And all my heart turn'd from her, as a thorn

Turns from the sea; but let me live my life.'

He sang his song, and I replied with mine:

I found it in a volume, all of songs, Knock'd down to me, when old Sir Robert's pride,

His books-the more the pity, so I saidCame to the hammer here in Marchand this

I set the words, and added names I knew. Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me:

4

Sleep, Ellen, folded in thy sister's arm, And sleeping, haply dream her arm is

mine.

'Sleep, Ellen, folded in Emilia's arm; Emilia, fairer than all else but thou, For thou art fairer than all else that is. 'Sleep, breathing health and peace upon her breast:

Sleep, breathing love and trust against her lip:

I go to-night: I come to-morrow morn.
I go, but I return: I would I were
The pilot of the darkness and the dream.
Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, love, and dream of
me.'

So sang we each to either, Francis
Hale,

The farmer's son, who lived across the bay, My friend; and I, that having wherewithal,

And in the fallow leisure of my life
A rolling stone of here and everywhere,
Did what I would; but ere the night we

rose

And saunter'd home beneath a moon, that, just

In crescent, dimly rain'd about the leaf Twilights of airy silver, till we reach'd The limit of the hills; and as we sank From rock to rock upon the glooming quay,

The town was hush'd beneath us: lower down The bay was oily calm; the harbourbuoy,

Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm, With one green sparkle ever and anon Dipt by itself, and we were glad at heart.

Up higher with the yew-tree by it, and half

A score of gables.

James. That? Sir Edward Head's: But he's abroad: the place is to be sold. John. Oh, his. He was not broken. James. No, sir, he, Vex'd with a morbid devil in his blood That veil'd the world with jaundice, hid his face

From all men, and commercing with himself,

He lost the sense that handles daily life

That keeps us all in order more or less And sick of home went overseas for

change.

John. And whither?

James. Nay, who knows? He's here and there.

But let him go; his devil goes with him, As well as with his tenant, Jocky Dawes. John. What's that?

James. You saw the man-on Monday, was it?

There by the humpback'd willow; half stands up

And bristles; half has fall'n and made a bridge;

And there he caught the younker tickling

trout

Caught in flagrante- what's the Latin word?

Delicto: but his house, for so they say, Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that

shook

James. Ay, ay, the blossom fades, and they that loved

At first like dove and dove were cat and dog.

She was the daughter of a cottager, Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride,

New things and old, himself and her, she sour'd

To what she is: a nature never kind! Like men, like manners: like breeds like, they say:

Kind nature is the best: those manners next

That fit us like a nature second-hand; Which are indeed the manners of the great. John. But I had heard it was this bill that past,

We took them all, till she was left alone
Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,
And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty.
John. They found you out?
James.
John.

Not they. Well after all What know we of the secret of a man?

His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound,

That we should mimic this raw fool the world,

Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,

As ruthless as a baby with a worm,
As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows
To Pity-more from ignorance than will.
But put your best foot forward, or I
fear

That we shall miss the mail: and here it

comes

With five at top: as quaint a four-in-hand As you shall see. -three pyebalds and a

roan.

EDWIN MORRIS;

OR, THE LAKE.

O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake, My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of a year,

My one Oasis in the dust and drouth
Of city life! I was a sketcher then:
See here, my doing: curves of mountain,
bridge,

Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built When men knew how to build, upon a rock

With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock : And here, new-comers in an ancient hold, New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires, Here lived the Hills- -a Tudor-chimnied bulk

Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.
O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake
With Edwin Morris and with Edward
Bull
The curate; he was fatter than his cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the

names,

G