Rich spectral beasts that feared to stir,
And haughty and wistful gazed on her,
And swayed their sleepy masks in time
And growled a drowsy under-rhyme.
Tune done, that agile fancy stopped;
The lingering notes in mid-air dropped;
The flute stole from her parted kiss,
Her cheeks for sorcery burned with bliss.
Then grew a deadly muttering there;
And sudden yellow eyes aglare
Blazed furious over wrinkled lips
And teeth on her. Her finger-tips
Trembled a little as they woke
The second tune beneath the oak,
A lilt that charmed and lulled to mute
The uneasy soul within the brute.
And all that warbling ecstasy
Was winged with terror, and daintily
Ceased on the wild and tragic face
And desperate huddle of her grace:
For with the hush began to gride
Their sullen, soulless, evil-eyed,
Intolerable rage, blown hot
Upon her. The third tune was caught
With trouble from unuttered air:
And still as autumn they sat there.

The breathless seventh tune died out
Like withered laughter: all about
The frantic silence ran a race:
She stirred, she moaned, she crawled a space.
There leaped a vast and thunderous roar :
A huge heart-shaking tumult tore
About the oak. Filing away,
They trod the stained flute where it lay.

Joseph Russell Taylor.

ON A LUTE FOUND IN A

SARCOPHAGUS

What curled and scented sun-girls, almond

eyed, With lotos-blossoms in their hands and hair, Have made their swarthy lovers call them fair, With these spent strings, when brutes were

deified, And Memnon in the sunrise sprang and cried, And love-winds smote Bubastis, and the bare Black breasts of carven Pasht received the

prayer Of suppliants bearing gifts from far and wide! This lute has out-sung Egypt; all the lives Of violent passion, and the vast calm art

That lasts in granite only, all lie dead;
This little bird of song alone survives,
As fresh as when its fluting smote the heart
Last time the brown slave wore it garlanded.

Edmimd Gosse.

THE MUSICAL DUEL

(From "The Lover's Melancholy ")

Menaphon. Passing from Italy to Greece,

the tales Which poets of an elder time have feigned To glorify their Tempe, bred in me Desire of visiting that paradise. To Thessaly I came; and, living private, Without acquaintance of more sweet compan

ions Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts, I day by day frequented silent groves And solitary walks. One morning early This accident encountered me: I heard The sweetest and most ravishing contention That art and nature ever were at strife in. Amethus. I cannot yet conceive what you

infer By art and nature.

Men.
.

I shall soon resolve you.
A sound of music touched mine ears, or rather,
Indeed, entranced my soul. As I stole nearer,
Invited by the melancholy, I saw
This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his

lute,
With strains of strange variety and harmony,
Proclaiming, as it seemed, so bold a challenge
To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds,
That, as they flocked about him, all stood

silent,
Wondering at what they heard. I wondered

too.
Am. And so do I; good! - On!
Men.

A nightingale,
Nature's best-skilled musician, undertakes
The challenge, and, for every several strain
The well-shaped youth could touch, she sang

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her own;

He could not run division with more art
Upon his quaking instrument than she,
The nightingale, did with her various notes
Reply to; for a voice, and for a sound,
Amethus, 'tis much easier to believe
That such they were than hope to hear again.

Am. How did the rivals part?
Men.

You term them rightly ;

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