Theocrite grew old at home;
A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome.

One vanished as the other died:
They sought God side by side.

1844.

Robert Browning.

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SAINT BRANDAN

SAINT BRANDAN sails the northern main;
The brotherhoods of saints are glad.
He greets them once, he sails again;

So late!-such storms!-The Saint is mad! 4

He heard, across the howling seas,
Chime convent-bells on wintry nights;

He saw, on spray-swept Hebrides,

Twinkle the monastery-lights.

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But north, still north, Saint Brandan steer'd-
And now no bells, no convents more!

The hurtling Polar lights are near'd,
The sea without a human shore.

At last (it was the Christmas night;
Stars shone after a day of storm) –
He sees float past an iceberg white,
And on it-Christ!-a living form.

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That furtive mien, that scowling eye,

Of hair that red and tufted fellIt is Oh, where shall Brandan fly?

The traitor Judas, out of hell!

Palsied with terror, Brandan sate;

The moon was bright, the iceberg near. He hears a voice sigh humbly: "Wait! By high permission I am here.

"One moment wait, thou holy man!

On earth my crime, my death, they knew;

My name is under all men's ban

Ah, tell them of my respite too!

"Tell them, one blessed Christmas-night-
(It was the first after I came,
Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite,
To rue my guilt in endless flame)---

"I felt, as I in torment lay

'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power, An angel touch mine arm, and say:

Go hence and cool thyself an hour!

"Ah, whence this mercy, Lord?' I said.
The Leper recollect, said he,
Who ask'd the passers-by for aid,
In Joppa, and thy charity.

"Then I remember'd how I went,

In Joppa, through a public street,

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One morn when the sirocco spent

Its storms of dust with burning heat;

"And in the street a leper sate,

Shivering with fever, naked, old;
Sand raked his sores from heel to pate,
The hot wind fever'd him five-fold.

"He gaz'd upon me as I pass'd,

And murmur'd: Help me, or I die!— To the poor wretch my cloak I cast,

Saw him look eased, and hurried by.

"Oh, Brandan, think what grace divine,
What blessing must full goodness shower,
When fragment of it small, like mine,
Hath such inestimable power!

"Well-fed, well-clothed, well-friended, I
Did that chance act of good, that one!
Then went my way to kill and lie—
Forgot my good as soon as done.

"That germ of kindness, in the womb Of mercy caught, did not expire; Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom,

And friends me in the pit of fire.

“Once every year, when carols wake,
On earth, the Christmas-night's repose,
Arising from the sinners' lake,

I journey to these healing snows,

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"I stanch with ice my burning breast,

With silence balm my whirling brain. O Brandan! to this hour of rest

That Joppan leper's ease was pain."

Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes;

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He bow'd his head, he breathed a prayerThen look'd, and lo, the frosty skies!

1867.

The iceberg, and no Judas there!

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Matthew Arnold.

ARETHUSA

ARETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,-
From cloud and from crag,

With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;—
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams:
And gliding and springing

She went, ever singing,

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her,

And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.

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Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,

With his trident the mountains strook
And opened a chasm

In the rocks; with the spasm

All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind

It concealed behind

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below.
The beard and the hair
Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph's flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair!"
The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred,

And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth's white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam;
Behind her descended
Her billows, unblended

With the brackish Dorian stream:

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