Like One, we bore for you the penal pain. SHEPHERD. What tongues austere are these, that offer help I shudder with a strange, voluptuous awe, NYMPHS. Our service hath ceased for you, shepherds! VOICES. Flame hath not melted, nor did earthquake rend The dungeons where we waited for The End, Which coming not, we issue forth to power. We quench vain joy with shadows of the grave; We smite your lovely wantonness, to save; We hang Eternity on Life's weak hour! NYMPHS. We wait in the breezes, VOICES. The word is spoken, let the judgment fall! As I beheld it. Yonder hang the clouds, Huge, weary masses, leaning on the hills; A poor man's prayer so high the Gods may hear,— Hark! what strain is that, NYMPHS. We came when you called us, we linked our dainty being SHEPHERD. If blight they threaten, 'tis already here; But while her life, though changed from what it was, Feeds on the sunshine, we shall also live. VOICES (from underground). We won, through martyrdom, the power to aid; Like One, we bore for you the penal pain. SHEPHERD. What tongues austere are these, that offer help I shudder with a strange, voluptuous awe, As when the Pythia spake: 'tis doom disguised,— NYMPHS. Our service hath ceased for you, shepherds! VOICES. Flame hath not melted, nor did earthquake rend The dungeons where we waited for The End, Which coming not, we issue forth to power. We quench vain joy with shadows of the grave; We smite your lovely wantonness, to save; We hang Eternity on Life's weak hour! NYMPHS. We wait in the breezes, VOICES. The word is spoken, let the judgment fall! NYMPHS. The heart of the lover, VOICES. Truth comes, and vanity shall be no more! NYMPHS. Not wholly we vanish; Shall seek us, and find. VOICES. Dead are the things the world has left behind. NYMPHS. Lost beauty shall haunt you With tender remorses; And out of its exile The passion return! VOICES. The flame shall purify, the fire shall burn! NYMPHS. Lift from the rivers Your silver sandals, From mists of the mountains Your floating veils! From musky vineyard, And copse of laurel, For lovers' tales! Let olives ripen And die, untended; From swell of surges, From restful brine! As the bee when twilight Has closed the bell,- As love from the bosom When doubts compel, We go: farewell! SHEPHERD. The strains dissolve into the hollow air, Yet something stays, -a sense of distant woe, And strong, though troubled is her breadth of brow, She sees me not: I am too mean for sight Of such a goddess; yet, methinks, the milk Of those large breasts might feed me into that Which once I dreamed I should be,-lord, not slave! Francis James Child. BORN in Boston, Mass., 1825. EDMUND SPENSER. [From a Memoir in "The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser." 1855-60.] THE HE better part of Spenser's life was spent in Ireland, in what must be regarded as seclusion. Some time was given to business, some to study. Lodowick Bryskett says he was "not only perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well read in Philosophy, both moral and natural." Of course he was a scholar, and had a well-stored mind, but his learning has been greatly overstated. There is nothing in his poetry, or in the man, which should lead us to think that he regretted the loss of society. He was a faithful friend to Harvey, and at forty became an ardent lover; but it strikes us that his sympathies were contracted, and his affections not very active. His acquaintance seems to have lain among courtiers, scholars, and book-characters. Mankind he may have understood, for we are assured that he was versed in moral philosophy; but men he had not profoundly studied, not even his own heart. There are few, if any, traces of self-discipline, of a struggle with nature, in all his writings; which requires explanation in so contemplative a poet. He seems never to have known a great sorrow. The "atmosphere of mild melancholy" which hangs over his compositions is deceptive. It |