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Every day the starving poor
Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door;
For he had a plentiful last-year's store,
And all the neighborhood could tell
His granaries were furnished well.

At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day
To quiet the poor without delay;

He bade them to his great barn repair,

He laid him down and closed his eyes,
But soon a scream made him arise;
He started, and saw two eyes of flame
On his pillow, from whence the screaming came.

He listened and looked, - it was only the cat ;
But the bishop he grew more fearful for that,
For she sate screaming, mad with fear
At the army of rats that were drawing near.

And they should have food for the winter there. For they have swum over the river so deep,

Rejoiced the tidings good to hear,

The
poor folks flocked from far and near;
The great barn was full as it could hold
Of women and children, and young and old.

Then, when he saw it could hold no more,
Bishop Hatto he made fast the door;
And whilst for mercy on Christ they call,
He set fire to the barn, and burnt them all.

"I' faith 't is an excellent bonfire!" quoth he;
"And the country is greatly obliged to me
For ridding it, in these times forlorn,
Of rats that only consume the corn."

So then to his palace returnèd he,
And he sate down to supper merrily,
And he slept that night like an innocent man;
But Bishop Hatto never slept again.

In the morning, as he entered the hall,
Where his picture hung against the wall,
A sweat like death all over him came,
For the rats had eaten it out of the frame.

As he looked, there came a man from his farm,
He had a countenance white with alarm:
"My lord, I opened your granaries this morn,
And the rats had eaten all your corn."

Another came running presently,
And he was pale as pale could be.
"Fly! my lord bishop, fly!" quoth he,
"Ten thousand rats are coming this way, -
The Lord forgive you for yesterday!"

"I'll go to my tower in the Rhine," replied he;
""T is the safest place in Germany,

The walls are high, and the shores are steep,
And the tide is strong, and the water deep."

Bishop Hatto fearfully hastened away;
And he crossed the Rhine without delay,
And reached his tower, and barred with care
All the windows, doors, and loop-holes there.

And they have climbed the shores so steep,
And now by thousands up they crawl
To the holes and the windows in the wall.

[Baltimore is a small seaport in the barony of Carbery, in South Munster. It grew up around a castle of O'Driscoll's, and was, after his ruin, colonized by the English. On the 20th of June, 1631, the crews of two Algerine galleys landed in the dead of the night, sacked the town, and bore off into slavery all who were not too old, or too young, or too fierce, for their purpose. The pirates were steered up the intricate channel by one Hackett, a Dungarvan fisherman, whom they had taken at sea for the purpose. Two years after, he was convicted of the crime and executed. Baltimore never recovered from this.]

THE summer sun is falling soft on Carbery's
hundred isles,

The summer sun is gleaming still through
Gabriel's rough defiles, -

Old Inisherkin's crumbled fane looks like a
molting bird;

And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard:

The hookers lie upon the beach; the children cease their play;

The gossips leave the little inn; the households kneel to pray;

O, some sweet mission of true love must urge This boy will bear a Scheik's chibouk, and that them to the shore, a Bey's jerreed.

They bring some lover to his bride, who sighs in O, some are for the arsenals by beauteous DarBaltimore !

And o'er each black and bearded face the white "T is two long years since sunk the town beneath or crimson shawl. that bloody band,

The yell of “Allah!" breaks above the prayer And all around its trampled hearths a larger and shriek and roarconcourse stand,

O blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore! Where high upon a gallows-tree a yelling wretch

There's one hearth well avenged in the sack of PARRHASIUS stood, gazing forgetfully
Baltimore !

Upon the canvas. There Prometheus lay,
Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus,

Midsummer morn, in woodland nigh, the birds The vulture at his vitals, and the links

lives

And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim | Your heart, old man!— forgive-ha! on your
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye

Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip,

Let him not faint! rack him till he revives !

"Vain, — vain, - give o'er. His eye Glazes apace. He does not feel you now,

Were like the winged god's breathing from his Stand back! I'll paint the death-dew on his brow! flights.

Gods! if he do not die,

But for one moment - one - till I eclipse
Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!

"Shivering! Hark! he mutters

Brokenly now, that was a difficult breath, -
Another? Wilt thou never come, O Death?
Look! how his temple flutters !

Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head!
He shudders, gasps, Jove help him!
- he 's dead!"

How like a mounting devil in the heart
Rules the unreined ambition! Let it once
But play the monarch, and its haughty brow
Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought
And unthrones peace forever. Putting on
The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns
Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip,
The heart to ashes, and with not a spring
We look upon our splendor, and forget
The thirst of which we perish!

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS

THE ROMAN FATHER'S SACRIFICE.

FROM "VIRGINIA."

STRAIGHTWAY Virginius led the maid
A little space aside,

To where the reeking shambles stood,
Piled up with horn and hide;
Close to yon low dark archway,

Where, in a crimson flood,
Leaps down to the great sewer

The gurgling stream of blood.

Hard by, a flesher on a block
Had laid his whittle down :
Virginius caught the whittle up,
And hid it in his gown.
And then his eyes grew very dim,
And his throat began to swell,
And in a hoarse, changed voice he spake,
"Farewell, sweet child! Farewell!

"O, how I loved my darling!

Though stern I sometimes be,

To thee, thou know'st, I was not so,
Who could be so to thee?

So,