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70

AFTER BLENHEIM.

AFTER BLENHEIM.

IT was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun;

And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found;

He came to ask what he had found
That was so large and smooth and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy

Who stood expectant by:

And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh

""Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden,

For there's many here about;
And often when I go to plough

The ploughshare turns them out.
For many thousand men," said he,
"Were slain in that great victory."

AFTER BLENHEIM.

"Now tell us what 'twas all about," Young Peterkin he cries;

And little Wilhelmine looks up

With wonder-waiting eyes; "Now tell us all about the war,

And what they fought each other for."

"It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out.
But every body said," quoth he,
"That 'twas a famous victory.

"My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;

They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly:

So with his wife and child he fled,

Nor had he where to rest his head.

“With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide,

And many a childing mother then

And newborn baby died:

But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They say it was a shocking sight

After the field was won;

For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun:

But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

71

72

OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
And our good Prince Eugene;"
"Why 'twas a very wicked thing!”
Said little Wilhelmine;

"Nay.. nay.. my little girl," quoth he,
"It was a famous victory.

"And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win.”
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin:-

"Why that I cannot tell,” said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

Robert Southey.

OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT.

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

P. B. Shelley.

THE NILE.

73

THE NILE.

IT flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream;
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,—
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

Leigh Hunt.

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FANTASTIC sleep is busy with my eyes:
I seem in some waste solitude to stand
Once ruled of Cheops: upon either hand
A dark, illimitable desert lies,

Sultry and still-a realm of mysteries;

A wide-browed Sphinx, half buried in the sand, With orbless sockets stares across the land, The wofullest thing beneath these brooding skies Where all is woful weird-lit vacancy.

'Tis neither midnight, twilight, nor moonrise.
Lo! while I gaze, beyond the vast sand-sea

The nebulous clouds are downward slowly drawn,
And one blear❜d star, faint-glimmering like a bee,
Is shut i' the rosy outstretched hand of Dawn.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

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