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And not kept drawing still unwholesome draughts
Out of Saint Básil's, Hilary's, Chrysostom's
And Athanasius' duckmeat-mantled pools,

I doubt if in my heart I could have found it
To say, as now I say: Dante, go down.

Stand up here, little finger; thou 'rt the pensive,
Délicate, gentle, nobleminded Schiller,

Ténder white-rose frostnípped in Weimar's garden
Ére it had raised its modest head above

Luxúriant Goethe's all too neighbouring shade.

Redundancy of words, enthusiasm,

Subjectiveness (youth's faults) are thý faults, Schiller!
Amiable weaknesses which every day

Of longer life had sobered, cúrtailed, cured

Diis aliter visum; so thou must go down.

Só, being a boy, I used to count my fingers,

And so in manhood sometimes count them still

Ín the late gloaming or the early morn

Or when I sleepless lie at deep midnight.

Walking from SANCT ANTON on the ADLERBERG (German TYROL) to TEUFEN

in Canton APPENZELL, Sept. 6-10, 1854.

"WHY 's a priest like a fingerpost, you dunce?"

Said a schoolmaster to his pupil once;

"I think I know," replied the roguish elf;

"He points the way, but never goes himself."

Walking from UNTERBRUCK to Kreutzstrassen near MUNICH, July 4, 1854.

THERE wás a curious creáture

Lived many years ago;

Don't ask me what its name was,
For I myself don't know;

But 'twás a curious creáture,
So délicately made

It could not bear the sunshine,

It scárce could bear the shade.

Its judgment was defective,
Its mémory was weak,

Until it was two years old

Not one word could it speak.

Capricious in its témper,

And gráve by fits, then gay,

It seldom liked tomorrow

The thing it liked today.

When 't mét a little trouble

"Twould heave a doleful sigh,

Clasp its forepaws together

And loúdly sob and cry;

And then when something pleased it

"Twould fall into a fit

And work in such convulsions

You'd think its sides would split

With little taste for lábor,
And weáry soon of rest,
It seemed always in a puzzle
Which of the two was best.

So after a while's lábor

It would sit down and say: "This lábor is a killing thing, I'll work no more today."

Then after a while's sitting

"Twould fold its arms and cry:

"Donóthing 's such a weariness I'd almost rather die."

As fóx or magpie clever,

And full of guile and art,

Its chiéfest study ever

Was hów to hide its heart;

And séldom through its feátures

Could you its thoughts discern, Or what its feelings towards you From words or manner learn.

Fierce, únrelenting, cruel,
Bloodshed was its delight;

To give pain, its chief pleasure
From morning úntil night;

All kinds of beasts, birds, fishes, "Twould fall upon and kill,

And not even its own like spare, Its húngry maw to fill;

And when it could no more eat

But was stuffed up to the throat,
"Twould húnt them down for pastime,
And on their anguish gloat.

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That fór some seventy years should

Live wickedly, then die

And túrn into an ángel

And fly up to the sky;

And there in the blue éther

With God for ever dwell,

Oft wondering how it cáme there

When 't should have been in hell.

Begun at ARCO in the Italian TYROL, Aug. 24,

1854; finished while

walking from CAMPIGLIO across the VAL DI NON and over the PALLADE to SPONDINI at the foot of the ORTELER, Aug. 29 to Sept. 2, 1854.

THE GAP IN THE CLOUDS.*

Ir happened as one summer day I walked
From Küssnacht round the Righi's foot to Schwyz,
Ánd had behind me left Tell's Hollow Way
Ánd the green, sloping banks of Zug's clear lake,
That looking up I saw a gap in the clouds
And asking what had made it, was informed
'Twas left there by the fall of Rossberg mountain
Whose ruins strewed the valley at my feet.
Doúbting, as usual, and incredulous,
Again I looked up, at and through the gap,
And saw beyond it in the clear, blue ether
The figure of a man with open shirtneck,
Seated and writing something upon papers
Which éver and anon down through the gap
He scattered to the ground. One near me fallen
I picked up, curious, and began to read;

But being no lover of non sequiturs

And Béggings of the Argument and mean

And vúlgar thoughts dressed up in melodrame,

*Mountains have fallen

Leaving a gap in the clouds, and with the shock
Rocking their Alpine brethren; filling up

The ripe green valleys with destruction's splinters,

Damming the rivers with a sudden dash

thus,

Which crushed the waters into mist, and made
Their fountains find another channel
Thus, in its old age, did Mount Rosenberg.

BYRON.

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