They told him e'en the mighty deep
His kingly sway confessed;
That he could bid its billows leap
Or still its stormy breast!

He smiled contemptuously, and cried,
"Be then my boasted empire tried !"

Down to the ocean's sounding shore
The proud precession came,
To see its billows' wild uproar

King Canute's power proclaim;
Or, at his high and dread command,
In gentle murmurs kiss the strand.

Not so, thought he, their noble king,
As his course he seaward sped ;-
And each base slave like a guilty thing,
Hung down his conscious head;

He knew the ocean's Lord on high! They, that he scorned their senseless lie.

His throne was placed by ocean's side, He lifted his sceptre there;

Bidding, with tones of kingly pride,

The waves their strife forbear :---

And, while he spoke his royal will,
All but the winds and waves were still.

Louder the stormy blast swept by,
In scorn of his idle word;

The briny deep its waves tossed high,
By his mandate undeterred,
As threatening, in their angry play,
To sweep both king and court away.

The monarch with upbraiding look,
Turned to the courtly ring;

But none, the kindling eye could brook
Even of his earthly king;

For in that wrathful glance they see
A mightier monarch wronged than he !

Canute thy regal race is run;
Thy name had passed away,
But for the meed this tale hath won
Which never shall decay:

Its meek, unperishing renown,
Outlasts thy sceptre and thy crown.

The Persian, in his mighty pride,
Forged fetters for the main ;
And when its floods his power defied,
Inflicted stripes as vain ;-

But it was worthier far of thee

To know thyself, than rule the sea!

BERNARD BARTON.

THE CURFEW-SONG OF ENGLAND.

HARK! from the dim church tower,
The deep slow curfew's chime!
A heavy sound unto hall and bower
In England's olden time!

Sadly 'twas heard by him who came

From the fields of his toil at night,

And who might not see his own hearth-flame

In his children's eyes make light

Sternly and sadly heard,

As it quench'd the wood-fires glow,

Which had cheer'd the board with the mirthful word,

And the red wine's foaming flow!

Until that sullen boding knell
Flung out from every fane,
On harp, and lip, and spirit, fell,
With a weight and with a chain.

Woe for the pilgrim then,

In the wild deer's forest far!

No cottage lamp, to the haunts of men

Might guide him, as a star.

And woe for him whose wakeful soul,

With lone aspirings fill'd,

Would have lived o'er some immortal scroll,

While the sounds of earth were still'd !

And yet a deeper woe

For the watcher by the bed,

Where the fondly loved in pain lay low,
In pain and sleepless dread!