THE GRAPE-HARVEST. From The Englishman in Italy.

In the vat, half-way up in our house-side,

Like blood the juice spins,

While your brother all bare-legged is dancing

Till breathless he grins

Dead-beaten, in effort on effort

To keep the grapes under,

Since still when he seems all but master,

In pours the fresh plunder

From girls who keep coming and going

With basket on shoulder,

And eyes shut against the rain's driving,

Your girls that are older

For under the hedges of aloe,

And where, on its bed

Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple
Lies pulpy and red,

All the young ones are kneeling and filling
Their laps with the snails

Tempted out by this first rainy weather-
Your best of regales,

As to-night will be proved to my sorrow,
When, supping in state,

We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen,

Three over one plate)

With lasagne1 so tempting to swallow

In slippery ropes,

And gourds fried in great purple slices,

That colour of popes.

Meantime, see the grape-bunch they've brought you

The rain-water slips

O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe

Which the wasp to your lips

Still follows with fretful persistence

Nay, taste, while awake,

This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball,

That peels, flake by flake,

Like an onion's, each smoother and whiter.

1 Vermicelli.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING: 1809-1861. E. B. Browning, England's greatest poetess, was born in London. From her seventeenth year, notwithstanding ill health and other afflictions, she poured forth volume after volume of beautiful and impressive poetry. In 1846 she became the wife of the poet Robert Browning. Her chief poems are The Seraphim, A Vision of Poets, Lady Geraldine's Courtship, Casa Guidi Windows, Aurora Leigh, Poems before Congress, &c.; but her Sonnets and smaller poems are the most popular of her productions.

Do

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.

ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;

The

young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west;
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

• ...

For oh, say the children, we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap.

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.

Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping,
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring,

Through the coal-dark underground-
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.

For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning-
Their wind comes in our faces-

Till our hearts turn-our heads, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places.

Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall,
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
And, all day, the iron weels are droning;
And sometimes we could pray,

'O ye wheels'-breaking out in a mad moaning-
"Stop! be silent for to-day!'

Ay! be silent! let them hear each other breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth!

Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth!

Let them feel that this cold metallic motion

Is not all the life God fashions or reveals.

Let them prove their inward souls against the notion

That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!

Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,

Grinding life down from its mark;

And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.

LOVE. From Sonnets from the Portuguese.

I thought once how Theocritus1 had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one, in a gracious hand, appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old and young;
And as I mused it, in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair,
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove:

'Guess now who holds thee?' 'Death!' I said. But there The silver answer rang: 'Not Death, but Love.'

1 A celebrated Greek idyllic poet.

LORD MACAULAY: 1800-1859.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, the celebrated historian, gained a high reputation as a poet by his magnificent historical ballads, The Lays of Ancient Rome; Ivry, a Song of the Huguenots; and The Armada, a Fragment. Macaulay entered the House of Commons in 1830; from 1834 to 1838 he served as a member of the Supreme Council in India; in 1840 he became Secretary at War, and was raised to the peerage in 1857. (For a specimen of his History of England, see Readings in English Prose, page 212.)

IVRY, A SONG OF THE HUGUENOTS.1

[The Huguenots was the name given to the Protestant party in France in the sixteenth century. They were cruelly persecuted by the Catholics under the Duke of Guise, and on the eve of St Bartholomew's Day (September 5), 1572, many thousands of them were massacred. Henry de Bourbon, king of Navarre, one of the Huguenots who had escaped the massacre, now headed the Protestants, the Catholics, under Guise, having meanwhile formed themselves into a League for the extirpation of the heretics. On the death of the French king in 1589, Henry of Navarre became sovereign of France, but the Catholics opposed his claims, and an arduous struggle ensued between the two parties. At length, in 1590, the forces of the League under the Duke of Mayenne were completely defeated at the village of Ivry, a few miles from Paris, and Henry afterwards became king.]

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!
And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre!
Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,
Through thy cornfields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land of
France!

And thou, Rochelle,2 our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,

Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.
As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,

For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls

annoy.

Hurrah! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war,
Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre.

1 By permission of Messrs Longman.

2 Rochelle was considered the Protestant capital.

Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array;
With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers,
And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears.
There rode the brood of false Lorraine,1 the curses of our land;
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand:
And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood,
And good Coligni's 2 hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war,
To fight for his own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.

The king is come to marshal us, all in his armour drest;
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;

He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,
Down all our line, a deafening shout, 'God save our lord the King.'
'And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may—
For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray-

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme, to-day, the helmet of Navarre.'

Hurrah! the foes are moving! Hark to the mingled din
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.
The fiery Duke is pricking fast across St André's plain,3
With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.
Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France,
Charge for the golden lilies-upon them with the lance!
A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest;
And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star,
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

Now, God be praised, the day is ours! Mayenne hath turned his rein.

D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish Count is slain.

1 The Guises belonged to the ducal family of Lorraine.

2 Coligni, Admiral of France, perished in the massacre of St Bartholomew. 3 The battle-field.