SANTA FILOMENA. W "HENE'ER a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher levels rise. The tidal waves of deeper souls And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares. Honour to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low! Thus thought I, as by night I read The trenches cold and damp, The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery Pass through the glimmering gloom, And slow, as in a dream of bliss, Upon the darkening walls. As if a door in heaven should be On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past. A lady with a lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood. Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore. THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS. THERE, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, His figure was tall and stately, His hair was yellow as hay, Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the colour of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach, As unto the King he spoke. And Alfred, King of the Saxons. And wrote down the wondrous tale Of him who was first to sail Into the Arctic seas. "So far I live to the northward, No man lives north of me; To the east are wild mountain-chains, And beyond them meres and plains; To the westward all is sea. "So far I live to the northward, From the harbour of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day, With a fair wind all the way, More than a month would you sail. "I own six hundred reindeer, |