SANTA FILOMENA.

WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise,

To higher levels rise.

The tidal wave of deeper souls

Into our inmost being rolls,

And lifts us unawares

Out of all meaner cares.

Honour to those whose words or deeds

Thus help us in our daily needs,

And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read

Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,

The starved and frozen camp,—

The wounded from the battle-plain,

In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,

The cold and stony floors.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,

The speechless sufferer turns to kiss

Her shadow, as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be
Opened and then closed suddenly,

The vision came and went,

The light shone and was spent.

On England's annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,

That light its rays shall cast

From portals of the past.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,

Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here

The palm, the lily, and the spear,

The symbols that of yore

Saint Filomena bore.

THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE.

A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS.

OTHERE, the old sea-captain,

Who dwelt in Helgoland,

To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,

Which he held in his brown right hand.

P

His figure was tall and stately,

Like a boy's his eye appeared;

His hair was yellow as hay,

But threads of a silvery gray

Gleamed in his tawny beard.

Hearty and hale was Othere,

His cheek had the colour of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech,

Like the sea-tide on a beach,

As unto the King he spoke.

And Alfred, King of the Saxons,

Had a book upon his knees,

And wrote down the wondrous tale

Of him who was first to sail

Into the Arctic seas.

"So far I live to the northward,

No man lives north of me;

To the east are wild mountain-chains,

And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.

"So far I live to the northward,

From the harbour of Skeringes-hale,

If you only sailed by day,

With a fair wind all the way,

More than a month would you sail.