The spear, and drew it from his side, and eased

His wound's imperious anguish; but the blood

Came welling from the open gash, and life

Flow'd with the stream;-all down his cold white side

The crimson torrent ran, dim now and soil'd,

Like the soil'd tissue of white violets Left, freshly gather'd, on the native bank,

By children whom their nurses call with haste

Indoors from the sun's eye; his head droop'd low,

His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay

White, with eyes closed; only when

heavy gasps,

Deep heavy gasps quivering through all his frame,

Convulsed him back to life, he open'd them,

And fix'd them feebly on his father's face;

Till now all strength was ebb'd, a from his limbs,

Unwillingly the spirit fled away, Regretting the warm mansion which s

left,

And youth, and bloom, and this delight

ful world.

So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab a

dead;

PHILOMELA

HARK! ah, the nightingale

The tawny-throated!

Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!

What triumph! hark!—what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain
That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken,
old-world pain-

Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm?

And only the white sheep are sometimes seen

Cross and recross the strips of moonblanch'd green,

Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest!

Here, where the reaper was at work of late-

In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves

His coat, his basket, and his earthen

cruse,

And in the sun all morning binds the

sheaves,

Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use

Here will I sit and wait, While to my ear from uplands far away The bleating of the folded flocks is borne,

With distant cries of reapers in the

corn

All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, halfreap'd field,

And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be.

Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,

And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see

Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep;

And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers

Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,

And bower me from the August sun with shade;

And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book-

Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!

The story of the Oxford scholar poor, Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,

Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,

One summer-morn forsook

His friends, and went to learn the gipsylore.

And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood,