SONG ON MAY MORNING.

BY JOHN MILTON.

John Milton was born at London in 1608. At 16 he went to Christ's O College, Cambridge, and there wrote his "Ode on the Nativity" (1629). During the Long Parliament Milton wrote many political pamphlets attacking the Episcopacy, and later, when Charles I. had been executed, he answered the "Eikon Basilike" of Gauden with his famous "Eikonoclastes." At home Milton suffered through the neglect and impatience of his daughters, who, on account of his blindness, were the unwilling amanuenses, of "Paradise Lost," and "Paradise Regained." Besides these epic poems are "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Comus," and "Lycidas," all of which were written between 1634-'37. He died in 1674.

GROUNDS OF THE TERRIBLE.

BY HAROLD BEGBIE.

The death is announced of First Class Petty Officer Grounds of H. M. S. Terrible, the best shot with a heavy gun in the British navy. Grounds' wages were 3 shillings per day, and for the unparalleled achievement of making eight shots in one minute in 1901 with the six-inch gun, and seven hits out of eight rounds in one minute under most unfavorable weather conditions in 1902, he received in all the magnificent remuneration of 1 shilling 9 pence, and 6 shillings 3 pence in the two years, "his proper share of prize money."

The statesman at the council, and the gunner at the breech: The hand upon the parchment and the eye along the sight: O, the cry is on the waters: Have ye weighed the worth of each?

Have ye shown a mandate stronger than ability to smite? He was the best with a heavy gun in the whole o' the British

fleet,

And the run of his pay? Three shillin's a day, with biscuit and salted meat.

He was the man who could pitch his shell on a mark that was never still

Eight times true while a minute flew, and parliament whittled

the bill;

He was a man who could soothe a gun in the race of a swirling

tide,

Who could chime his shots with the charging knots of a ship with a dripping side,

Who could get to his mark from a dancing deck that never a moment stood,

Content to hear, for a Bisley cheer, a midshipman's muttered "Good!"

Never his eye will steady now thro' the spray and the whistling

rain,

To loose the scream from the foaming lips and splinter the mark in twain;

Never again will he win his share in the prize that my lords assign

Six-and-three in a single year, and once-it was one-and

nine!

Never again! He has fired the last of the shells that the state allowed,

He has turned from the roar of the six-inch bore to the hush

of the hammock shroud,

And never a bell in England tolled, and who was it caught his

breath

When the Shot o' the Fleet first dipped his feet in the flooding ford of Death?

Gladder, I think, would the gunner's soul have passed thro' the closing dark

Had he known that ye cared with patriot joy when the navy hit the mark;

Gladder, I think, would the gunner's soul have passed to the farther shore

Had the Mother Land once gripped his hand, and uttered the pride she bore.

Gold is the prize that all men seek, tho' the mark be honor and fame;

Declare: Have ye spurned by a gift or a word the Terrible gunners' aim?

Will ye care to know what the men can do when the hosts of hate embark?

What of your sons at the old sea guns?-have ye cared if they hit the mark?

IN THE GRAVEYARD.

BY MACDONALD CLARKE.

Macdonald Clarke was born at New London, Conn., in 1798. On account of his many eccentricities he gained the name of the "Mad Poet." His poems have been collected under the titles of "A Review of the Eve of Eternity and Other Poems," "The Elixir of Moonshine, by the Mad Poet," "The Gossip," "Poetic Sketches," and "The Belles of Broadway." He died in 1842.

'Mid the half-lit air, and the lonely place,
Rose the buried Pleasures of perish'd years.
I saw the Past, with her pallid face,
Whose smiles had turned to tears.

On many a burial stone,

I read the names of beings once known,
Who oft in childish glee,

Had jumped across the graves with me—

Sported, many a truant day,

Where-now their ashes lay.

There the dead Poet had been placed,
Who died in the dawn of thought-
And there, the girl whose virtues graced
The lines his love had wrought-
Beauty's power, and Talent's pride,

And Passion's fever, early chill'd

The heart that felt, the eye that thrill'd,

All, the dazzling dreams of each,

Faded, out of Rapture's reach.

O, when they trifled, on this spot,

Not long ago,

Little they thought, 'twould be their lot,

So soon to lie here lone and low,

'Neath a chilly coverlid of clay,

And few or none to go

'Mid the glimmering dusk of a summer day, To the dim place where they lay,