Joining then the valley-streamlet, then the golden-green

Isère,

Then, where Rhone's broad currents to the blue their lordly

burden bear:

-Torrent under lofty beeches, under larches cresting high, Thou art southward set, and southward all thy waters strain and fly :

Sunny South, o'er slope and summit the gray mist of olive spread;

Terrace high o'er terrace climbing, lines of white, vinegarlanded :

—Ah, another vision calls me, calls me to the northern isle, Voices from beyond the mountain: smiles that dim the sun's own smile:

And I set my soul against thee, water of the southern sea: -Thine are not the currents toward the haven where my heart would be.

FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE.

[From The Wanderer of Clova.]

AR from the stir of men

FAR

Lies Clova's lonely glen,

Tracked by the grey South Esk meandering tow'rds the seas;

On either hand are seen

Vast walls of living green,

Spotted with crags that mar their verdant harmonies.

U

And where the winter sun,

His short day's journey done,

Behind Tombine's mass betakes him to the night,-
Thence started on its course,

White-Water brings its force

To meet the half-grown Esk in rivalry of might.

Adown the deep Glen Dole

Its foamy torrents roll,

With speed that scarce will grant a moment's breathing

pause,

Still writhing at the stir

Of terror's urgent spur,

Escaping from the gripe of Luncart's rock-fanged jaws.

But ere the river raves

Through those terrific graves,

It walks with gentler step down lengths of silent vale;
A place most desolate,

High, bare, flat, formless, straight,—

All black and pallid green, hued like a dragon's mail.

EARL OF SOUTHESK.

[From He or She; or, a Poet's Portfolio.]

AFLOAT on the brim of a placid stream,

Pleasant it is to lie and dream,

With heaven above, and far below

The deeps of death-sad deeps that know

The still reflections of earth and sky
In their silent, serene obscurity.

And hanging thus upon Life's thin rim,
Death seems so sweet in that silvery, dim,
Deep world below, that it seems half-best
To sink into it and there find rest,

Both, both together, ere age can come,
And loving has lost its perfect bloom.
One tilt, dear love, and we both might be
Beyond earth's sorrows eternally.

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY.

[From Cleopatra.]

THERE, drowsing in golden sunlight,

Loiters the slow smooth Nile,

Through slender papyri, that cover

The wary crocodile.

The lotus lolls on the water,

And opens its heart of gold,

And over its broad leaf-pavement

Never a ripple is rolled.

W. W. STORY.

[From The Triumph of Time.]

HE stream,

THE

One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein, Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

“I

The Brook.

COME from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

"By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

"Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

"I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

"With many a curve my bank I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.