The tramp of hoof, the flash of steel

The Paynims round her coming!

The sound and sight have made her calm,—
False page, but truthful woman;

She stands amid them all unmoved :
A heart once broken by the loved
Is strong to meet the foeman.

"Ho, Christian page! art keeping sheep,
From pouring wine-cups resting?".
"I keep my master's noble name,

For warring, not for feasting;
And if that here Sir Hubert were,
My master brave, my master dear,

Ye would not stay the questing."

"Where is thy master, scornful page, That we may slay or bind him?'

"Now search the lea and search the wood

And see if ye can find him!

Nathless, as hath been often tried,

Your Paynim heroes faster ride

Before him than behind him."

"Give smoother answers, lying page,
Or perish in the lying!"—
"I trow that if the warrior brand

Beside my foot, were in my hand,
"Twere better at replying!"

They cursed her deep, they smote her low They cleft her golden ringlets through : The Loving is the Dying.

She felt the scimitar gleam down,
And met it from beneath

With smile more bright in victory
Than any sword from sheath,-
Which flashed across her lip serene,
Most like the spirit-light between
The darks of life and death.

Ingemisco, ingemisco!

From the convent on the sea,
Now it sweepeth solemnly,
As over wood and over lea
Bodily the wind did carry
The great altar of St Mary,

And the fifty tapers paling o'er it,

And the Lady Abbess stark before it,

And the weary nuns with hearts that faintly

Beat along their voices saintly—

Ingemisco, ingemisco!

Dirge for abbess laid in shroud

Sweepeth o'er the shroudless dead,

Page or lady, as we said,

With the dews upon her head,

All as sad if not as loud.

Ingemisco, ingemisco

Is ever a lament begun

By any mourner under sun,

Which, ere it endeth, suits but one?
E. B. BROWNING.

1

LITTLE Ellie sits alone.

'Mid the beeches of a meadow
By a stream-side on the grass,
And the trees are showering down
Doubles of their leaves in shadow
On her shining hair and face.

She has thrown her bonnet by,
And her feet she has been dipping
In the shallow water's flow:

Now she holds them nakedly

In her hands, all sleek and dripping,
While she rocketh to and fro.

Little Ellie sits alone,

And the smile she softly uses

Fills the silence like a speech
While she thinks what shall be done,
And the sweetest pleasure chooses
For her future within reach.

Little Ellie in her smile

Chooses "I will have a lover,
Riding on a steed of steeds:

He shall love me without guile,
And to him I will discover

The swan's nest among the reeds.

"And the steed shall be red-roan, And the lover shall be noble,

With an eye that takes the breath :

And the lute he plays upon

Shall strike ladies into trouble,

As his sword strikes men to death.

"And the steed it shall be shod All in silver, housed in azure,

And the mane shall swim the wind;

And the hoofs along the sod

Shall flash onward and keep measure,
Till the shepherds look behind.

"But my lover will not prize
All the glory that he rides in,

When he gazes in my face:
He will say, 'O Love, thine eyes
Build the shrine my soul abides in,
And I kneel here for thy grace!'