"Oh, Heaven! to think of their white souls,

And mine so black and grim!

I could not share in childish prayer,

Nor join in Evening Hymn: Like a Devil of the Pit I seemed, 'Mid holy cherubim !

"And peace went with them, one and all,
And each calm pillow spread;

But Guilt was my grim Chamberlain,
And lighted me to bed;

And drew my midnight curtains round,

With fingers bloody red!

"All night I lay in agony,

In anguish dark and deep,
My fevered eyes I dared not close
But stared aghast at Sleep:

For Sin had render'd unto her
The keys of Hell to keep

"All night I lay in agony,

From weary chime to chime, With one besetting horrid hint, That racked me all the time; A mighty yearning, like the first Fierce impulse unto crime!

"One stern tyrannic thought, that made
All other thoughts its slave;
Stronger and stronger every pulse
Did that temptation crave,-
Still urging me to go and see
The Dead Man in his grave!

"Heavily I rose up, as soon

As light was in the sky,

And sought the black accursed pool
With a wild misgiving eye;

And I saw the Dead in the river bed,
For the faithless stream was dry!

"Merrily rose the lark, and shook
The dew-drop from its wing;
But I never marked its morning flight,

I never heard it sing:

For I was stooping once again

Under the horrid thing.

"With breathless speed, like a soul in chase,

I took him up and ran;

There was no time to dig a grave

Before the day began;

In a lonesome wood, with heaps of leaves,

I hid the murder'd man!

"And all that day I read in school,

But my thought was other where;

As soon as the mid-day task was done,
In secret I was there:

And a mighty wind had swept the leaves,
And still the corse was bare!

"Then down I cast me on my face,
And first began to weep,

For I knew my secret then was one
That earth refused to keep:
Or land, or sea, though he should be
Ten thousand fathoms deep.

"So wills the fierce avenging Sprite,
Till blood for blood atones!
Ay, though he's buried in a cave,
And trodden down with stones,
And years have rotted off his flesh,-
The world shall see his bones!

"Oh, God! that horrid, horrid dream
Besets me now awake!
Again-again, with dizzy brain,

The human life I take;

And my red right hand grows raging hot, Like Cranmer's at the stake.

"And still no peace for the restless clay,

Will wave or mould allow;

The horrid thing pursues my soul,

It stands before me now!"

The fearful Boy look'd up, and saw
Huge drops upon his brow.

That very night, while gentle sleep
The urchin eyelids kissed,

Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn,
Through the cold and heavy mist;
And Eugene Aram walked between,
With gyves upon his wrist.

THE PORTRAITS OF SHAKSPEARE AND GOETHE.

BY DAVID MASSON.*

F there are any two portraits which we all expect to find hung up in the rooms of those whose tastes are regulated by the highest literary culture, they are the portraits of Shakspeare and Goethe. There are, indeed, many and various gods in our modern Pantheon of genius. It contains rough gods and

* Professor of English Literature in University College, London.

smooth gods, gods of symmetry and gods of strength, gods great and terrible, gods middling and respectable, and little cupids and toy-gods. Out of this variety, each master of a household will select his own Penates, the appropriate gods of his own mantelpiece. The roughest will find some to worship them, and the smallest shall not want domestic adoration. But we suppose a dilettante of the first class; one who, besides excluding from his range of choice the deities of war, and cold thought, and civic action, shall further exclude from it all those even of the gods of modern literature who, whether by reason of their inferior rank, or by reason of their peculiar attributes, fail as models of universal stateliness. What we should expect to see over the mantelpiece of such a rigorous person, would be the images of the English Shakspeare and the German Goethe. On the one side, we will suppose, fixed with due elegance against the luxurious crimson of the wall, would be a slab of black marble exhibiting in relief a white plaster-cast of the face of Shakspeare as modelled from the Stratford bust; on the other, in a similar setting, would be a copy, if possible, of the mask of Goethe taken at Weimar after the poet's death. This would suffice; and the considerate beholder could find no fault with such an arrangement. It is true, reasons might be assigned why a third mask should have been added-that of the Italian Dante; in which case Dante and Goethe should have occupied the sides, and Shakspeare should have been placed