Unbreachable the fort

Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall;

And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,
And near and real the charm of thy repose,
And night as welcome as a friend would fall.

But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss

Of quiet! Look, adown the dusk hill-side,

A troop of Oxford hunters going home,

As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!

From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come. Quick! let me fly, and cross

Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify The orange and pale violet evening-sky, Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!

I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,
The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,
The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,
And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out.
I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,

Yet, happy omen, hail!

Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale
(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep
The morningless and unawakening sleep
Under the flowery oleanders pale),

Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our Tree is there!-
Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,

And now in happier air,

Wandering with the great Mother's train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,

I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine,

Thou hearest the immortal chants of old!
Putting his sickle to the perilous grain

In the hot corn-field of the Phrygian king,
For thee the Lityerses-song* again

Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing;
Sings his Sicilian fold,

His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes

And how a call celestial round him rang,

And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang,

And all the marvel of the golden skies.

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here

Sole in these fields! yet will I not despair.

Despair I will not, while I yet descry

'Neath the mild canopy of English air

That lonely tree against the western sky.
Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear,

Our Gypsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee!

Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay,
Woods with anemonies in flower till May,

Know him a wanderer still; then why not me?

*“Daphnis, the ideal Sicilian shepherd of Greek pastoral poetry, was said to have followed into Phrygia his mistress Piplea, who had been carried off by robbers, and to have found her in the power of the King of Phrygia, Lityerses. Lityerses used to make strangers try a contest with him in reaping corn, and to put them to death if he overcame them. Hercules arrived in time to save Daphnis, took upon himself the reaping-contest with Lityerses, overcame him, and slew him. The Lityerses-song connected with this tradition was . . . of the early plaintive strains of Greek popular poetry, and used to be sung by

..one

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks,
Shy to illumine; and I seek it too.

This does not come with houses or with gold,
With place, with honor, and a flattering crew;

"Tis not in the world's market bought and sold —

But the smooth-slipping weeks

Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired;
Out of the heed of mortals he is gone,
He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone;
Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired.

Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound;
Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!

Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest,
If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power,
If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest.
And this rude Cumner ground,

Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields,

Here cam'st thou in thy jocund youthful time,

Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime! And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields.

What though the music of thy rustic flute
Kept not for long its happy, country tone;

Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note

Of men contention-tost, of men who groan,

Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tried thy throat

It fail'd, and thou wast mute!

Yet hadst thou alway visions of our light,

And long with men of care thou couldst not stay,

And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way,

Left human haunt, and on alone till night.

Too rare, too rare, grow now thy visits here! 'Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore,

Thyrsis in reach of sheep-bells is my home.

-Then through the great town's harsh, heart-wearying roar, Let in thy voice a whisper often come,

To chase fatigue and fear:

Why faintest thou? I wander'd till I died.

Roam on! the light we sought is shining still.

Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the hill,

Our Scholar travels yet the loved hill-side.

LAMENT FOR JAMES, EARL OF GLENCAIRN.

Robert Burns.

"YE scatter'd birds that faintly sing,
The reliques o' the vernal choir!
Ye woods that shed on a' the winds
The honors o' the aged year!

A few short months, and, glad and gay,
Again ye'll charm the ear and e'e;

But nocht in all revolving time

Can gladness bring again to me.

"In Poverty's low barren vale,

Thick mists, obscure, involv'd me round;
Though oft I turn'd the wistful eye,

Nae ray of fame was to be found:
Thou found'st me, like the morning sun
That melts the fogs in limpid air,

The friendless hard and rustic sano

"O! why has worth so short a date,

While villains ripen grey with time?
Must thou, the noble, gen'rous, great,
Fall in bold manhood's hardy prime!
Why did I live to see that day –

A day to me so full of woe?
O! had I met the mortal shaft
Which laid my benefactor low.

"The bridegroom may forget the bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The monarch may forget the crown
That on his head an hour has been;
The mother may forget the bairn

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And a' that thou hast done for me!"

SHAKSPEARE.

From HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP.

Thomas Carlyle.

As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so Shakspeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humors, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece, so in Shakspeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, will