Is the longing of the shield.

Tell thy name, thou trembling field;
Field of death, where'er thou be,
Groan thou with our victory!

Happy day, and mighty hour,

When our shepherd, in his power,

Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword,

To his ancestors restored,

Like a reappearing star,

Like a glory from afar,

First shall head the flock of war!'

Alas! the fervent harper did not know

That for a tranquil soul the lay was framed, Who, long compelled in humble walks to go, Was softened into feeling, smoothed, and tamed.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

In him the savage virtue of the race,

Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts, were dead: Nor did he change, but kept in lofty place The wisdom which adversity had bred.

Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth; The shepherd lord was honoured more and more; And ages after he was laid in earth,

'The good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore.

LESSON 40.

THE DEFEAT OF TIME;

OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES.

incredulity, refusing to be

lieve mutable, changeable nymphs, see note1 Oberon, king of the fairies Philomel, or Philomela, daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, and transformed into a nightingale

Rhea, goddess of the earth roc, a monstrous bird spoken of in Arabian mythology subtile, thin, delicately constructed

sylvan, woody, shady Tereus, son of Ares (Mars) Titania, queen of the fairies

Titania and her moonlight elves were assembled under the canopy of a huge oak, that served to shelter them from the moon's radiance, which being now at her full, shot forth intolerable rays,—intolerable, I mean, to the subtile texture of their little shadowy bodies,—but dispensing an agreeable coolness to us grosser mortals. An air of discomfort sat upon the queen and upon her courtiers. Their tiny friskings and gambols were forgotten; and even Robin Goodfellow, for the first time in his little airy life, looked grave. For the queen had had melancholy forebodings of late, founded upon

1 In mythology, Nymphs were beautiful females inhabiting and presiding over every region of earth and waters. Those presiding over rivers, etc. were called Naiades; those over woods and trees, Dryades; those over the sea, Nereides; those over valleys, Napacae,

etc.

an ancient prophecy laid up in the records of Fairyland, that the date of fairy existence should be then extinct when men should cease to believe in them. And she knew how that the race of the Nymphs, which were her predecessors, and had been the guardians of the sacred floods, and of the silver fountains, and of the consecrated hills and woods, had utterly disappeared before the chilling touch of man's incredulity; and she sighed bitterly at the approaching fate of herself and of her subjects, which was dependent on so fickle a lease as the capricious and ever-mutable faith of man. When, as if to realize her fears, a melancholy shape came gliding in, and that was-Time, who with his intolerable scythe mows down kings and kingdoms; at whose dread approach the fays huddled together as a flock of timorous sheep, and the most courageous among them crept into acorn-cups, not enduring the sight of that ancientest of monarchs. Titania's first impulse was to wish the presence of her false lord, King Oberon,-who was far away, in the pursuit of a strange beauty, a fay of Indian Land, that with his good lance and sword, like a faithful knight and husband, he might defend her against Time. But she soon checked that thought as vain; for what could the prowess of the mighty Oberon himself, albeit the stoutest champion in Fairyland, have availed against so huge a giant, whose bald top touched the skies? So, in the mildest tone, she besought the spectre that in his mercy he would overlook and pass by her small subjects, as too diminutive and powerless to add. any worthy trophy to his renown. And she besought him to employ his resistless strength against the ambitious children of men, and to lay waste their aspiring works, to tumble down their

towers and turrets, and the Babels of their pride,fit objects of his devouring scythe; but to spare her and her harmless race, who had no existence beyond a dream, frail objects of a creed that lived but in the faith of the believer. And with her little arms, as well as she could, she grasped the stern knees of Time; and, waxing speechless with fear, she beckoned to her chief attendants and maid of honour to come forth from their hiding-places, and to plead the plea of the fairies.

Then one of those small, delicate creatures came forth at her bidding, clad all in white, like a chorister, and in a low, melodious tone, not louder than the hum of a pretty bee when it seems to be demurring whether it shall settle upon this sweet flower or that before it settles, set forth her humble petition. We fairies,' she said, 'are the most inoffensive race that live, and least deserving to perish. It is we that have the care of all sweet melodies, that no discords may offend the sun, who is the great soul of music. We rouse the lark at morn; and the pretty echoes, which respond to all the twittering choir, are of our making. Wherefore, great King of Years, as ever you have loved the music which is raining from a morning cloud sent from the messenger of day, the lark, as he mounts to heaven's gate, beyond the ken of mortals; or if ever you have listened with a charmed ear to the night-bird, that—

"In the flowery spring, Amidst the leaves set, makes the thickets ring Of her sour sorrows, sweetened with her song," spare our tender tribes, and we will muffle up the sheep-bell for thee, that thy pleasure take no interruption whenever thou shalt listen unto Philomel.'

And Time answered that 'he had that song too long, and he was even wearied with that ancient strain that recorded the wrong of Tereus. But if she would know in what music Time delighted, it was when sleep and darkness lay upon crowded cities, to hark to the midnight chime which is tolling from a hundred clocks, like the last knell over the soul of a dead world; or to the crash of the fall of some age-worn edifice, which is as the voice of himself when he disparteth kingdoms.'

A second female fay took up the plea, and said: 'We be the handmaids of the spring, and tend upon the birth of all sweet buds: and the pastoral cowslips are our friends; and the pansies and the violets, like nuns; and the quaking harebell is in our wardship; and the hyacinth, once a fair youth, and dear to Phoebus.'

Then Time made answer, in his wrath striking the harmless ground with his hurtful scythe, that they must not think that he was one that cared for flowers, except to see them wither, and to take her beauty from the rose.'

And a third fairy took up the plea, and said: 'We are kindly things: and it is we that sit at evening and shake rich odours from sweet bowers upon discoursing lovers, that seem to each other to be their own sighs; and we keep off the bat and the owl from their privacy, and the ill-boding whistler; and we flit in sweet dreams across the brains of infancy, and conjure up a sweet smile upon its soft lips to beguile the careful mother, while its little soul is fled for a brief minute or two to sport with our youngest fairies.'

Then Saturn (which is Time) made answer, that 'they should not think that he delighted in tender babes, that had devoured his own, till foolish Rhea