is by no means certain that she fulfilled the last part of the precept, for there were occasions-on market days and the like-when she reminded her husband of his liability to trip. As for Robert, his triumph seemed to give him a new lease of life, and though he and his son-in-law were ever on the most amicable terms he never failed to assert his own pre-eminence as the ploughing champion. IN THE PLEASAUNCE OF DAME PHANTASY. There is a spirit in the woods.-WORDSWORTH,' Nutting.' To dwellers in a wood every species of tree has its voice, as well as its features.— THOMAS HARDY, Under the Greenwood Tree.' C'est la vague parole où toute la nature S'émeut, et que la lèvre humaine ne peut dire.' -ALBERT MOCKEL, L'Homme à la Lyre.' DAME PHANTASY a pleasaunce hath, 'Twas in that pleasaunce that erewhile, When England's year was in its spring, Dan Chaucer saw the daisies smile, And heard the little finches sing, And Spenser too, the monarch crowned Not far from thence does Arden lie, Nor are the Ludlow woods remote, And 'twas, too, from a neighbouring port, Thronged by the high-pooped ships of yoreAn old-time mariners' resort That a gaunt seaman sailed, who bore, Hung from his neck, a golden cross : Ah! lovely, lovely is the land Whereof that pleasaunce forms a part, And in that pleasaunce it befell— 'Twas eve, Midsummer Eve; the flush, And as I looked, misdoubting, lo! A flutter of shapes that by degrees Of shapes most diverse: from the Oak Strong for the glebe, sturdy of stroke; And, yet more rugged from their toil, Elm women;-by them Birch-tree girls, With flix of hair and frolic curls, And dainty in white linen smocks, Laugh to the Larches, who, in turn, Laugh back, and shake their trixy locksSo gay they are !-but sad and stern, With eyes of doom, as when they gave Their wood of old for bow and glaive, Stands, stiff of stower, each Yew-tree maid; And death eternal; and, hard by, Of the Park's silence. Bold and free, With limbs clear-cut as for the chaceWhat nymphs are these, fair beyond speech? These are the daughters of the Beech. Ah! who shall tell those Oreads all? From fairy Rowan light they leap, And feathered Ash; or, statelier, sweep Great Flanders creatures, slow emerge From Chestnut clumps; while here and there, Slim vestals from the Lime-trees' verge, Fling from their censers to the air, The sweet air swooning unto death, The incense of the Summer's breath. And hark they sing! Like leafage stirred Even such their song: it sinks, it soars, It floats up from the depths beneath, And swelling thence, it seems to voice The pain of it that moves to tears, But wordless all! O, Oreads fair, Oreads of beauty, you who come In vain, in vain! Vainly I cry, That, outlined clear in forms of speech, Flits not, elusive and uncaught, Beyond the bounds of human thought. Vain, vain! Again and yet again, Its one clear message.-Silence fills FRANK T. MARZIALS. |