POEMS.

THE EPIC.

AT Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve,-
The game of forfeits done the girls all kiss'd
Beneath the sacred bush and past away—

The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honour had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,

The parson taking wide and wide Now harping on the church-comm Now hawking at Geology and sch

Until I woke, and found him sett Upon the general decay of faith Right thro' the world, "at home And none abroad: there was no a To hold by." Francis, laughing, On Everard's shoulder, with "I h "And I," quoth Everard, "by th

Why yes," I said, "we knew yo At college: but another which you I mean of verse (for so we held it t What came of that?" "You know," His epic of King Arthur in the fire And then to me demanding why? He thought that nothing new was s Something so said 'twas nothingLooks freshest in the fashion of the God knows: he has a mint of reaso

Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing worth,

Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt."

66

"But I,"

Said Francis, " pick'd the eleventh from this hearth,
And have it keep a thing, its use will come.
I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes."

He laugh'd, and I, though sleepy, like a horse
That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears;
For I remember'd Everard's college fame

When we were Freshmen: then at my request
He brought it; and the poet little urged,
But with some prelude of disparagement,
Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,
Deep-chested music, and to this result.

Oh, sir,

said, or else

-that a truth

he day: sons: ask.

B 2

MORTE D'ART

So all day long the noise of battle Among the mountains by the win Until King Arthur's table, man b Had fall'n in Lyonness about thei King Arthur: then, because his The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted hir Sir Bedivere, the last of all his kn And bore him to a chapel nigh the A broken chancel with a broken c That stood on a dark strait of bar On one side lay the Ocean, and on Lay a great water, and the moon

Then spake King Arthur to Sir "The sequel of to-day unsolders a The goodliest fellowship of famous Whereof this world holds record.