They lay along the battery's side,

Below the smoking cannon:

Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde,

And from the banks of Shannon.

They sang of love, and not of fame;

Forgot was Britain's glory:

Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang "Annie Laurie."

Voice after voice caught up the song,
Until its tender passion

Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,-
Their battle-eve confession.

Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,
But as the song grew louder,
Something upon the soldier's cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.

Beyond the darkening ocean burned
The bloody sunset's embers,

While the Crimean valleys learned

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How English love remembers.

And once again a fire of hell

Rained on the Russian quarters,

With scream of shot, and burst of shell,

And bellowing of the mortars!

And Irish Nora's eyes are dim
For a singer dumb and gory;

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1851.

And English Mary mourns for him
Who sang of "Annie Laurie."

Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,-
The loving are the daring.

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Bayard Taylor.

THE PATRIOT

AN OLD STORY

Ir was roses, roses, all the way,

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day.

The air broke into a mist with bells,

The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.

Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels

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But give me your sun from yonder skies!" They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"

ΙΟ

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
To give it my loving friends to keep!

Naught man could do, have I left undone :
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.

There's nobody on the house-tops now-
Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,

At the Shambles' Gate-or, better yet,
By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

Thus I entered, and thus I go!

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In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. "Paid by the world, what dost thou owe Me?"- God might question; now instead, 'T is God shall repay: I am safer so.

1855.

Robert Browning.

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THE FORSAKEN MERMAN

COME, dear children, let us away;

Down and away below!

Now my brothers call from the bay,

Now the great winds shoreward blow,

Now the salt tides seaward flow;

Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!

This way, this way!

Call her once before you go

Call once yet!

In a voice that she will know:

'Margaret! Margaret!"

Children's voices should be dear

(Call once more) to a mother's ear;
Children's voices, wild with pain-
Surely she will come again!
Call her once and come away;
This way, this way!

"Mother dear, we cannot stay!

The wild white horses foam and fret."
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down;
Call no more!

One last look at the white-wall'd town,

ΙΟ

20

And the little grey church on the windy shore;
Then come down!

She will not come though you call all day;
Come away, come away!

Children dear, was it yesterday

We heard the sweet bells over the bay?

In the caverns where we lay,

Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?

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Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;

Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday

(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,

On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.

She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it
well,

When down swung the sound of a far-off bell. She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear

green sea;

She said: "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray In the little grey church on the shore to-day. 'T will be Easter-time in the world-ah me! And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."

I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the

waves;

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