And if thou meet an enemy,
What art thou that none such should be?
Even so but if the two parts run
Into each other and grow one,
Then comes the curtain's cue to fall.

Whate'er by other's need is claimed
More than by thine,-to him unblamed
Resign it and if he should hold
What more than he thou lack'st, bread,
gold,

Or any good whereby we live,-
To thee such substance let him give
Freely nor he nor thou be shamed.

Strive that thy works prove equal: lest
That work which thou hast done the best
Should come to be to thee at length
(Even as to envy seems the strength
Of others) hateful and abhorr'd,-
Thine own above thyself made lord,-
Of self-rebuke the bitterest.

Unto the man of yearning thought
And aspiration, to do nought
Is in itself almost an act,-
Being chasm-fire and cataract
Of the soul's utter depths unseal'd.
Yet woe to thee if once thou yield
Unto the act of doing nought!

How callous seems beyond revoke
The clock with its last listless stroke!
How much too late at length !-to trace
The hour on its forewarning face,
The thing thou hast not dared to do!....
Behold, this may be thus! Ere true
It prove, arise and bear thy yoke.

Let lore of all Theology

Be to thy soul what it can be:

But know, the Power that fashions man
Measured not out thy little span
For thee to take the meting-rod
In turn, and so approve on God
Thy science of Theometry.

To God at best, to Chance at worst,
Give thanks for good things, last as first.
But windstrown blossom is that good
Whose apple is not gratitude.
Even if no prayer uplift thy face,
Let the sweet right to render grace
As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd.

Didst ever say, "Lo, I forget?" Such thought was to remember yet. As in a gravegarth, count to see The monuments of memory.

Thought-wandering, unto nought that met them there,

But to the unfettered irreversible goal. This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud

Of his soul writ and limned; this other

one,

His true wife's charge, full oft to their abode

Yielded for daily bread the martyr's stone,

Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone,

The words now home-speech of the mouth of God.

III. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

HIS Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove

The father-songster plies the hour-long quest,)

To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest;

But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above

Their callow fledgling progeny still hove With tented roof of wings and fostering breast

Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest

From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love.

Yet ah! Like desert pools that show

the stars Once in long leagues,

-even such the scarce-snatched hours

Which deepening pain left to his lord

liest powers:—

Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars.

Six years, from sixty saved! Yet kindling skies

Own them, a beacon to our centuries.

Weary with labor spurned and love found vain,

In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.

O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips

And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse,

Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er,

Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ

But rumor'd in water, while the fame of it

Along Time's flood goes echoing ever

more.

V. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (INSCRIPTION FOR THE COUCH, STILL PRESERVED, ON WHICH HE PASSED THE LAST NIGHT OF HIS

LIFE.) "TWIXT those twin worlds,-the world of Sleep, which gave

No dream to warm,-the tidal world of Death,

Which the earth's sea, as the earth, replenisheth,

Shelley, Song's orient sun, to breast the

wave.

Rose from this couch that morn. Ah! did he brave

Only the sea?--or did man's deed of hell Engulf his bark 'mid mists impenetrable?.

No eye discerned, nor any power might

save.

When that mist cleared, O Shelley!

what dread veil

Was rent for thee, to whom far-darkling Truth

Reigned sovereign guide through thy brief ageless youth?

Was the Truth thy Truth, Shelley?— Hush! All-Hail,

Past doubt, thou gav'st it; and in Truth's bright sphere

Art first of praisers, being most praised here. 1881.

THE KING'S TRAGEDY

JAMES I OF SCOTS. --20TH FEBRUARY, 1437.

I CATHERINE am a Douglas born,
A name to all Scots dear;

And Kate Barlass they've called me now
Through many a waning year.

Through all the days of his gallant youth The princely James was pent,

By his friends at first and then by his foes,

In long imprisonment.

For the elder Prince, the kingdom's heir,
By treason's murderous brood
Was slain; and the father quaked for
the child

With the royal mortal blood.

I' the Bass Rock fort, by his father's care,
Was his childhood's life assured;
And Henry the subtle Bolingbroke,
Proud England's King, 'neath the south-
ron yoke

His youth for long years immured. Yet in all things meet for a kingly man Himself did he approve;

And the nightingale through his prisonwall

Taught him both lore and love.

For once, when the bird's song drew him close

To the opened window-pane,
In her bowers beneath a lady stood,
A light of life to his sorrowful mood,
Like a lily amid the rain.

And for her sake, to the sweet bird's note,
He framed a sweeter Song,
More sweet than ever a poet's heart

Gave yet to the English tongue.

She was a lady of royal blood;

And when, past sorrow and teen,

He stood where still through his crown

At Scone were the happy lovers crowned, A heart-wed King and Queen.

But the bird may fall from the bough of youth,

And song be turned to moan, And Love's storm-cloud be the shadow of Hate,

When the tempest-waves of a troubled State

Are beating against a throne.

Yet well they loved; and the god of Love,
Whom well the King had sung,
Might find on the earth no truer hearts
His lowliest swains among.

From the days when first she rode abroad
With Scottish maids in her train,

I Catherine Douglas won the trust

Of my mistress, sweet Queen Jane.

And oft she sighed, "To be born a
King!"

And oft along the way
When she saw the homely lovers pass
She has said, "Alack the day!"

Years waned,-the loving and toiling

years:

Till England's wrong renewed Drove James, by outrage cast on his

crown,

To the open field of feud.

"T was when the King and his host were met

At the leaguer of Roxbro' hold,. The Queen o' the sudden sought his camp With a tale of dread to be told.

And she showed him a secret letter writ
That spoke of treasonous strife,
And how a band of his noblest lords
Were sworn to take his life.

"And it may be here or it may be there,
In the camp or the court," she said:
"But for my sake come to your people's

arms

And guard your royal head.”

Quoth he, ""T is the fifteenth day of the siege,

And the castle 's nigh to yield." "O face your foes on your throne," she cried,

"And show the power you wield; And under your Scottish people's love You shall sit as under your shield."

At the fair Queen's side I stood that day When he bade them raise the siege, And back to his Court he sped to know How the lords would meet their Liege.

But when he summoned his Parliament, The louring brows hung round,

Like clouds that circle the mountainhead

Ere the first low thunders sound.

For he had tamed the nobles' lust

And curbed their power and pride, And reached out an arm to right the

poor

Through Scotland far and wide; And many a lordly wrong-doer

By the headsman's axe had died.

'T was then upspoke Sir Robert Græme, The bold o'ermastering man:

"O King, in the name of your Three Estates

I set you under their ban!

For, as your lords made oath to you Of service and fealty, Even in likewise you pledged your oath Their faithful sire to be :

"Yet all we here that are nobly sprung Have mourned dear kith and kin Since first for the Scottish Barons' curse Did your bloody rule begin."

With that he laid his hands on his King:

Is this not so, my lords?"

But of all who had sworn to league with him

Not one spake back to his words. Quoth the King:-" Thou speak'st but for one Estate.

Nor doth it avow thy gage. Let my liege lords hale this traitor hence!"

The Græme fired dark with rage:"Who works for lesser men than himself, He earns but a witless wage!"

But soon from the dungeon where he lay He won by privy plots,

And forth he fled with a price on his head

To the country of the Wild Scots.

And word there came from Sir Robert Græme

To the King at Edinbro':

"No Liege of mine thou art; but I see From this day forth alone in thee God's creature, my mortal foe.

"Through thee are my wife and children lost,

My heritage and lands;

And when my God shall show me a way, Thyself my mortal foe will I slay

With these my proper hands."

Against the coming of Christmastide
That year the King bade call

I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth
A solemn festival.

And we of his household rode with him In a close-ranked company;

But not till the sun had sunk from his throne

Did we reach the Scottish Sea.

That eve was clenched for a boding storm, 'Neath a toilsome moon half seen; The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;

And where there was a line of the sky,
Wild wings loomed dark between.

And on a rock of the black beach-side,
By the veiled moon dimly lit,
There was something seemed to heave
with life

As the King drew nigh to it.

And was it only the tossing furze

Or brake of the waste sea-wold? Or was it an eagle bent to the blast? When near we came, we knew it at last For a woman tattered and old.

"Four years it is since first I met, "Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu, A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud,

And that shape for thine I knew.

"A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle
I saw thee pass in the breeze,
With the cerecloth risen above thy feet
And wound about thy knees.

"And yet a year, in the Links of Forth,
As a wanderer without rest,
Thou cam'st with both thine arms i'
the shroud

That clung high up thy breast.

"And in this hour I find thee here, And well mine eyes may note That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast

And risen around thy throat.

"And when I meet thee again, O King, That of death hast such sore drouth,Except thou turn again on this shore.— The winding-sheet shall have moved

once more

And covered thine eyes and mouth.

"O King, whom poor men bless for their King,

Of thy fate be not so fain;

But these my words for God's message take,

.And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake Who rides beside thy rein!"

While the woman spoke, the King's horse reared

As if it would breast the sea,

And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale

The voice die dolorously.

When the woman ceased, the steed was still,

But the King gazed on her yet, And in silence save for the wail of the sea His eyes and her eyes met.

At last he said:-"God's ways are His

own:

Man is but shadow and dust. Last night I prayed by His altar-stone; To-night I wend to the feast of His Son ; And in Him I set my trust.

"I have held my people in sacred charge, And have not feared the sting

Of proud men's hate,—to His will resign'd Who has but one same death for a hind And one same death for a King.

“And if God in His wisdom have brought close

The day when I must die, That day by water or fire or air My feet shall fall in the destined snare Wherever my road may lie.

"What man can say but the Fiend hath set

Thy sorcery on my path,

My heart with the fear of death to fill, And turn me against God's very will

To sink in His burning wrath?"

The woman stood as the train rode past, And moved nor limb nor eye;

And when we were shipped, we saw her there

Still standing against the sky.

As the ship made way, the moon once