"This other Eden"

HIS royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world's ransom, blessèd Mary's Son.

Shakespeare.

Letty's Globe

HEN Letty had scarce passed her third glad

W

year,

And her young, artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a coloured sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and
know,

By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peeped
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped

And laughed, and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turned her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry—
“Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!"
And, while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

C. Tennyson-Turner.

"I travelled among unknown men

TRAVELLED among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;

Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore

A second time; for still I seem

To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel

The joy of my desire;

And she I cherished turned her wheel

Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed

The bowers where Lucy played;

And thine too is the last green field

That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

Wordsworth.

W

Youth and Age

HEN all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad,

And round the world away;

Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,

And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,

And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among;

God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.

Charles Kingsley.

From "The Lay of the Last
Minstrel "

B

REATHES there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand!—
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band,

That knits me to thy rugged strand!
Still, as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what has been,

Seems as, to me, of all bereft,

Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still,

Even in extremity of ill.

By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my withered cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot Stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The Bard may draw his parting groan.

TILL on the spot Lord Marmion stayed,
For fairer scene he ne'er surveyed.
When sated with the martial show
That peopled all the plain below,
The wandering eye could o'er it go,

And mark the distant city glow
With gloomy splendour red;

For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,

The morning beams were shed,
And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge Castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,

Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town!
But northward far, with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
And as each heathy top they kissed,
It gleamed a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
Here Preston Bay and Berwick-Law:
And, broad between them rolled,
The gallant Frith the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float,
Like emeralds chased in gold.
Fitz-Eustace' heart felt closely pent;
As if to give his rapture vent,
The spur he to his charger lent,
And raised his bridle hand,
And, making demi-volte in air,

Cried, "Where's the coward that would not dare To fight for such a land!"

Sir Walter Scott.