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.

16 *

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.

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 color 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.

6 So far I live to the northward,

From the harbor of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day, With a fair wind all the way,

More than a month would you sail.

6 I own six hundred reindeer,

With sheep and swine beside; I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone and reindeer-skins,

And ropes of walrus-hide.

“ I ploughed the land with horses,

But my heart was ill at ease, For the old seafaring men Came to me now and then,

With their sagas of the seas;

"Of Iceland and of Greenland,

And the stormy Hebrides,