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Following your own greedy appetites, and the Devil's Commandments. Corrupt unjust persons,' and here I think he glanced at Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, giving him and others very sharp language, though he named them not:' 'Corrupt unjust persons; scandalous to the profession of the Gospel; how can you be a Parliament for God's People? Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God,-go!'

The House is of course all on its feet,-uncertain almost whether not on its head: such a scene as was never seen before in any House of Commons. History reports with a shudder that my Lord General, lifting the sacred Mace itself, said, 'What shall we do with this bauble? Take it away!'—and gave it to a musketeer. And now-Fetch him down!' says he to Harrison, flashing on the Speaker. Speaker Lenthall, more an ancient Roman than anything else, declares, He will not come till forced. 'Sir,' said Harrison, 'I will lend you a hand;' on which Speaker Lenthall came down, and gloomily vanished. They all vanished; flooding gloomily, clamorously out, to their ulterior businesses, and respective places of abode: the Long Parliament is dissolved! 'It's you that have forced me to this,' exclaims my Lord General: 'I have sought the Lord night and day, that He would rather slay me than put me upon the doing of this work.' 'At their going out, some say the Lord General said to young Sir Harry Vane, calling him by his name, That he might have prevented this; but that he was a juggler, and had not common honesty.' 'O, Sir Harry Vane,' thou with thy subtle casuistries and abstruse hair-splittings, thou art other than a good one, I think! "The Lord deliver me from thee, Sir Harry Vane!' 'All being gone out, the door of the House was locked, and the Key with the Mace, as I heard, was

carried away by Colonel Otley ;'-and it is all over, and the unspeakable Catastrophe has come, and remains.

ALFRED TENNYSON.-BORN 1809.

ALFRED TENNYSON, our greatest living poet, succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850.

Works: Poems (1827, -30, -33,-42), The Princess (1847), In Memoriam (1850), Maud, &c. (1855), Idylls of the King (1859-73), Enoch Arden, &c. (1864), and two historical dramas, Queen Mary (1875), and Harold (1877).

THE PASSING OF ARTHUR.

(From The Idylls of the King.)

[The 'last, dim, weird battle of the west' has been fought; and Arthur's knights have fallen, man by man, about their lord, King Arthur,' who has also been mortally wounded. Sir Bedivere,

'First made and latest left of all the knights,'

has carried the king to a barge, where he has been received by 'three queens with crowns of gold,' who are attended by a great company of 'stately forms, black-stoled, black-hooded.' (Cf. pages 15–18.)]

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere :
'Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have been not since the light that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world,
And I, the last, go forth companionless,

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And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.'

405

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways,

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Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,

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414

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

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Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

But now farewell! I am going a long way
With these thou seest-if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)—
To the island-valley of Avilion ;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.'

So said he, and the barge with oar and sail

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Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,

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Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood

With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere

Revolving many memories, till the hull

Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.

440

'GEORGE ELIOT.'

Under the assumed name of GEORGE ELIOT, a lady has taken the foremost place among living English novelists. She has also achieved reputation as a poet.

Works: Scenes of Clerical Life (1858), Adam Bede (1859), The Mill

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