he gusty pine.
Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire:
And he who wrought that spell?--
Ah! towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hopvines' incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.
And on that grave where English oak, and holly,
And laurel wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,--
This spray of Western pine!
Bret Harte
DOST THOU LOOK BACK ON WHAT HATH BEEN
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;
Who makes by force his merit known,
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a world's desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He played at counsellors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea,
And reaps the labour of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands;
"Does my old friend remember me?"
Tennyson: "In Memoriam, LXIV."
THE PASSING OF ARTHUR
And so both hosts dressed them together. And king Arthur took his horse,
and said, Alas this unhappy day, and so rode to his party: and Sir
Mordred in like wise. And never was there seen a more dolefuller battle
in any Christian land. For there was but rushing and riding, foining and
striking, and many a grim word was there spoken either to other, and
many a deadly stroke. But ever king Arthur rode throughout the battle
of Sir Mordred many times, and did full nobly as a noble king should;
and at all times he fainted never. And Sir Mordred that day put him in
great peril. And thus they fought all the long day, and never stinted,
till the
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