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His Scottish tunes and warlike marches play, By moonshine, on the balmy summer-night,

The while I dance amid the tedded hay
With merry maids, whose ringlets toss in light.

Or lies the purple evening on the bay
Of the calm glossy lake, O let me hide

Unheard, unseen, behind the alder-trees,
For round their roots the fisher's boat is tied,
On whose trim seat doth Edmund stretch at ease,
And while the lazy boat sways to and fro,

Breathes in his flute sad airs, so wild and slow, That his own cheek is wet with quiet tears.

But O, dear Anne! when midnight wind careers, And the gust pelting on the out-house shed

Makes the cock shrilly on the rain-storm crow, To hear thee sing some ballad full of woe, Ballad of ship-wreck'd sailor floating dead

Whom his own true-love buried in the sands! Thee, gentle woman, for thy voice re-measures Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures

The things of Nature utter; birds or trees Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves, Or, when the stiff grass 'mid the heath-plant waves, Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.

COLERIDGE.

[FROM

Fairy.

66

Ο

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM."]

VER hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough briar,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moone's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen
To dew her orbs upon the green :
The cowslips tall her pensioners be,
In their gold coats spots you see,
These be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

SHAKESPEARE.

CIRCUMSTANCE.

WO children in two neighbour villages

Two strangers meeting at a festival;

leas;

Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall;
Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease;
Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-
tower,

Wash'd with still rains and daisy-blossomèd;
Two children in one hamlet born and bred;
So runs the round of life from hour to hour.
TENNYSON.

THE SANDS O' DEE.

66

I.

MARY, and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o' Dee:"

The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,

And all alone went she.

II.

The creeping tide came up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see;

The blinding mist came down and hid the landAnd never home came she.

III.

Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair ?—
A tress o' golden hair,

O' drowned maiden's hair,

Above the nets at sea.

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair,
Among the stakes on Dee.

IV.

They row'd her in across the rolling foam,

The cruel crawling foam,

The cruel hungry foam,

To her grave beside the sea:

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,

Across the sands o' Dee.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

Μ'

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

I.

Y heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk : 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thy happiness,-
Where thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

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O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

III.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin, and

dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

IV.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

V.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

VI.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstacy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

VII.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;

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