52.

The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna,

Sir John Moore conducted an expedition, in the north of Spain, against Napoleon. He was killed at Corunna (1809) just at the moment of victory. NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,

As his corpse to the rampart we hurried ;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him ;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow,

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought as we hollowed his narrow bed,
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,—
But little he'll reck if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone-
But we left him alone with his glory.

C. WOLFE.

53.

The Pilgrim.

WHO would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather;
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round
With dismal stories.
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright;
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Can daunt his spirit ;
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,

He'll not fear what men say,

He'll labour night and day

To be a pilgrim.

54.

After.

J. BUNYAN

TAKE the cloak from his face, and at first

Let the corpse do its worst!

How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.

And, absorbed in the new life he leads,

He recks not, nor heeds

Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike

On his senses alike,

And are lost in the solemn and strange

Surprise of the change.

Na dnde the prey,

OPIORNARE saddening der each brow, eave to tell exulted wow!"

A figure lithe, all white and saffron-robed,
Flashed right across the circle, and now stood
With ripened arms uplift and regal head,

Like some tall flower whose dark and intense heart
Lies half within a tulip-tinted cup.

Juan stood fixed and pale; Pepita stepped
Backward within the ring: the voices fell
From shouts insistent to more passive tones
Half meaning welcome, half astonishment.
“Lady Fedalma !—will she dance for us?"

But she, sole swayed by impulse passionate,
Feeling all life was music and all eyes

The warming quickening light that music makes,
Moved as, in dance religious, Miriam,

When on the Red Sea shore she raised her voice
And led the chorus of her people's joy;
Or as the Trojan maids that reverent sang
Watching the sorrow-crowned Hecuba :'
Moved in slow curves voluminous, gradual,
Feeling and action flowing into one,
In Eden's natural taintless marriage-bond
Ardently modest, sensuously pure,
With young delight that wonders at itself
And throbs as innocent as opening flowers,
Knowing not comment―soilless, beautiful.
The spirit in her gravely glowing face
With sweet community informs her limbs,
Filling their fine gradation with the breath
Of virgin majesty; as full vowelled words
Are new impregnate with the master's thought.
Even the chance-strayed delicate tendrils black,
That backward 'scape from out her wreathing hair—
Even the pliant folds that cling transverse
When with obliquely soaring bend altern

She seems a goddess quitting earth again—
Gather expression—a soft undertone

And resonance exquisite from the grand chord
Of her harmoniously bodied soul.

GEORGE ELIOT.

I The second wife of Priam, king of Troy. She lost nearly all her children in the Trojan war.

42.

The Sweet Singer of Israel.

THEN I tuned my harp,-took off the lilies we twine round its chords

Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide-those sunbeams like swords!

And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one,

So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done. They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed

Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's

bed;

And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows

star

Into eve and the blue far above us,- so blue and so far!

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their winesong, when hand

Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand

And grow one in the sense of this world's life.—And then, the last song

When the dead man is praised on his journey—“ Bear, bear him along

With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seeds not here

To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier.

Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!”— And then, the glad chaunt

Of the marriage,-first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt

As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.— And then, the great march

Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch

Nought can break; who shall harm them, our friends?— Then, the chorus intoned

As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned.

R. BROWNING.