But the glamour was over, the dream gone by for ever, and the awakening was all that was to come. Through long days and nights Laura kept watch in vain

In sullen silence of exceeding pain.

She never heard the luring cry again. She too began to 'dwindle and grow grey.' One day she remembered her kernel-stone, and set it in the ground with the wild hope of having fruit for herself, but it never grew, and so the last hope died out, and with it died out Laura's efforts in life. She 'no more swept the house,' or fetched the honey, or brought water from the brook; all interest was over, she sat in the chimney corner listless and weary, and would not eat.

Then the great pity which cannot rest until it has made effort for the deliverance of its object, woke in Lizzie's heart. She thought of dead Jeanie, and felt that something must be done to save her Laura, who seemed to be knocking at death's door. She weighs no more, sees but one fact directly, that at any sacrifice except that of right, Laura must be helped. So she put a silver penny in her purse,

Kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze
At twilight; halted by the brook,

And for the first time in her life

Began to listen and to look.

What a wonderful picture Christina Rossetti has created here, of the young girl with the selfless purpose, and the speed impelling love glowing in her pure young face.

If I were an artist, I would draw that Lizzie in the twilight, as she crosses 'the heath with clumps of furze.'

She has not long to wait when she reaches the brook. She has been long looked for: the goblins come to meet her, laughing with fiendish glee. She has come at last -they knew she would, so they

Came towards her hobbling,

Flying, running, leaping,

Puffing and blowing,

Chuckling, clapping, crowing,

Clucking and gobbling,

Mopping and mowing,

Full of airs and graces.

And pressing round her they caressed her, and stretched up their dishes piled with fruit, as luscious and as tempting as they had given to Laura. But they did. not know Lizzie. Holding out her silver penny, she asked for the fruit in a way altogether foreign to them. 'Nay! but eat with us,' they say 'it is nothing if you do not sit at the feast with us; let us see how you relish the fruit. You cannot carry such fruit away! The bloom would go off it. Stay and be our welcome guest.' 'Nay!' said Lizzie, 'one waits at home alone for me, if you will not sell me the fruit, give me back my silver penny.' Then their persuasions turn to fury -their tenderness to cruelty-they first give her evil words, then hustle and claw her, and shew themselves

the evil beasts they really are with their fierce wicked

ways. They

Twitched her hair out by the roots,

Stamped upon her tender feet,

Held her hands, and squeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.

The description of Lizzie in this cruel crowd, and this bewildering pain, is perhaps the most beautiful part of

the poem,

White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in the flood,

Like a rock of blue-veined stone
Lashed by tides obstreperously,

Like a beacon left alone

In a hoary roaring sea

Sending up a golden fire,

Like a fruit-crowned orange tree,
White with blossoms, honey-sweet,

Sore beset by wasp and bee,

Like a royal virgin town

Topped with gilded dome and spire,

Close beleaguered by a fleet

Mad to tug her standard down.

Nothing can move the simple-hearted girl whose whole mind is set on giving help to another. She utters not a word; kicked, mocked at, cuffed, pinched black as ink, she will not open her lips lest the fruit should be crammed into her mouth.

At last the evil people,

Worn out by her resistance,

Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit
Along which ever way they took,

Not leaving root or stone or shoot;

Some writhed into the ground,

Some dived into the brook

With ring and ripple,

Some scudded on the gale without a sound,

Some vanished in the distance.

Lizzie has done her work. She has proved that they are but goblins, that there is no reality either in their promises or themselves. She has done her best for Laura, and she hurries home. Going up the garden path she calls to Laura to come and kiss her.

For your sake I have braved the glen

And had to do with goblin merchant men.

The thought of Lizzie's danger and of the darkness which might shadow her life in consequence, roused Laura from her own sorrow. Was Lizzie's lot to be dimmed as hers had been? Was she 'to be undone in her undoing?'

Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?

The thought is maddening to the weary-hearted girl She clings to her sister, and kissed and kissed and kissed her,' while the long-frozen tears flow from her eyes. But as Laura's lips touch the juices which linger about Lizzie, she comes to a true knowledge of those

fruits. She knows now that they are goblin pleasures, not true ones they turn to wormwood, and fever runs through her veins. The past appears in its true colours. She sees what Lizzie has done; the contrast between them overwhelms her, and she gives way under the long strain she has endured.

She fell at last ;

Pleasure past, and anguish past,

Is it death, or is it life?

And what is the answer? What is the great meaning of the poem? What is Lizzie's guerdon for pain?

Life out of death.

Through the long night of anguish Lizzie watches by her sister. When the early reapers go to work, when the notes of the first birds are heard in the eaves, when the new buds are opening to the light,

Laura awoke as from a dream;

Laughed in the innocent old way;

Hugged Lizzie, but not twice or thrice,

and she is saved. Years after, when both Lizzie and Laura are wives, with children of their own, Laura calls the little ones and tells them the story of the haunted glen and the wicked fruit merchant goblins :

Would tell them how her sister stood

In deadly peril to do her good,

And win the fiery antidote.

Then, joining hands to little hands,

G