"John of Douay shall effect my plan,

Set me on horseback here aloft,
Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

"In the very square I have crossed so oft: That men may admire, when future suns Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

"While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze

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207

Admire and say, 'When he was alive
How he would take his pleasure once!'

210

"And it shall go hard but I contrive

To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb
At idleness which aspires to strive."

213

So! While these wait the trump of doom,
How do their spirits pass, I wonder,
Nights and days in the narrow room?

Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder
What a gift life was, ages ago,
Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

Only they see not God, I know,
Nor all that chivalry of his,

The soldier-saints who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss-
Since, the end of life being manifest,
He had burned his way through the world to

this.

216

219

222

225

I hear you reproach, " But delay was best,

For their end was a crime."-Oh, a crime will

do

As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

As a virtue golden through and through,
Sufficient to vindicate itself

And prove its worth at a moment's view!

Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?
Where a button goes, 't were an epigram
To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

The true has no value beyond the sham:
As well the counter as coin, I submit,
When your table 's a hat, and your prize, a
dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
Venture as warily, use the same skill,

228

231

234

237

Do your best, whether winning or losing it, 240

If you choose to play!-is my principle.
Let a man contend to the uttermost

For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

243

The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin:

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 246

Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
You of the virtue (we issue join)
How strive you? De te, fabula!
1855.

Robert Browning.

250

THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS

OR, THE BRITISH SOLDIER IN CHINA

Last night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed, and swore;
A drunken. private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.

To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,
He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,

And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
Bewildered, and alone,

A heart, with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.

Ay, tear his body limb from limb,

Bring cord or axe or flame:

He only knows that not through him
Shall England come to shame.

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seemed,
Like dreams, to come and go;

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Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed.
One sheet of living snow;

1860.

The smoke above his father's door
In gray soft eddyings hung;

Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doomed by himself, so young?

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Yes, honour calls!-with strength like steel
He put the vision by;

Let dusky Indians whine and kneel,

An English lad must die.

And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent,

Unfaltering on its dreadful brink,
To his red grave he went.

Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed,
Vain those all-shattering guns,
Unless proud England keep untamed
The strong heart of her sons;

So let his name through Europe ring,—
A man of mean estate,

Who died, as firm as Sparta's king,

Because his soul was great.

Sir Francis Hastings Doyle.

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40

RAMON

(REFUGIO MINE, NORTHERN MEXICO)

DRUNK and senseless in his place, Prone and sprawling on his face, More like brute than any man

Alive or dead,~ ·

By his great pump out of gear,
Lay the peon engineer,

Waking only just to hear,
Overhead,

Angry tones that called his name,

Oaths and cries of bitter blame,— Woke to hear all this, and waking, turned and fled!

"To the man who 'll bring to me," Cried Intendant Harry Lee,

Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,

"Bring the sot alive or dead,

I will give to him," he said,
"Fifteen hundred pesos down,
Just to set the rascal's crown
Underneath this heel of mine:
Since but death

Deserves the man whose deed,
Be it vice or want of heed,

Stops the pumps that give us breath,—
Stops the pumps that suck the 'eath
From the poisoned lower levels of tre

mine!"

No one answered, for a cry

From the shaft rose up on high;

And shuffling, scrambling, tumbling from
below,

Came the miners each, the bolder
Mounting on the weaker's shoulder,

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