Till broad and fierce the star came forth

On Ely's stately fane,

And tower and hamlet rose in arms

O'er all the boundless plain,
Till Belvoir's lordly terraces

The sign to Lincoln sent,

And Lincoln sped the message on
O'er the wide vale of Trent,

Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned
On Gaunt's embattled pile,

And the red glare on Skiddaw roused

The burghers of Carlisle !

Lord Macaulay.

Pontefract (Pomfret).

KING RICHARD IN THE DUNGEON OF POMFRET CASTLE.

I

HAVE been studying how to compare

This prison, where live, unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.

My brain I'll prove the female to my soul;
My soul, the father: and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world
In humors, like the people of this world,

For no thought is contented. The better sort –

As thoughts of things divine

are intermixed

With scruples, and do set the Word itself

Against the Word: as thus, Come, little ones; then again,

It is as hard to come, as for a camel

To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of Fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars,
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame
That many have, and others must sit there:
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.

Thus play I, in one person, many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king;
Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am. Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I kinged again: and, by and by,
Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,

And straight am nothing. But, whate'er I am,

Not I, nor any man that but man is,

With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased

With being nothing. — Music do I hear?

Ha, ha! keep time. How sour sweet music is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.

And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disordered string;
But, for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth Time waste me;
For now hath Time made me his numbering clock.
My thoughts are minutes; and, with sighs, they jar
Their motions unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,

Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs, and tears, and groans,
Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack-o'-the-clock.
This music mads me, let it sound no more;
For, though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For 't is a sign of love; and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

William Shakespeare.

Porlock.

PORLOCK.

PORLOCK! thy verdant vale so fair to sight,

Thy lofty hills which fern and furze imbrown, The waters that roll musically down

Thy woody glens, the traveller with delight
Recalls to memory, and the channel gray
Circling its surges in thy level bay.
Porlock! I also shall forget thee not,

Here by the unwelcome summer rain confined;
But often shall hereafter call to mind

How here, a patient prisoner, 't was my lot
To wear the lonely, lingering close of day,
Making my sonnet by the alehouse fire,
Whilst Idleness and Solitude inspire

Dull rhymes to pass the duller hours away.

Robert Souther

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF E. S.

WRITTEN AT WORTHY FARM, NEAR PORLOCK, SOMERSET.

THIS side the brow of yon sea-bounding hill

TH

There is an alley overarched with green,

Where thick-grown briers entwine themselves at will; There, twinkling through the under-flowers, is seen The ever-shaking ocean far below;

And on the upper side, a rocky wall

Where deepest mosses and lithe ivies grow,
And honeysuckle-blooms in clusters fall.
There walked I when I last remembered thee;
And all too joyfully came o'er my mind
Moments of pleasure by the southern sea,
By our young lives two summers left behind;
Ah, sad-sweet memory, for that very day

The gloom came on which may not pass away.

Henry Alford.

Preston.

FILIAL PIETY.

ON THE WAYSIDE BETWEEN PRESTON AND LIVERPOOL.

NTOUCHED through all severity of cold;

UNTOU

Inviolate, whate'er the cottage hearth Might need for comfort or for festal mirth; That pile of turf is half a century old: Yes, traveller! fifty winters have been told Since suddenly the dart of death went forth 'Gainst him who raised it, his last work on earth: Thence has it, with the son, so strong a hold Upon his father's memory, that his hands, Through reverence, touch it only to repair

Its waste. Though crumbling with each breath of air, In annual renovation thus it stands,

Rude mausoleum! but wrens nestle there,

And redbreasts warble when sweet sounds are rare.

William Wordsworth.