15. She clad herself in a russet gown-
She was no longer Lady Clare :

She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

16. The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
Leapt up from where she lay,

Dropt her head in the maiden's hand,
And followed her all the way.

17. Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower
"O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!
Why come you drest like a village maid,
That are the flower of all the earth?"
18. "If I come drest like a village maid,
I am but as my fortunes are:
I am a beggar born," she said,
"And not the Lady Clare."

19. "Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
"For I am yours in word and deed.
Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald,
"Your riddle is hard to read."

20. Oh, and proudly stood she up!

Her heart within her did not fail:
She looked into Lord Ronald's eyes,
And told him all her nurse's tale.

21. He laughed a laugh of merry scorn:
He turned and kissed her where she stood:
"If you are not the heiress born,

And I," said he, "the next of blood

22. "If you are not the heiress born,

And I," said he, "the lawful heir,

We two will wed to-morrow morn,

And you shall still be-LADY CLARE."

TENNYSON.

ALFRED TENNYSON, poet laureate of England, the son of a clergyman, was born in Lincolnshire, in 1810. He received his university education at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first volume of poems was published in 1830; his second, three years afterward. Some of his early minor pieces, as well as selections from "The Princess," are simple, true to nature, and exquisitely beautiful. "In Memoriam," one of his most characteristic poems, is the most important contribution which has yet been given to what may strictly be entitled Elegiac Poetry. It first appeared in 1850, nearly twenty years after the death of young Hallam, the son of the celebrated historian, to whom he was bound by many

endearing ties, and to whose memory the work is a tribute. Careful study, and reflection on the reader's own inmost being, are required to fully reveal the imaginative power, the wisdom, and the spiritual beauty of this work. The poet's early fame is fully sustained by his later writings. "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is one of the most spirited and effective poems ever written. "Idyls of the King," for vigor, exquisite utterance, and varied interest, is probably inferior to no corresponding poem in any language. "Lady Clare," the selection here introduced, while well adapted to public reading and poetic recitation, is especially valuable as an exercise in Personation-see p. 69.

MA

VI.

102. MAUD MULLER.

AUD MULLER, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hāy.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

2. But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast—
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
3. The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,

nd ask a draught from the spring that flowed Through the meadow, across the road.

4. She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin-cup,

And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
"Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed."

5. He spoke of the grass, and flowers, and trees,
Of the singing-birds and the humming bees;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

66 Ah me!

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles, bare and brown,
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
6. Maud Muller looked and sighed :
That I the Judge's bride might be!
He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
My father should wear a broadcloth coat,
My brother should sail a painted boat.
I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door."
7. The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Müller standing still :

"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay:

No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
But low of cattle and song of birds,

And health, and quiet, and loving words.

8. But he thought of his sister, proud and cold,
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field ǎlone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.

9. He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,

1

He watched a picture come and go ;
And sweet Maud Müller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
10. Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead ;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,
To dream of meadows and clover blooms;
And the proud man sighed with a secret pain,—
"Ah, that I were free again!

Free as when I rode that day

Where the barefoot maiden raked the hāy."
11. She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft, when the summer's sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring-brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,
And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
12. Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinet' turned,
The tallow candle an astral' burned;
And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty, and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, "It might have been."

13. Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,

For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

1 Spinet, a musical instrument resembling a harpsichord, but smaller. * Astral, (ås ́tral-låmp), an argand

lamp having the oil in a flattened ring surmounted by a hemisphere of ground glass.

For all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: "IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN!"
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

And in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave ǎway.

WHITTIER.

JOHN GREENLEAF Whittier, one of the truest and most worthy of American poets, was born near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1808. Of a Quaker family, his youth was passed at home, assisting his father on the farm, and attending the district school and Haverhill Academy. In 1828 he went to Boston, and became editor of a newspaper entitled the "American Manufacturer," and in 1830 he succeeded George D. Prentice as editor of the "New England Weekly Review," at Hartford, and remained connected with it for two years. For several years he was corresponding editor of the Washington "National Era." He has been a prolific and popular writer both in prose and verse. A complete edition of his poems, in two volumes, appeared in 1863; and "Snow-Bound, a Winter Idyl," in 1866. In 1840 Mr. Whittier removed to Amesbury, Massachusetts, where all his later publications have been written, and where he still resides.

Ο

VII.

103. THE DREAM.

PART FIRST.

UR life is twofold: sleep hath its own world-
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence : sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality;

And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts;
They take a weight from off our waking toils;
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of Eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past,--they speak
Like sibyls' of the future; they have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not--what they will:

1 Sib'yl, a woman supposed to be endowed with a spirit of prophecy: hence, a female fortune-teller, or gipsy. The number of the sibyls is

variously stated; but among the ancients, they were believed to be ten. They resided in various parts of Persia, Greece, and Italy.