In time the story of his dismal fate

Was noised abroad through all the country side,
And by his honest life, and even course,

He won kind friends, and genial words from all :
But not her love for which he risked his all.

The course of suns at length brought round the day
On which he first had planned that fatal voyage :
And coming, found him at his daily toil.
And, as upon that distant day, the sun
Pouring on all a flood of living light,

And in the drowsy heavens no single cloud
Casting a shadow on the sleeping sea,

So now the Shepherd sat upon the shore,
Tending for hire another's fleecy flocks:

And as he gazed across the leagues of blue,

He shaped his thoughts in fashion like to this :

O smooth, deceitful sea, thy glassy wave

Is but a reflex of the sky above.

At early morn it shrouds itself in mists,

Towards noon the sun breaks through the serried ranks,

And all is bright throughout the world of God.

But, as the sun goes down, a host of clouds

Dares venture on the face of the blue heaven:

And winds start out, as 'twere from crannied rocks: And forked lightnings join the gathering storm, Like evil spirits tempted to a feast

Unholy and accursed; with them come

Attendant thunders, sounding wild alarms,

And waking with rude mirth the shrouded world:
And on them all comes night, as 'twere a pall
To cover what is ghastly and unclean.

Now as a man, who, trusting in the noon,

Has wandered thoughtlessly o'er hill and dale,
And stopped a hundred times to praise his God,
And all the beauty of His smiling earth,

And all the splendour of His sapphire sky,

Is buried in the sudden raid of storm,

And, when the fierceness of the charge has passed,

Is found a charred, distorted, trampled heap,
So I, allured by thy most winning face,
Have ventured into what I find, too late,

Is storm, and ruin, and despair, and night!

EDWARD GEOFFREY SMITH STANLEY, FOURTEENTH EARL OF DERBY.

OBIIT MDCCCLXIX.

I.

Profound, profound

The sense of loss

That steals over turret, and steeple, and cross:

And falls to the ground,

As the fatal sound

Like the boom of a distant cannonade

Swells farther and farther and farther round,

And tells of a debt that is paid:

And speaks of a voice that is laid

For ever!

II.

Flashed round the coast of the Island he loved,
Flashed through the wire over mountain and plain,
Borne on the breath of the crowd in the street,
Carried by horseman and shrill-screaming train,
Flies abroad the tale of a grief—

Of a grievous loss to his country and Queen,
Of a loss to letters, and science and art,

Of a loss that will make our Christmas dim;
But a gain to him

For ever!

III.

Statesman and Orator! Scholar and Bard!

Strong vital essence, that fought to the last,

True was the soul that has past,

Steady the hand that has fallen.

O champion of an ancient cause,
Unmoved by thunders of applause,