Dare tell him Dora waited with the child;

And Dora would have risen and gone to him,

But her heart fail'd her; and the reapers reap'd,

And the sun fell, and all the land was dark.

But when the morrow came she rose and took

The child once more, and sat upon the mound;

And made a little wreath of all the flowers

That grew about, and tied it round his hat

To make him pleasing in her uncle's eye.

Then when the farmer pass'd into the field

He spied her, and he left his men at work,

And came and said: "Where were you yesterday?

Whose child is that? What are you doing here?"

So Dora cast her eyes upon the ground, And answer'd softly, "This is William's child!"

"And did I not," said Allan, "did I

At Dora's feet. She bow'd upon her hands,

And the boy's cry came to her from the field,

More and more distant. She bow'd down her head,

Remembering the day when first she

came,

And all the things that had been. She bow'd down

And wept in secret; and the reapers reap'd,

And the sun fell, and all the land was dark.

Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stood

Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise

To God, that help'd her in her widowhood.

And Dora said, "My uncle took the boy;

But, Mary, let me live and work with you:

He says that he will never see me

inore.'

So the women kiss'd Each other, and set out, and reach'd the farm.

The door was off the latch: they peop'd, and saw

The boy set up betwixt his grandsire's knees,

Who thrust him in the hollows of his

arm,

And clapt him on the hands and on the cheeks,

Like one that loved him: and the lad stretch'd out

And babbled for the golden seal, that hung

From Allan's watch, and sparkled by the fire.

Then they came in: but when the boy beheld

His mother, he cried out to come to her:

And Allan set him down, and Mary said:

Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay,

Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks

Imbedded and injellied; last, with these,

A flask of cider from his father's vats, Prime, which I knew; and so we sat and eat

And talk'd old matters over; who was dead.

Who married, who was like to be, and how

The races went, and who would rent the hall:

Then touch'd upon the game, how scarce it was

This season glancing thence, discuss'd the farm,

The fourfield system, and the price of grain:

And struck upon the corn-laws, where we split,

And came again together on the king With heated faces; till he laugh'd

aloud:

And, while the blackbird on the pippin hung

To hear him, elapt his hand in mine and sang

"Oh! who would fight and march and countermarch,

Be shot for sixpence in a battle-field, And shovell'd up into a bloody trench

Where no one knows? but let me live my life.

"Oh! who would cast and balance at a desk,

Perch'd like a crow upon a three-legg'd stool,

Till all his juice is dried, and all his joints

Are full of chalk? but let me live my life.

"Who'd serve the state? for if I carved my name

Upon the cliffs that guard my native land,

I might as well have traced it in the sands;

The sea wastes all: but let me live my life.

Oh! who would love? I woo'd a woman once,

But she was sharper than an eastern wind,

And all my heart turn'd from her, as a thorn

Turns from the sea; but let me live my lite.

He sang his song, and I replied with mine:

I found it in a volume, all of songs, Knock'd down to me, when old Sir Robert's pride,

His books the more the pity, so I said -

Came to the hammer here in Marchand this -...

I set the words, and added names I knew.

"Sleep, Ellen Aubrey, sleep, and dream of me:

Sleep. Ellen, folded in thy sister's

The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at doors,

And rummaged like a rat: no servant stay'd:

The farmer vext packs up his beds and chairs,

And all his household stuff; and with his boy

Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt.

Sets out, and meets a friend who hails him. "What!

You're flitting!" "Yes, we're litting." says the ghost,

(For they had pack'd the thing among the beds,

"O well," says he, "you flitting with us too

Jack, turn the horses' heads and home again."

John. He left his wife behind; for so I heard.

James. He left ber, yes. I met my lady once:

A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs.

John. O yet but I remember, ten years back

'Tis now at least ten years- -and then she was

You could not light upon a sweeter

thing:

Should see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbs

Sweat on his blazon'd chairs; but, sir. you know

That these two parties still divide the world

Of those that want, and those that

have and still

The same old sore breaks out from age to age

With much the same result. Now I myself,

A Tory to the quick, was as a boy Destructive, when I had not what I would.

I was at school-a college in the South:

There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit,

His hens, his eggs; but there was law

for us:

We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She,

With meditative grunts of much content.

Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.

By night we dragg'd her to the college

tower

From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair

With hand and rope we haled the

groaning sow,

And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.

Large range of prospect had the mother SOW,

And but for daily loss of one she loved,

As one by one we took them — but for thisAs never world

SOW was higher in this

Might have been happy: but what lot is pure?

We took them all, till she was left

alone

Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,
And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty.
John. They found you out?
James.

John.

Not they. Well after al What know we of the secret of a man? His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound,

That we should mimic this raw fool

the world,

Which charts us all in its coarse blacks

or whites,

EDWIN MORRIS; OR, THE LAKE.

O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake,

My sweet, wild, fresh three quarters of a year,

My one Oasis in the dust and drouth Of city life! I was a sketcher then: See here, my doing curves of mountain, bridge,

Boat, island, ruins of a castle, built When men knew how to build, upon a rock,

With turrets lichen-gilded like a rock: And here, new-comers in an ancient hold,

New-comers from the Mersey, millionaires,

Here lived the Hills-a Tudor-chim nied bulk

Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.

O me, my pleasant rambles by the

lake

With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull

The curate; he was fatter than his

cure.

But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names,

Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern,

Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks,

Who taught me how to skate, to row, to swim,

Who read me rhymes elaborately good,

His own-I call'd him Crichton, for he seem'd

All-perfect, finish'd to the finger nail.

And once I ask'd him of his early life,

And his first passion; and he answer'd

me:

And well his words became him: was he not

A full-cell'd honeycomb of eloquence Stored from all flowers? Poet-like he spoke.

"My love for Nature is as old as I ; But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that,

And three rich sennights more, my love for her.