e rivals part?

_Menaphon--_

You term them rightly;
For they were rivals, and their mistress harmony.
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird,
Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes,
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice.
To end the controversy, in a rapture
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly
So many voluntaries and so quick,
That there was curiosity and cunning,
Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.

_Amethus_--

Now for the bird.

_Menaphon--_

The bird, ordained to be
Music's first martyr, strove to imitate
These several sounds; which when her warbling throat
Failed in, for grief down dropped she on his lute,
And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness,
To see the conqueror upon her hearse
To weep a funeral elegy of tears;
That trust me, my Amethus, I could chide
Mine own unmanly weakness that made me
A fellow mourner with him.

_Amethus_--

I believe thee.

_Menaphon--_

He looked upon the trophies of his art,
Then sighed, then wiped his eyes, then sighed and cried:--
"Alas, poor creature! I will soon revenge
This cruelty upon the author of it;
Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,
Shall never more betray a harmless peace
To an untimely end:" and in that sorrow,
As he was pushing it against a tree,
I suddenly stept in.

FRIEDRICH, BARON DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE

(1777-1843)

[Illustration: FOUQUE]

The romantic school had many false and erratic tendencies, but it
produced some of the most fanciful and poetic creations of literature.
Fouque was called the Don Quixote of the Romanticists, and his early
romances of chivalry were devoured by the public as quickly as they
appeared. But his fame proved to be a passing fancy; and his later
works scarcely found a publisher. This was owing partly to a change in
public taste, and partly to his mannerisms. His descriptions often
deteriorate into tediousness, and the narrative is broken by
far-fetched digressions. He was so imbued with the spirit of chivalry
that he became one-sided, and his scenes were always laid in "the
chapel or the tilt-yard." Critics of his time speak of his mediaeval
romances as "full of sweet strength and lovely vi