But now on board of the Valdemar

Stood the Klaboterman.
And they all knew their doom was sealed;

They knew that death was near;
Some prayed who never prayed before,
And some they wept, and some they swore,

And some were mute with fear.
Then suddenly there came a shock,

And louder than wind or sea
A cry burst from the crew on deck,
As she dashed and crashed, a hopeless wreck,

Upon the Chimneys Three.
The storm and night were passed, the light

To streak the east began;
The cabin-boy, picked up at sea,
Survived the wreck, and only he,

To tell of the Carmilhan.

THE FUGITIVE.
A TARTAR SONG, FROM THE PROSE VERSION OF CHODZKO,

I.

H

“He is gone to the desert land !
I can see the shining mane
Of his horse on the distant plain,
As he rides with his Kossak band !
“Come back, rebellious one!
Let thy proud heart relent;
Come back to my tall, white teni,
Come back, my only son !

Thy hand in freedom shall
Cast thy hawks when morning breaks
On the swans of the Seven Lakes,
On the lakes of Karajal.
“ I will give thee leave to stray,
And pasture thy hunting steeds
In the long grass and the reeds
Of the meadows of Karaday.
“I will give thee my coat of mail
Of softest leather made,
With choicest steel inlaid ;-
Will not all this prevail ?'

" I will no longer stray,
And pasture my hunting steeds
In the long grass and the reeds
Of the meadows of Karaday.
Though thou give me thy coat of inail
Of softest leather made,
With choicest steel inlaid ;
All this cannot prevail.
“What right have thou, O Khan,
To me, who am my own ?
Who am slave to God alone,
And not to any man.

God will appoint the day
When I again shall be
By the blue, shallow sea,
Where the steel-bright sturgeons play.
“God, who doth care of me
In the barren wilderness,
On unknown hills, no less
Will my companion be.
“When I wander lonely and lost
In the wind ; when I watch at night,
Like a hungry wolf, and am white
And covered with hoar-frost;
“ Yea, wheresoever I be,
In the yellow desert sands,
In mountains, or unknown lands,
Allah will care for me.

Then Sobra, the old, old man-
Three hundred and sixty years
Had he lived in this land of tears-
Bowed down, and said : “ O Khan !
“If you bid me I will speak,
There's no sap in dry grass,
No marrow in dry bones! alas,
The mind of old men is weak !
“I am old, I am very old ;
I have seen the primeval man,
I have seen the great Gingis Khan
Arrayed in his robes of gold.
“What I say to you is the truth ;
And I say to you, O Khan,
Pursue not the star-white man,
Pursue not the beautiful youth

“ Him the Almighty made ;
He brought him forth of the light
At the verge and end of the night,
When men on the mountain prayed.
“ He was born at the break of day,
When abroad the angels walk;
He hath listened to their talk,
And he knoweth what they say.
“ Gifted with Allah's grace,
Like the moon of Ramazan
When it shines in the skies, O Khan,
Is the light of his beautiful face,
“ When first on the earth he trod,
The first words that he said
Were these, as he stood and prayed
• There is no God but God!
“ And he shall be King of men,
For Allah hath heard his prayer,
And the Archangel in the air,
Gabriel, hath said, Amen!”

MONTE CASSINO.
BEAUTIFUL valley, through whose verdant meads

Unheard the Garigliano glides along,
The Liris, nurse of rushes and of reeds,

The river taciturn of classic song!
The Land of Labour, and the Land of Rest,

Where mediæval towns are white on all
The hill-sides, and where every mountain crest

Is an Etrurian or a Roman wall !
There is Alagna, where Pope Boniface

Was dragged with contumely from his throne. Sciarra Colonna, was that day's disgrace

The Pontiff's only, or in part thine own? There is Ceprano, where a renegade

Was each Apulian, as great Dante saith, When Manfred, by his men-at-arms betrayed,

Spurred on to Benevento and to death. There is Aquinum, the old Volscian town

Where Juvenal was born, whose lurid light Still hovers o'er his birthplace, like the crown

Of splendour over cities seen at night. Doubled the splendour is, that in its streets

The Angelic Doctor as a school-boy played, And dreamed perhaps the dreams that he repeats

In ponderous folios for scholastics made.

And there, uplifted like a passing cloud

That pauses on a mountain summit high, Monte Cassino's convent rears its proud

And venerable walls against the sky. Well I remember how on foot I climbed

The stony pathway leading to its gate: Above, the convent bells for vespers chimed;

Below, the darkening town grew desolate. Well I remember the low arch and dark,

The court-yard with its well, the terrace wide, From which, far down, diminished to a park,

The valley veiled in mist was dim descried. The day was dying, and with feeble hands

Caressed the mountain-tops; the vales between Darkened; the river in the meadow-lands

Sheathed itself as a sword and was not seen. The silence of the place was like a sleep,

So full of rest it seemed; each passing tread Was a reverberation from the deep

Recesses of the ages that are dead. For more than thirteen centuries ago,

Benedict, fleeing from the gates of Rome, A youth disgusted with its vice and woe,

Sought in these mountain solitudes a home. He founded here his Convent and his Rule

Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer. His pen became a clarion, and his school

Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air. What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way

Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores The illuminated manuscripts that lay

Torn and neglected on ihe dusty floors ?
Boccaccio was a novelist, a child

Of fancy and of fiction at the best;
This the urbane librarian said, and smiled

Incredulous, as at some idle jest.
Upon such themes as these with one young friar

I sat conversing late into the night,
Till in its cavernous chimney the wood fire

Had burnt its heart out like an anchorite.
And then translated, in my convent cell,

Myself yet not myself, in dreams I lay ; And as a monk who hears the matin bell,

Started from sleep ;-already it was day. From the high window I beheld the scene

On which Saint Benedict so oft had gazed; The mountains and the valley in the sheen

Of the bright sun, and stood as one amazed.

Gray mists were rolling, rising, vanishing;

The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns; Far off the mellow bells began to ring

For matins in the half-awakened towns. The conflict of the Present and the Past,

The ideal and the actual in our life, As on a field of battle held me fast,

Where this world and the next world were at strife. For, as the valley from its sleep awoke,

I saw the iron horses of the steam
Toss to the morning air their plumes of smoke,

And woke as one awaketh from a dream.

AMALFI.
Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet;
Where amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless, summer seas.
In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.
'Tis a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures, tall and straight;
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil ?
Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands.
On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands,
Placid, satisfied, serene,
Looking down upon the scene
Over wall an i red-tiled roof,
Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care, and free from pain
And the sordid love of gain,
And as indolent as he.

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