a cherry. And yet a frosty morning must have given many a dainty nose that fair bright coral colour.

So too, Bob Cherry, in these lines To His Lady:

359. "Or the Bees their careful King."

In old times the "Governor" of a Bee Hive was sometimes referred to as the King and sometimes as the Queen. The choice depended in part on which kind of monarch was on the throne. There is an entrancing story of the middle ages, told by Mr. Tickner Edwardes in his book on the Honey Bee.

"A certaine simple woman, on finding that her bees were storing little honey for her and were perishing of "the murraine," stole one of the holy wafers from the priest, and for miraculous remedy concealed it in one of her hives. "Whereupon the Murraine ceased and the Honie abounded. The Woman, therefore lifting up the hive at the due time to take out the Honie, saw there (most strange to be seene) a Chappell built by the Bees, with an altar to it, the wals adorned by marvellous skill of architecture, with windowes conveniently set in their places: also a doore and a steeple with bells. And the Host being laid upon the altar, the Bees making a sweet noise, flew around it." Apart from "the singing masons building roofs of gold," the gluttonous drones, the sentries, wax-makers, bread-kneaders, nurses, etc., there are the Queen's Ladies-in-waiting. "For difference from the rest they beare for their crest a tuft or tossell, in some coloured yellow, in some murrey, in manner of a plume; whereof some turne downward like an Ostrich-feather, others stand upright like a Hern-top." But for truths even stranger than fantasy regarding bees and their kind, go to Henri Fabre.

360. "And here, and here."

362. "My Heart is gladder than all these."

363.

The word screen (line 4) means, I think, "Hide and shelter those smiles away that in their beauty seem to burn in the air": for all beauty resembles radiance in its influence on the mind. And this recalls to memory Southwell's poem, The Burning Babe, No. 256.

364. "A Sonnet of the Moon."

The closer one looks at and examines a fine sonnet—its way of rhyming, its rise, poise, flight and fall, the ease and exactitude with which what is said in it fills its mould or form—the more, I was going to say, one should hesitate before attempting to write another. This particular sonnet (like No. 361), is of the English or Shakespearean kind, and is so lovely a thing that only a close attention would notice the carelessness of its rhymes. No. 342 is an example of the form which our sixteenth century poets borrowed from Italy. Comparison of them shows that, as with the old Chinese ginger jars, so in poetry: not only is the syrup delightful, but even the pot may be interesting.

Coleridge wrote few sonnets, and this is his explanation of the length one must be: "It is confined to fourteen lines, because as some particular number is necessary, and that particular number must be a small one, it may as well be fourteen as any other number. When no reason can be adduced against a thing, Custom is a sufficient reason for it."

When I read this last remark for the first time it was as if my mind had been startled into attention as one's body is when it collides with a stranger in the street. There is a wide wisdom in it. How many natural, human and delightful things there are in this world indeed for which Custom is a sufficient reason: Children, for instance, daisies in the grass, skylarks in the clouds, dreams in sleep, rhymes, gay clothes, friendship, laughter.

"The Pale Queen."

There is the apparition of a lovely face in the Moon—proud and mute—to be discovered by careful eyes usually on the extreme right of the disc, her own eyes gazing towards the left.

368. "It was in and about the Martinmas time."

This old Scottish song was a favourite of Oliver Goldsmith's in his childhood. "The music of the finest singer," he said, "is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-night, or The Cruelty of Barbara Allen.

As with the Scottish ballads so with this last poem—it is the brevity and bareness with which the story is told and is not told that sets it apart. Without one express word to prove it so, we know that Sir John had always loved the proud Barbara even though he had spoken lightly of her, and that she too had always loved him, though she refuses the word that would have saved his life.

371. "I Never Had but One True Love, in Cold Grave She was Lain."

Yet another tragic and sorrowful poem of which, to some fancies, there may be too many in this book already. Well, here is the story of the beautiful Princess Uillanita: She cared only for flowers white and colourless as dew in the first light of day, or as laundered linen blanching on a hedge of thorn. And she came one still evening, when she was in search of what she could not find, to a valley wherein a forest gloomed above a deep but placid river. Within the forest, refreshed by the mists of the river, grew none but flowers blue and dark and purple, and such was the young Princess's hatred of them that she covered her eyes with her hands, fled on, and so lost her way.

In the middle of the night and long after she had wept herself to sleep, the wailing of a nocturnal bird pierced into her dreams, and she woke to find one solitary star of the colourlessness of Vega shining alone in radiance in the space of sky betwixt the branches above her head. Its thin ray silvered down—spearlike in its straightness—and of a beam easily sufficing to irradiate a tiny clustering flower which stood scarcely visible in the moss at her hand's side, and was drenching the air with its fragrance. It was a flower utterly strange to her, whiter than hoarfrost, fairer than foam.

The enravished Princess gazed spellbound. "Why," whispered she to herself, in the quiet of the dark gigantic forest; "if I had not wept at the flowers of this sombre forest, if I had not lost my way, if I had not been moved in my sleep to awaken, I never should have seen this crystal thing; that is lovelier than I deemed Paradise itself could bring to bloom." And she kissed the thin-spun petals, and happily fell again asleep.

372. "A Lament."

Only two stanzas out of six, and these, maybe, a little difficult in the old Scots:

380. To Helen.

Who "the wayworn wanderer" is, I am uncertain; but apart from its rare music, how long a journey awaits the imagination in this poem, and how closely inwoven is its thought. Yet it is said to have been written when Poe was in his early 'teens.

381. "There is a Lady."

Mr. Nahum's picture for this poem was of a little winged boy at evening, his quiver of arrows on his back, his bow the perch of a nightingale, and himself lying fast asleep under a hawthorn bush in full flower—a narrow green sun-dappled river near-by, rosy clouds and birds in the air, and strange snow-peaked hills afar.

"Till I die."

383. "It is not so."

385.

In this poem, as in all Christina Rossetti's work, there is a rhythm and poise, a serpentining of music, so delicate that on clumsy lips it will vanish as rapidly as the bloom from a plum. Indeed, each stanza is like a branch (with its twigs) of a wild damson-tree, its wavering line broken and beautified with bud, flower and leaf. And certainly as fresh an air, and as clear a light, stirs and dwells in the poem as on the tree itself in April.

387.

This is from Part II., Act II., Scene i. of "Zapolya." Glycine sings unseen in a cavern—her voice comforting her lover wandering forlorn by night "in a savage wood."

389.

391. "Chimborazo, Cotopaxi."

In medieval days it seems that a traveller here and there, happily supposing the world to be a floating island of indiscoverable dimensions, hung in the wilds of space, and not knowing that it was merely an "oblate spheroid," would journey clean round it and so come back, to his amazement, to the place from which he started. Here is such an experience from Sir John Mandeville, in his own words: "It was told that a certain worthy man departed some time from our Country for to go search the World.... He passed India and the Isles beyond it, where are more than 5000 Isles, and so long and for so many seasons he went by Sea and Land, and so environed the World, that he came at last to an Isle whereon he heard spoken his own language—a calling of oxen in the Plough—such Words in fact as men were wont to speak to Beasts in his own country. Whereof he greatly marvelled, knowing not how that might be." For there—as if it were a ghost or spectre—there was the chimney of his own house smoking up into the clear morning air! And what did he do, maybe? He stared; he sighed; he grew pale; he shuddered: and—he turned back!

392. "Hallo my fancy."

For the first sight of this poem I most gratefully thank my friend Mr. Ivor Gurney, though no doubt it was in Mr. Nahum's Book somewhere, and I was too indolent at the time to copy it out. The poem was written by William Cleland while he was still at St. Andrews. All else I know of him is that he was born about 1661, and fell at Dunkeld in 1689. There is nothing in English to my knowledge that resembles it. Erra Pater (stanza 4) was the name given to a busy astrologer and almanac-concocter, William Lilly, of the time. King Phalaris's monstrous bull was of brass: he perished in it.

By "the tapers" (stanza 2) is meant, I fancy, those phosphor-like fires that gather on the yard-arms of ships at sea when the air is electric with tempest. Sir Humphrey Gilbert's sailors were fearful at sight of this apparition, and of a monster, too, that appeared swimming in the waves beside their frigate, the Squirrel, a little before she and her riding lights disappeared for ever.

" ... Men which all their life time had occupied the Sea, never saw more outragious Seas. We had also upon our maine yard, an apparition of a little fire by night, which seamen doe call Castor and Pollux. But we had onely one, which they take an evill signe of more tempest.... The same Monday night, about twelve of the clocke ... suddenly her lights were out ... and withall our watch cryed, the Generall was cast away, which was too true. For in that moment, the Frigat was devoured and swallowed up of the Sea ..."

As for Cupid (stanza 5), he is said to be the slyest archer that ever shot arrow—and a dangerous child either to entertain (as the poem proves that begins as follows):

or—as yet another poem shows—to take as a scholar:

And last, the pelican (in stanza 7). She was supposed in old days to be "the lovingest bird that is," since at need she would pierce her breast with her bill to feed her young ones. The plaintive singing of the dying swan I have never heard, except in Tennyson's words:

393. "Columbus's doom-burdened caravels." (line 13)

" ... The next day, Thursday, October 11, 1492, was destined to be for ever memorable in the history of the world.... The people on the Santa Maria saw some petrels and a green branch in the water; the Pinta saw a reed and two small sticks carved with iron, and one or two other pieces of reeds and grasses that had been grown on shore, as well as a small board. Most wonderful of all, the people of the Nina saw 'a little branch full of dog roses';.... The day drew to its close; and after nightfall, according to their custom, the crews of the ships repeated the Salve Regina. Afterwards the Admiral addressed the people and sailors of his ship, 'very merry and pleasant,'.... The moon was in its third quarter, and did not rise until eleven o'clock. The first part of the night was dark, and there was only a faint starlight into which the anxious eyes of the look-out men peered from the forecastles of the three ships. At ten o'clock Columbus was walking on the poop of his vessel, when he suddenly saw a light right ahead. The light seemed to rise and fall as though it were a candle or a lantern held in some one's hand and waved up and down. The Admiral called Pedro Gutierrez to him and asked him whether he saw anything; and he also saw the light. Then he sent for Rodrigo Sanchez and asked him if he saw the light; but he did not.... Dawn came at last, flooding the sky with lemon and saffron and scarlet and orange, until at last the pure gold of the sun glittered on the water. And when it rose it showed the sea-weary mariners an island lying in the blue sea ahead of them: the island of Guanahani; San Salvador....

Christopher Columbus, Filson Young

395. "To Sea, to Sea."

"Caved Tritons' azure Day" (line 12)

—Dark-fated Clarence in King Richard III. dreamt of that "azure day":

396. "Jewels more rich than Ormus shows." (line 20)

Mr. Nahum's picture to this was of a man clothed in rags that must once have been rich and pompous. He sits, in the picture, gnawing his nails upon a heap of what appears to be precious stones and lumps of gold. All around him stretch the sands of the seashore, and there is a little harbour with a decayed quay, its river-mouth silted up with ooze and flotsam, so that nothing but a row-boat could find entrance there. An immense sun burns in the sky; and, though a thread of fresh water flows nearby, the man among the jewels seems to be tormented with thirst. For Ormus, or Hormuz, on its narrow island of wild-coloured rocks, date-palms, parrots and many birds, was once the rich mart and treasure-house between Persia and India—spices, pearls, ivory, gold, precious stones, and, in particular, the diamond, being its merchandise. In 1507 the Portuguese Conqueror Alfonso Albuquerque stole it from its dark princes. In 1622 Shah Abbas the Great razed it to the ground. To-day it is but a waste, inhabited by a few fishermen and diggers, its only commodities—that once were gems—salt and sulphur; while still in the height of its Summer blows Julot, Harmatan, Il Sirocco, the Flame-Wind, so deadly in its breath that the troops of an army of 1600 horsemen and 6000 foot, says Marco Polo, marching to punish the city for neglecting to pay tribute to the King of Kîrman, and camping overnight without its walls, were baked next noon as dry as pumice, and not a voice among them to tell the tale, though their bodily shape and colour seemed to appearance unchanged. To protect themselves against this Julot, the citizens of Ormus would build huts of sheltering osier-work over the water, and in the heat of the morning would stand immersed in its coolness up to the chin.

"Apples" (line 23)

—these are pineapples, the "price" of the next line meaning excellence. "Ambergris" (line 28), is a rare and costly stuff which, as its name tells, resembles grey amber. It has a wondrously sweet smell, was once used in cooking, and is disgorged by the whale that supplies the world with the comforting ointment of childhood called Spermaceti.

In Shakespeare's day, Marvell's "remote Bermudas" were known as the "Isle of Divels"—because of the nocturnal yellings, cries and yelpings that were reported to haunt them. English sailors, wrecked and cast away on Great Bermuda in 1709, however, brought home in their boats of cedar-wood the news that this wild music was caused (at least in part) by descendants of the hogs that had been left there by the long-gone Spaniard, Juan Bermudez and his men! They told, too, that it was an island fair and commodious, of a gentle climate, and a sweet-smelling air; and Shakespeare almost certainly had its enchantments in mind when he wrote of Ariel, Caliban and Miranda. Was not Ariel in Prospero's more solitary days called up at midnight "to fetch dewe from the still-vext Bermoothes"?

To the Puritan voyagers of Andrew Marvell's poem the Islands were as welcome and angelic as the Hesperides. And no poet could better tell of them than he. For in Marvell's verse dwells a curious happiness, like sunshine on a pool of water-lilies. Yet he, too, like other dreamers, was a man of affairs, and of endless industry and zeal. He was thrice Member of Parliament for his birthplace, Kingston-on-Hull, and, with Milton, was one of Oliver Cromwell's Latin Secretaries. John Aubrey describes him as "of a middling stature, pretty strong sett, roundish face, cherry-cheek't, hazell eie, brown hair. He was in his conversation very modest, and of very few words. And though he loved wine, he would never drink heartilie in company, and was wont to say, that, he would not play the good fellow in any man's company in whose hands he would not trust his life.... He lies interred under the pewes in the south side of St. Giles' church-in-the-fields, under the window wherein is painted in glass a red lyon...." And there George Chapman, William Shirley, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury share his rest.

397. "That talkative bald-headed Seaman came." (line 23)

398.

The prose "argument" to the "Ancient Mariner," which is almost as rare a piece of reading as the Rime itself, has been omitted. But here is a fragment of it relating to the passage on pages 390-4: "...The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him; but the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance. He despiseth the creatures of the calm, and envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead. But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men. In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.

"By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm—their beauty and their happiness. He blesseth them in his heart. The spell begins to break. By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain. He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the element. The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired and inspirited, and the ship moves on; but not by the souls of the men, nor by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint...."

"Daemons of earth or middle air" have been told of also by land travellers—by Friar Odoric, for example, in the account of his journey through Cathay during the years 1316-1330:

"Another great and terrible thing I saw. For, as I went through a certain valley which lieth by the River of Delights, I saw therein many dead corpses lying. And I heard also therein sundry kinds of music, but chiefly nakers, which were marvellously played upon. And so great was the noise thereof that very great fear came upon me. Now, this valley is seven or eight miles long; and if any unbeliever enter therein he quitteth it never again, but perisheth incontinently. Yet I hesitated not to go in that I might see once for all what the matter was. And when I had gone in I saw there, as I have said, such numbers of corpses as no one without seeing it could deem credible. And at one side of the valley, in the very rock, I beheld as it were the face of a man very great and terrible, so very terrible indeed that for my exceeding great fear my spirit seemed to die in me. Wherefore I made the sign of the cross, and began continually to repeat VERBUM CARO FACTUM, but I dared not at all to come nigh that face, but kept at seven or eight paces from it. And so I came at length to the other end of the valley, and there I ascended a hill of sand and looked around me. But nothing could I descry, only I still heard those nakers to play which were played so marvellously. And when I got to the top of that hill I found there a great quantity of silver heaped up as it had been fishes' scales, and some of this I put into my bosom. But as I cared nought for it, and was at the same time in fear lest it should be a snare to hinder my escape, I cast it all down again to the ground. And so by God's grace I came forth scathless. Then all the Saracens, when they heard of this, showed me great worship, saying that I was a baptised and holy man. But those who had perished in that valley they said belonged to the devil."

399. "He Told of Waves." (line 28)

So, too, does the Ship's Captain in yet such another ore-loaden poem of the marvellous, "The Sale of St. Thomas," by Lascelles Abercrombie, telling how the saint in terror of the unknown would turn back from his mission, is rebuked by his Master, and sold by him for twenty pieces of silver to the Captain of a slant-sailed vessel bound for the barbarous Indies. Here is but a fragment of the poem:

400. "Parrots of Shrilly Green"

—this gaudy and longevous bird, that seems to contain all the wisdom of Solomon and more than the craft of Cleopatra in his eye, perched first upon England many centuries ago. Skelton speaks of him:

And so, too, John Maplet, a "naturalist" who in 1567 wrote A Greene Forest:

"The Parret hath all hir whole bodie greene, saving that onely about hir necke she hath a Coller or Chaine naturally wrought like to Sinople or Vermelon. Indie hath of this kinde such as will counterfaite redily a mans speach: what wordes they heare, those commonly they pronounce. There have bene found of these that have saluted Emperours...."

But which Emperors, and when and to what end he does not relate. A parrot of price indeed would be she that had held converse with "Ozymandias, king of kings."

402. "The March of Time." (line 2)

They are like strings of precious stones, rosaries, these Tudor laments, one image following another, and however sad in colour, all making beauty:

403. "The Wild Hyaena." (line 11)

In old times it was believed that if a hungry hyaena or jaccatray—who cannot wry his neck "because his backbone stretches itself out to the head"—dreams, he dreams so vividly that he calls into his sleeping brain a vision of the beasts he covets for prey. And this vision is so lifelike that he howls out of his sleep in mockery of the beasts—and thus decoys them to his den! He is a nocturnal scavenger, haunting graveyards, and "when" says Lyly, he "speaketh lyke a man," he "deviseth most mischief."

404. "In Xanadu Did Kubla Khan."

"Now, this lord (the Great Caan)," says Friar Odoric in his Cathay, "passeth the summer at a certain place which is called SANDU, situated towards the north, and the coolest habitation in the world. But in the winter season he abideth in Cambalech. And when he will ride from the one place to the other this is the order thereof. He hath four armies of horsemen, one of which goeth a day's march in front of him, one at each side, and one a day's march in rear, so that he goeth always as it were, in the middle of a cross. And marching thus, each army hath its route laid down for it day by day, and findeth at its halts all necessary provender. But his own immediate company hath its order of march thus. The king travelleth in a two-wheeled carriage, in which is formed a very goodly chamber, all of lign-aloes and gold, and covered over with great and fine skins, and set with many precious stones. And the carriage is drawn by four elephants, well broken in and harnessed, and also by four splendid horses, richly caparisoned. And alongside go four barons, who are called CUTHE, keeping watch and ward over the chariot that no hurt come to the king. Moreover, he carrieth with him in his chariot twelve gerfalcons; so that even as he sits therein upon his chair of state or other seat, if he sees any birds pass he lets fly his hawks at them. And none may dare to approach within a stone's throw of the carriage, unless those whose duty brings them there. And thus it is that the king travelleth."

"A Sunless Sea."

Our English eyes, loving light, weary a little of the short cold days in our country, when the sun makes "winter arches." Sadder still would be our state in the regions told of by Marco Polo in the following passage:

"Beyond the most distant part of the territory of the Tartars, ... there is another region [thick set with dark impenetrable woods] which extends to the utmost bounds of the north, and is called the Region of Darkness, because during most part of the winter months the sun is invisible, and the atmosphere is obscured to the same degree as that in which we find it just about the dawn of day, when we may be said to see and not to see. The men of this country are well made and tall, but of a very pallid complexion. They are not united under the government of a king or prince, and they live without any established laws or usages, in the manner of the brute creation. Their intellects also are dull, and they have an air of stupidity. The Tartars often proceed on plundering expeditions against these people, to rob them of their cattle and goods. For this purpose they avail themselves of those months in which the darkness prevails, in order that their approach may be unobserved; but, being unable to ascertain the direction in which they should return homeward with their booty, they provide against the chance of going astray by riding mares that have young foals at the time, which latter they suffer to accompany the dams as far as the confines of their own territory, but leave them, under proper care, at the commencement of the gloomy region. When their works of darkness have been accomplished, and they are desirous of revisiting the region of light, they lay the bridles on the necks of their mares, and suffer them freely to take their own course. Guided by maternal instinct, they make their way directly to the spot where they had quitted their foals; and by these means the riders are enabled to regain in safety the places of their residence."

406. "One held a Shell unto his Shell-like Ear." (line 6)

407. "Like Solemn Apparitions Lulled Sublime To Everlasting Rest." (line 11)

411. "The Golden Vanity."