66

One morn when the sirocco spent

Its storms of dust with burning heat;

And in the street a leper sate,

Shivering with fever, naked, old; Sand raked his sores from heel to pate, The hot wind fever'd him five-fold.

"He gaz'd upon me as I pass'd,

And murmur'd: Help me, or I die!— To the poor wretch my cloak I cast,

Saw him look eased, and hurried by.

"Oh, Brandan, think what grace divine,
What blessing must full goodness shower,
When fragment of it small, like mine,
Hath such inestimable power!

"Well-fed, well-clothed, well-friended, I Did that chance act of good, that one! Then went my way to kill and lie

Forgot my good as soon as done.

"That germ of kindness, in the womb Of mercy caught, did not expire; Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom,

And friends me in the pit of fire.

"Once every year, when carols wake,
On earth, the Christmas-night's repose,
Arising from the sinners' lake,

I journey to these healing snows.

44

48

52

56

60

64

68

"I stanch with ice my burning breast,

With silence balm my whirling brain. O Brandan! to this hour of rest

That Joppan leper's ease was pain."

72

Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes;
He bow'd his head, he breathed a prayer-
Then look'd, and lo, the frosty skies!

1867.

The iceberg, and no Judas there!

76

Matthew Arnold.

ARETHUSA

ARETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,—
From cloud and from crag,

With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;—
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams:
And gliding and springing

She went, ever singing,

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.

18

Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold,

With his trident the mountains strook
And opened a chasm

In the rocks;-with the spasm

All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind

It concealed behind

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below.
The beard and the hair

Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light

Of the fleet nymph's flight

To the brink of the Dorian deep.

Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,

For he grasps me now by the hair!"
The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred,

And divided at her prayer;

And under the water

The Earth's white daughter

Fled like a sunny beam;

Behind her descended

Her billows, unblended

With the brackish Dorian stream:

36

Like a gloomy stain

On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind,—

As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind. 54

Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones, Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams
Weave a network of colored light;
And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves
Are as green as the forest's night;—
Outspeeding the shark,

And the sword-fish dark,

Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts

Of the mountain clifts

They passed to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains

In Enna's mountains,

Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted

Grown single-hearted,

They ply their watery tasks.

72

At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of Asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;—

Like spirits that lie

In the azure sky

When they love but live no more.

1820. 1824.

90

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

LAODAMIA

"WITH sacrifice before the rising morn Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired; And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn

Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required: Celestial pity I again implore ;

Restore him to my sight-great Jove,

restore!"

So speaking, and by fervent love endowed With faith, the Suppliant heavenward lifts her hands;

While, like the sun emerging from a cloud, Her countenance brightens-and her eye ex

pands;