away." The little book ends thus:--

"Soon after this, a wonderful vision appeared to me, in which I saw
things which made me purpose to speak no more of this blessed one until
I could more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this, I study to
the utmost of my power, as she truly knoweth. So that, if it shall
please Him through whom all things live, that my life be prolonged for
some years, I hope to speak of her as never was spoken of any woman. And
then may it please Him who is the Lord of Grace, that my soul may go to
behold the glory of its lady, the blessed Beatrice, who in glory looks
upon the face of Him, _qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_ [who is
Blessed forever]!"

In 1320, or perhaps not till 1321, the "Paradiso" was finished; in 1321,
Dante died.

* * * * *

THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY.

"Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made
diligent inquiry: he assures me y't it had really two heads, one at each
end, two mouths, two stings or tongues."

Rev. Christopher Toppan to Cotton Mather.

Far away in the twilight time
Of every people, in every clime,
Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,
Born of water, and air, and fire,
Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud
And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,
Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,
Through dusk tradition and ballad age.
So from the childhood of Newbury town
And its time of fable the tale comes down
Of a terror which haunted bush and brake,
The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
Consider that strip of Christian earth
On the desolate shore of a sailless sea,
Full of terror and mystery,
Half-redeemed from the evil hold
Of the wood so dreary and dark and old,
Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew
When Time was young and the world was new,
And wove its shadows with sun and moon
Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn;
Think of the sea's dread monotone,
Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown,
Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North,
Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth,
And the dismal tales the Indian told,
Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold,
And he shrank from the tawny wizard's boasts,
And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts,
And above, below, and on every side,
The fear of his creed seemed verified;--