nightly,
Through the silver waters sweep.

"See I not, there, a white shimmer?
Something with pale silken shrine?
No; it is the column's glimmer,
'Gainst the gloomy hedge of pine."

* * * * *

7. "Hark, below the gates unbarring!
Tramp of men and quick commands!
''Tis my lord come back from hunting,'
And the Duchess claps her hands.

"Slow and tired came the hunters;
Stopped in darkness in the court.
'Ho, this way, ye laggard hunters!
To the hall! What sport, what sport.'

"Slow they entered with their master;
In the hall they laid him down.
On his coat were leaves and blood-stains,
On his brow an angry frown."

* * * * *

8. "Now clear, pure, hard, bright, and one by one, like to hailstones,
Short words fall from his lips fast as the first of a shower,--
Now in twofold column, Spondee, Iamb, and Trochee,
Unbroke, firm-set, advance, retreat, trampling along,--
Now with a sprightlier springiness, bounding in triplicate syllables,
Dance the elastic Dactylics in musical cadences on;
Now, their voluminous coil intertangling like huge anacondas,
Roll overwhelmingly onward the sesquipedalian words."

SELECTIONS.

* * * * *

HERVE RIEL.

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
Did the English fight the French,--woe to France!
And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance,
With the English fleet in view.

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
Close on him fled, great and small,
Twenty-two good ships in all;
And they signalled to the place,
"Help the winners of a race!
Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick--or quicker still,
Here's the English can and will!"

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board;
"Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" laughed they:
"Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored,
Shall the 'Formidable' here with her twelve and eighty guns,
Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craf