"I greet thee, bonny boat! Whither or whence, With thy fluttering golden band?”

"I greet thee, little bird! To the wide sea, I haste from the narrow land.

"Full and swollen is every sail;
I see no longer a hill,

I have trusted all to the sounding gale,
And it will not let me stand still.

"And wilt thou, little bird, go with us?
Thou mayest stand on the mainmast tall,
For full to sinking is my house
With merry companions all."

"I need not and seek not company,
Bonny boat, I can sing all alone;
For the mainmast tall too heavy am I,
Bonny boat, I have wings of my own.

66

High over the sails, high over the mast,
Who shall gainsay these joys?

When thy merry companions are still, at last,
Thou shalt hear the sound of my voice.

"Who neither may rest, nor listen may,
God bless them every one!

I dart away, in the bright blue day,
And the golden fields of the sun.

"Thus do I sing my weary song, Wherever the four winds blow;

And this same song, my whole life long,
Neither Poet nor Printer may know."

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

A MYTH.

Afloating, afloating

Across the sleeping sea,

All night I heard a singing bird
Upon the topmast tree.

“Oh, came you from the isles of Greece,
Or from the banks of Seine?

Or off some tree in forests free
That fringe the western main ?"

"I came not off the old world,
Nor yet from off the new;
But I am one of the birds of God

Which sing the whole night through."

"Oh, sing and wake the dawning!

Oh, whistle for the wind!

The night is long, the current strong,
My boat it lags behind."

"The current sweeps the old world,
The current sweeps the new ;

The wind will blow, the dawn will glow,
Ere thou hast sailed them through."

C. KINGSLEY.

CHILLON

THE BIRD, SPIDER, AND MICE.

A light broke in upon my brain,
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,

The sweetest song ear ever heard.
And mine was thankful till my eyes,
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees come back
My senses to their wonted track,
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,

But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perched as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree :

A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,
And seemed to say them all for me!

I never saw its like before,

I ne'er shall see its likeness more;
It seemed like me to want a mate,

But was not half so desolate,
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,

Or broke its cage to perch on mine,

But knowing well captivity,

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!
Or if it were, in wingèd guise,

A visitant from Paradise;

For

Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile :
I sometimes deem'd that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;
But then, at last, away it flew,

And then 't was mortal - well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown
And left me twice so doubly lone, -
Lone

as the corse within its shroud,

Lone as a solitary cloud,

A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear
When skies are blue and earth is gay.

At last men came to set me free,

I asked not why, and recked not where, It was at length the same to me,

Fettered or fetterless to be

I learned to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage and all my own!

And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,

And watched them in their sullen trade.

Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell.
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: - even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.

BYRON.

PHILOMELA.

HARK! ah, the nightingale!

The tawny throated!

Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!

What triumph! hark-what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore

Still

after many years, in distant lands

Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain

That wild, unquenched, deep sunken Old World pain,

Say will it never heal?

And can this fragrant lawn,

With its cool trees, and night, And the sweet, tranquil Thames, And moonshine and the dew, To thy racked heart and brain Afford no balm?

Dost thou to-night behold

Here, through the moonlight on the English grass
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?
Dost thou again peruse,