, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!

II. BOOT AND SADDLE.

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Rescue my castle before the hot day
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray.

_Cho_. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay!"

_Cho_. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundhead's array:
Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,

_Cho_. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,
Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!
I've better counsellors; what counsel they?

_Cho_. Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

ROBERT BROWNING.

* * * * *

ACROSS THE FIELDS TO ANNE.

From Stratford-on-Avon a lane runs westward through the fields a mile to
the little village of Shottery, in which is the cottage of Anne Hathaway,
Shakespeare's sweetheart and wife.

How often in the summer tide,
His graver business set aside,
Has stripling Will, the thoughtful-eyed,
As to the pipe of Pan
Stepped blithsomely with lover's pride
Across the fields to Anne!

It must have been a merry mile,
This summer-stroll by hedge and stile,
With sweet foreknowledge all the while
How sure the pathway ran
To dear delights of kiss and smile,
Across the fields to Anne.

The silly sheep that graze to-day,
I wot, they let him go his way,
Nor once looked up, as who should say:
"It is a seemly man."
For many lads went wooing aye
Across the fields to Anne.

The oaks, they have a wiser look;
Mayhap they whispered to the brook:
"The world by him shall yet be shook,
It is in nature's plan;
Though now he fleets like any rook
Across the fields to Anne."

And I am sure, that on some hour
Coquetting soft 'twixt sun and shower,
He stooped and broke a daisy-flower
With heart of tiny span,
And bore it as a lover's dower
Across the fields to Anne.

While from her cottage garden-bed
She plucked a jasmine's goodlihede,
To scent his jerkin's brown instead;
Now since that love began,
What luckier swain than he who sped
Across the fields to Anne?

The winding path wheron I pace,
The hedgerows green, the summer's grace,
Are still be