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A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown-and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and oh!

The difference to me!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850.

THE BALADE OF THE SHEPHARDE.

FROM THE "KALENDAR OF SHEPHARDES."

I know that God hath formed me,
And made me to his own likenesse :
I know that he hath given to me truly
Soul and body-wit and knowledge givis.
I know that by right wise true balance,
After my deeds judged shall I be.

I know much, but I wot not the variance,
To understand whereof cometh my folly.

I know full well that I shall die,
And yet my life amend not I.

I know in what poverty,

Born a child this earth above.

I know that God hath lent to me
Abundance of goods to my behoof.
I know that riches can me not save,
And with me I shall bear none away.
I know the more good I have,
The loather I shall be to die.

I know all this faithfully,

And yet my life amend not I.

I know that I have passed

Great part of my days with joy and pleasaunce.

I know that I have gathered

Sins, and also do little penance.

I know that by ignorance,

To excuse me there is no art.

I know that once shall be

When my soul shall depart

That I shall wish that I had mended me.

I know there is no remedy,

And therefore my life amend I will!

RICHARD PYNSON, 16th centu y.

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SE

Duke of Orleans, have been inserted in this volume; and as the American reader is seldom very familiar with French poets, we shall venture to give a little sketch of their author. Charles d'Orleans was born in 1391, and his life was highly colored by the vicissitudes of that stormy period. He was a nephew of the unhappy Charles VI., and was still a mere lad when, in 1406, his father Louis, Duke of Orleans, and regent of the kingdom, was assassinated in the streets of Paris, an event which placed the youth at once in nominal possession of his father's duchy. The crime was laid at the door of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy; and the widowed princess, Valentine Visconti, urged doubtless by the nobles of her political party, sought every possible means of bringing the offender to punishment; a criminal suit, extraordinary in its details, stands recorded in the French annals in connection

with this circumstance.

In order to excite the public sym

pathies to the utmost, the widowed duchess, with her children, appeared repeatedly in the streets, and courts of justice, in gloomy mourning procession. On all these occasions the young duke held a prominent position at the side of his Italian mother. His father's murderer and kinsman, however, was too powerful for legal punishment; a few years later he fell under the dagger of the assassin on the bridge of Montereau, and in the presence of the dauphin. The consequences of these crimes were ruinous to France; the powerful house of Burgundy, after the murder of Duke John, rose in open rebellion, and Henry V. of England, through their means, obtained what without them he would scarcely have dared seriously to aim at-possession of the throne of St. Louis. On the famous field of Agincourt, Charles d'Orleans, sharing the fate of so many others, was made prisoner. He was immediately sent to England, where his captivity and exile were prolonged through a period of nearly five and twenty years, and varied only by removals from one stronghold to another. During part of that time he was confined in Pontrefact Castle, where his cousin, Queen Katherine, the wife of Henry V., paid him a visit in one of her progresses. Captivity, as in the case of several other royal and princely exiles, led him to seek consolation and amusement from poetical composition. His verses are very pleasing indeed, full of the simplicity of natural feeling, with much ease and grace of expression. Absence does not appear to have diminished his love of country; he cherished a longing desire to return to France, and envied, as he tells us, even the birds which were flying toward his native shores. At length, after a captivity extending over half a lifetime, he was liberated, and returned to France. Having some claims upon the Duchy of Milan, through his mother, a Visconti, he raised troops, not iong after his return to Paris, and led an expedition into Italy, but failed to conquer the ducal crown. He was more successful as a poet than as a soldier; but he left, however, a reputation superior to either of these distinctions, that

of a good and honest man. His death took place in the year 1461.

The Duke of Orleans, who figures in Shakspeare's drama of Henry V. at the battle of Agincourt, was this same poetprince. His character is not unworthily sketched in the play, where he appears loyal and brave, superior to the other French princes figuring in the same scenes. When the French are already in full flight, he exclaims:

"We are enough yet living in the field
To smother up the English in our throngs,
If any order might be thought upon."

To which the Duke of Bourbon is made to reply, very expressively:

"The devil take order now! I'll to the throng;

Let life be short, else shame will be too long."

Shakspeare was probably not aware that the duke was a poet, else he would doubtless have made an allusion to the fact in Act iii., Scene vii., where some pleasantry occurs between the dauphin and his companions regarding a sonnet he had himself written to his horse.

SONG.

FROM THE FRENCH.

I stood upon the wild sea-shore,
And marked the wide expanse;

My straining eyes were turned once more
To long-loved distant France:

I saw the sea-bird hurry by

Along the waters blue;

I saw her wheel amid the sky,
And mock my tearful, eager eye,
That would her flight pursue.

Onward she darts, secure and free,
And wings her rapid course to thee!
O that her wing were mine to soar,
And reach thy lovely land once more!

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