'Faith, our sun was near eclipse! Demand whate'er you will,

112 France remains your debtor still.

Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville.'

Then a beam of fun outbroke

On the bearded mouth that spoke, 116 As the honest heart laughed through Those frank eyes of Breton blue: 'Since I needs must say my say,

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Since on board the duty's done,

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run? Since 'tis ask and have, I may

Since the others go ashore

Come! A good whole holiday!

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!'
That he asked and that he got,

Name and deed alike are lost:

Not a pillar nor a post

nothing more.

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black

On a single fishing-smack,

In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack

All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank

Search the heroes flung pell-mell

On the Louvre, face and flank!

You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel.

So, for better and for worse,

Hervé Riel, accept my verse!

In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more

140 Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!

5

EPILOGUE.

[From Asolando (1889)]

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,

When you set your fancies free,

Will they pass to where by death, fools think, imprisoned
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,

Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!

What had I on earth to do

With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?

Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel

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One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time

Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,

'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed,

There as here!'

fight on, fare ever

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

ELIZABETH BARRETT (1806–1861), the daughter of a wealthy West-Indian landowner, was born at the country-house of Coxhoe Hall, near Durham. Her girlhood was spent at her father's estate of Hope End, in Herefordshire, where, at the age of 15, she seriously injured her spine while endeavouring to saddle her pony. Sharing in her brother's lessons, she acquired a thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek. Very early, at 8 years old, she began to write poetry, and her father had a long epic by her on The Battle of Marathon (1820) printed when she was only fourteen. At London, whither her family ultimately removed (1835), the state of her health, aggravated by a nervous shock at her brother's sudden death and fostered by her father's artificial and despotic treatment, confined her more and more to her sickroom; but she continued writing prose and poetry, and formed a few literary friendships. An acquaintance with the poet Robert Browning soon ripened into love, and led to their marriage in 1846, against the will of her father, who never after was reconciled to her. On account of her delicate health, they immediately went abroad, and settled down at Florence, where she soon marvellously recovered and, in a Florentine palazzo called Casa Guidi, found a peace

ful and ideally happy home for the rest of her life. She died at Florence in her fifty-sixth year.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the greatest poetess of England. Her finest contribution to English literature is a series of love-sonnets addressed to her husband during their courtship, but delicately disguised as Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) with reference to Camoens and his Catarina. Though essentially a lyrical poet, she often tried her hand at epic verse, such as the story of Lady Geraldine's Courtship (1844), or the romantic ballads of The Romaunt of the Page (1839), The Lay of the Brown Rosary (1840), and Rhyme of the Duchess May (1844). Aurora Leigh (1856), her most ambitious work, is a long blank-verse novel, specially remarkable for its autobiographical element and its long discussions on art and social problems. Her humanitarian sympathies found a pathetic expression also in some smaller poems, such as The Cry of the Human (1842) and The Cry of the Children (1843). Her intense interest in Italy's struggle for freedom gave rise to the poem of Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Poems before Congress (1860). All her poetry is full of genuine and tender feeling; but, like that of her husband, it is not free from defects of form.

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.

[From 'Blackwood's Magazine', August 1843]

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.

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The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow
Why their tears are falling so?

The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago;

The old tree is leafless in the forest,
The old year is ending in the frost,
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest,

The old hope is hardest to be lost:

But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,

For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy;

'Your old earth,' they say, 'is very dreary,

Our young feet,' they say, 'are very weak; Few paces have we taken, yet are weary Our grave-rest is very far to seek:

Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children,

For the outside earth is cold,

And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old.

"True,' say the children, 'it may happen

That we die before our time:

Little Alice died last year, her grave is shapen

Like a snowball, in the rime.

We looked into the pit prepared to take her:

Was no room for any work in the close clay!

From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,

Crying, "Get up, little Alice! it is day."

If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,

With your ear down, little Alice never cries;

Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes:

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And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud by the kirk-chime.

It is good when it happens,' say the children,
"That we die before our time.'

Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking

Death in life, as best to have:

They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,
With a cerement from the grave. S

Go out, children, from the mine and from the city,
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty,
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!
But they answer, 'Are your cowslips of the meadows
Like our weeds anear the mine?

Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine!

'For oh,' say the children, 'we are weary, And we cannot run or leap;

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.

Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping,

We fall upon our faces, trying to go; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,

The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. For, all day, we drag our burden tiring

Through the coal-dark, underground; Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron In the factories, round and round.

For all day the wheels are droning, turning;
Their wind comes in our faces,

Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places:

Turns the sky in the high window, blank and reeling,
Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling:

All are turning, all the day, and we with all. And all day the iron wheels are droning,

And sometimes we could pray,

"O ye wheels" (breaking out in a mad moaning), "Stop! be silent for to-day!"

Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth!

Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth!

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Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals:
Let them prove their living souls against the notion
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!
Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,

Grinding life down from its mark;

And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
To look up to Him and pray;

So the blessed One who blesseth all the others,

Will bless them another day.

They answer, 'Who is God that He should hear us,
While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us

Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word.
And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door:

Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,
Hears our weeping any more?

"Two words, indeed, of praying we remember,
And at midnight's hour of harm,

"Our Father," looking upward in the chamber, 116 We say softly for a charm

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We know no other words except "Our Father,"

And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within His right hand which is strong. "Our Father!" If He heard us, He would surely

(For they call Him good and mild)

Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, "Come and rest with me, my child."

'But, no!' say the children, weeping faster,
'He is speechless as a stone:

And they tell us, of His image is the master
Who commands us to work on.

Go to!' say the children, 'up in Heaven,

Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving: We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.' Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,

O my brothers, what ye preach?

For God's possible is taught by His world's loving,
And the children doubt of each.

And well may the children weep before you!
They are weary ere they run;