Were added mouths that gaped, and eyes that ask'd "What is it?' but that oarsman's haggard face,

As hard and still as is the face that men
Shape to their fancy's eye from broken rocks
On some cliff-side, appall'd them, and they said,
"He is enchanted, cannot speak-and she,

Look how she sleeps-the Fairy Queen, so fair!
Yea, but how pale! what are they? flesh and blood?
Or come to take the King to fairy land?

For some do hold our Arthur cannot die,

But that he passes into fairy land."

While thus they babbled of the King, the King

Came girt with knights: then turned the tongueless man
From the half-face to the full eye, and rose
And pointed to the damsel and the doors.
So Arthur bade the meek Sir Percivale
And pure Sir Galahad to uplift the maid;

And reverently they bore her into hall.

Then came the fine Gawain and wondered at her,
And Lancelot later came and mused at her,

At last the Queen herself and pitied her:
But Arthur spied the letter in her hand,

Stooped, took, brake seal and read it; this was all:

"Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake,

I, sometime called the maid of Astolat,
Come, for you left me taking no farewell,
Hither, to take my last farewell of you.

I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.
And therefore to our lady Guinevere,

And to all other ladies, I make moan.

Pray for my soul, and yield me burial.
Pray for my soul thou too, Sir Lancelot,
As thou art a knight peerless."

Thus he read,

And ever in the reading, lords and dames.
Wept, looking often from his face who read
To hers which lay so silent, and at times,
So touched were they, half-thinking that her lips,
Who had devised the letter, moved again.

FROM "IN MEMORIAM."

THE Danube to the Severn gave

The darkened heart that beat no more,
They laid him by the pleasant shore,

And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills;
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hushed nor moved along,

And hushed my deepest grief of all,
When filled with tears that cannot fall,

I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall At last-far off-at last, to all, And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

CROSSING THE BAR.

SUNSET and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark;

And may there be no sadness of farewell

When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

THE beautiful romance of Browning's life is a part of his own and his wife's poetry. He was about two-and-thirty when they met and loved each other, and they ran away and were married in 1846, when he was thirty-four. During the fifteen years that followed, their happiness in each other was full and complete, with no shadow on it; and Browning even had the happiness of knowing that his love had prolonged her life and freed it from much physical pain, as well as transfiguring it with spiritual joy. She died in 1861, and he survived her twenty-eight years, dying in Venice in 1889. But in soul they were never apart; it was a true marriage; and as they were both persons of the finest genius, their felicity was a final answer to the doubt whether high souls can be truly mated. Most of their married life was passed in Italy, partly on account of Mrs. Browning's delicate health, partly because her father was never reconciled to their marriage, but died the surly and selfish tyrant that he had always lived; and partly because the political hopes and struggles of Italy were ardently espoused by both the poets, and largely tinged much of their verse. Their only child, a son, was born in Florence; and Mrs. Browning lived long enough to see her hopes of the emancipation of Italy from the Austrian yoke accomplished.

Browning is the most interesting figure among modern poets; he has been for years the subject of study on the part of numerous "societies," and the final word on him has not yet been said. He is a philosopher, a man of the world, a poet and a lover these dissimilar elements are united, but

not completely fused in him. His music is broken, but when it does ring true, there is no sweeter sound in literature. "Your poetry doesn't sing!" Swinburne once said to him; and no one who has read him can question the truth of the criticism. Browning himself admitted it; he recognized his ruggedness and obscurity as faults; he did what he could to overcome them; but in spite of his efforts his thoughts would "break thro' language and escape." We must accept him as he is; and there is no keener, subtler, and at the same time braver and truer mind among the poets of this century. His field of exploration is human nature in its deeper and more remote manifestations; his activity is thus in a world scarcely known to exist by the ordinary person; and the surprises he announces and the treasures he brings to light are therefore a cause of perplexity and doubt to the spectators, much as if an Oriental magician were to produce before them strange objects apparently created out of empty air. Browning does his best to make all clear to them; but the material he works with has not yet been reduced to recognizable form; it is like ore from the mine, which to the uninstructed looks like anything but precious metal.

The difficulty of Browning's verse, the need of study to understand most of it, and the real value which careful study shows it to possess, have led many to assign him a place in literature higher than he deserves. He is a great writer and often a great poet; but in no respect is he the greatest. His apprehension of the relativity of all things is imperfect; were it otherwise he would be able to state his message in terms as simple as those of Shakespeare, and so accommodate it to the understanding of the simple. Browning himself was a scholar of high attainments, and he often used his acquired knowledge as if it were a common possession, like the multiplication table. Such is the fault of "Sordello," in order to understand which one must begin with a thorough mastery of the mediæval history of Italy. Nor is familiarity with the various dialectics of modern philosophy less indispensable to an adequate comprehension of much that he has written; and the public naturally and rightly revolts from such requirements. The profoundest truths can be stated plainly; they can be