VI.

With staff in hand across the cleft

The Challenger began his march;

And now, all eyes and feet, hath gain'd
The middle of the arch.

When list! he hears a piteous moan-
Again!-his heart within him dies-
His pulse is stopp'd, his breath is lost,
He totters, pale as any ghost,
And, looking down, he spies

A Lamb, that in the pool is pent

Within that black and frightful Rent.

VII.

The Lamb had slipp'd into the stream,

And safe without a bruise or wound

The Cataract had borne him down

Into the gulph profound.

His Dam had seen him when he fell,

She saw him down the torrent borne ;

And, while with all a mother's love

She from the lofty rocks above

Sent forth a cry forlorn,

The Lamb, still swimming round and round, Made answer to that plaintive sound.

VIII.

When he had learnt, what thing it was,
That sent this rueful cry; I ween,
The Boy recover'd heart, and told
The sight which he had seen.

Both gladly now deferr'd their task;
Nor was there wanting other aid—
A Poet, one who loves the brooks,
Far better than the sages' books,
By chance had thither stray'd;

And there the helpless Lamb he found
By those huge rocks encompass'd round.

IX.

He drew it gently from the pool,

And brought it forth into the light :

The Shepherds met him with his Charge,

An unexpected sight!

Into their arms the Lamb they took,

Said they, "He's neither maim'd nor scarr'd"

Then up the steep ascent they hied

And placed him at his Mother's side;
And gently did the Bard

Those idle Shepherd-boys upbraid,

And bade them better mind their trade.

POOR SUSAN.

At the corner of Wood-Street, when day-light appears, There's a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years: Poor Susan has pass'd by the spot, and has heard

In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

She sees

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her?
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripp'd with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only Dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her Heart is in Heaven:-but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;

The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,

And the colours have all pass'd away from her eyes.