A good sword and a trusty hand!

A merry heart and true!

King James's men shall understand
What Cornish lads can do!

And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawney! die?

Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why!

Out spake their Captain brave and bold:
A merry wight was he:-

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"If London Tower were Michael's hold, We'd set Trelawney free!

"We'll cross the Tamar, land to land:
The Severn is no stay:

With 'one and all,' and hand in hand;
And who shall bid us nay?

"And when we come to London wall,

A pleasant sight to view,

Come forth! come forth! ye cowards
Here's men as good as you.
"Trelawney he's in keep and hold:
Trelawney he may die:

But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold
Will know the reason why!"

Richard Chevenir Trench

1807-1886

15

all;

20

"SOME MURMUR WHEN THEIR SKY IS CLEAR"

I

Some murmur when their sky is clear,
And wholly bright to view,
If one small speck of dark appear
In their great heaven of blue.

1 James II issued a "Declaration of Indulgence," the object of which was to give the Roman Catholics greater power. He ordered it to be read in the churches. Many of the clergy refused to read this "declaration" and the King threatened to put them in the Tower. Among those who refused was Trelawney, Bishop of Bristol, a native of Cornwall.

A small, precipitous, and rocky island, crowned by a castle, off the coast of Cornwall,

Well, let it take them! What have we to do
With Kaikobád the Great, or Kaikhosrú?

Let Zál and Rustum' thunder as they will, 15 Or Hatim call to Supper-heed not you. . .

1 Edward Fitzgerald, a man of wide and curious learning and fastidious taste, held a unique position among the poets of his time. His original productions were few. and comparatively unimportant; his reputation rests on his work as a translator, and it rests largely on his translation of a single poem. He translated six plays of the Spanish dramatist Calderon; he translated several poems from the Persian, and then, in 1859, he astounded and delighted innumerable readers by his rendering of the "quatrains" of Omar Khayyam. While Fitzgerald lived a most secluded life, he was the warm friend of Tennyson, Thackeray, Spedding, and other eminent men. Tennyson, in dedicating his Tiresias to "Old Fitz," as he calls his life-long friend, declared that he knew no translation in English done "n 'more divinely well" than Fitzgerald's Omar.

A poem by Omar Khayyam (i. e. Omar, the Tentmaker) a Persian poet and astronomer of the 11th and 12th centuries. The title of his most famous poem refers simply to its poetic form. Rubaiyat is the technical name for a quatrain of a certain metrical character.

The birthplace of Omar, in the province of Khorasin, northern Persia.

Jamshyd, Kaikobád, and Kaikhosru, were early Per sian kings in Firdusi's poem Shahnamah, or epic of kings.

Heroes in Firdusi's great epic. Zál is Rustum's father. The tragic error of Rustum, who unwittingly kills his SOR Sohrab, is the theme of Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum. Hátim Tai, a type of oriental generosity,

THE END OF THE PLAY
(From Dr. Birch and His Young Friends,
1848-1849)

The play is done; the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter's bell:
A moment yet the actor stops,

And looks around, to say farewell.

It is an irksome word and task

And, when he's laughed and said his say,
He shows, as he removes the mask,
A face that's anything but gay.

One word, ere yet the evening ends,
Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
And pledge a hand to all young friends,
As fits the merry Christmas time.
On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,
That Fate ere long shall bid you play;
Good night! with honest gentle hearts
A kindly greeting go alway!

Good night! I'd say, the griefs, the joys,
Just hinted in this mimic page,

The triumphs and defeats of boys,
Are but repeated in our age.

I'd say, your woes were not less keen,

Your hopes more vain, than those of men; pangs or pleasures of fifteen

Your

At forty-five played o'er again.

I'd say, we suffer and we strive,

Not less nor more as men than boys;

As erst at twelve in corduroys.

5

10

15

20

So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed;
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
And longing passion unfulfilled.
Amen! whatever fate be sent,

Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
Although the head with cares be bent,
And whitened with the winter's snow.

Come wealth or want, come good or ill, Let young and old accept their part, And bow before the Awful Will,

And bear it with an honest heart, Who misses or who wins the prize.

Go, lose or conquer as you can; But if you fail, or if you rise,

Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

A gentleman, or old, or young! (Bear kindly with my humble lays); The sacred chorus first was sung

Upon the first of Christmas days: The shepherds heard it overheadThe joyful angels raised it then: Glory to God, on high, it said,

And peace on earth to gentle men.

My song, save this, is little worth;

I lay the weary pen aside,

And wish you health, and joy, and mirth, As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

With grizzled beards at forty-five,

And if, in time of sacred youth,

We learned at home to love and pray, Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth May never wholly pass away.

30

Be this, good friends, our carol still— Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.

William E. Aytoun

1813-1865

THE WIDOW OF GLENCOE1

I

Do not lift him from the bracken,
Leave him lying where he fell—
Better bier ye cannot fashion:

None beseems him half so well
As the bare and broken heather,
And the hard and trampled sod,
Whence his angry soul ascended
To the judgment-seat of God!
Winding sheet we cannot give him-
Seek no mantle for the dead,
Save the cold and spotless covering
Showered from heaven upon his head.
Leave his broadsword as we found it,
Bent and broken with the blow,
Which before he died, avenged him
On the foremost of the foe.
Leave the blood upon his bosom-
Wash not off that sacred stain;

10

15

1 The Clan of Macdonald, in the Highland valley of Glencoe, were late in taking the required oath of loyalty to King William III. Under royal warrant a regiment was sent to Glencoe and many of the Macdonalds were treacherously killed.

Stumbled through the midnight snow,

55

Crimsoned with the conflagration,

With their fathers' houses blazing,

And their dearest dead below!

Oh, the horror of the tempest,
As the flashing drift was blown,

And the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers-the prayers and curses That together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many Through that long and woful night! Till the fires began to dwindle,

And the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge Only as a far halloo.

Till the silence once more settled

O'er the gorges of the glen Broken only by the Cona

Plunging through its naked den. Slowly from the mountain summit Was the drifting veil withdrawn, And the ghastly valley glimmered In the grey December dawn.

35

60

When she searches for her offspring

Round the relics of her nest.

For in many a spot the tartan
Peered above the wintry heap,
Marking where a dead Macdonald

Lay within his frozen sleep. Tremblingly we scooped the covering From each kindred victim's head, And the living lips were burning

On the cold ones of the dead.
And I left them with their dearest-
Dearest charge had every one—
Left the maiden with her lover,
Left the mother with her son.
I alone of all was mateless-

Far more wretched I than they,
For the snow would not discover
Where my lord and husband lay.
But I wandered up the valley,
Till I found him lying low,
With the gash upon his bosom

And the frown upon his browTill I found him lying murdered, Where he wooed me long ago!

III

Woman's weakness shall not shame meWhy should I have tears to shed? Could I rain them down like water,

O my hero! on thy headCould the cry of lamentation

Wake thee from thy silent sleep,
Could it set thy heart a-throbbing,

It were mine to wail and weep!
But I will not waste my sorrow,
Lest the Campbell women say
That the daughters of Clanranald
Are as weak and frail as they.
I had wept thee hadst thou fallen,
Like our fathers, on thy shield,
When a host of English foemen
Camped upon a Scottish field-

I had mourned thee, hadst thou perished
With the foremost of thy name,

When the valiant and the noble

Better had the morning never

Praying for a place beside thee,

Dawned upon our dark despair!

Dearer than my bridal bed: