green neck:
On every one's forehead
There glitters a star,
With a hairy train
Of light _floating from afar_,
And pale or fiery red.
Now old Eolus goes
To each muttering blast,
Scattering blows;
And some he binds fast
In hollow rocks vast,
And others he gags
With thick heavy foam.
'Twing them round
The sharp rugged crags
That are sticking out near,'
Growls he, 'for fear
They all should rebel,
And so play hell.'
Those that he bound,
Their prison-walls grasp,
And through the dark gloom
Scream fierce and yell:
While all the rest gasp,
In rage fruitless and vain.
Their shepherd now leaves them
To howl and to roar--
Of his presence bereaves them,
To feed some young breeze
On the violet odour,
And to teach it on shore
To rock the green trees.
But no more can be said
Of what was transacted
And what was enacted
In the heaving abodes
Of the great sea-gods."

* * * * *

THE IMPOSSIBILITIES OF HISTORY.

In _The Tablet_ of June 18 is a leading article on the proposed erection of
Baron Marochetti's statue of Richard Coeur de Lion. Theology and history
are mixed: of course I shall carefully exclude the former. I have tried to
trace the statements to their sources; and where I have failed, perhaps
some of your readers may be able to help me.

"When the physicians told him that they could do nothing more for him,
and when his confessor had done his duty faithfully and with all
honesty, the stern old soldier commanded his attendants to take him off
the bed, and lay him naked on the bare floor. When this was done, he
then bade them take a discipline and scourge him with all their might.
This was the last command of their royal master; and in this he was
obeyed with more zeal than he found displayed when at the head of his
troops in Palestine."

I find no record that "the stern old soldier," who was then forty-two years
of age, and whom the writer oddly calls Richard II., had any reason to
complain of want of zeal in his troops. They fought well, and flogged
well--if they flogged at all. Richard died of gangrene in the shoulder; and
I have the authority of an eminent physician for saying, that gangrene, so
near the vital parts, would produce such mental and bodily prostration,
that it is highly improbable that the patient, unless in delirium, shoul