Through the clear stream the fishes rise,
And nimbly catch the incautious flies.
The glow-worms, numerous and bright,
Illumed the dewy dell last night.
At dusk the squalid toad was seen,
Hopping and crawling o'er the green;
The whirling wind the dust obeys,
And in the rapid eddy plays;

The frog has changed his yellow vest,
And in a russet coat is dressed.
Though June, the air is cold and still,
The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill.
My dog, so altered in his taste,

Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast;
And see yon rooks, how odd their flight,
They imitate the gliding kite,
And seem precipitate to fall,
As if they felt the piercing ball.
'Twill surely rain, I see with sorrow,
Our jaunt must be put off to-morrow.

An old song made by an aged old pate,

Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate,
That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,
And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate;
Like an old courtier of the queen's,

And the queen's old courtier.

With an old lady whose anger one word assuages;
They every quarter paid their old servants their wages,

And never knew what belong'd to coachman, footman, nor pages,
But kept twenty old fellows with blue coats and badges;
Like an old courtier of the queen's,

And the queen's old courtier.

With an old study fill'd full of learned old books,

With an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his looks,
With an old buttery hatch worn quite off the hooks,
And an old kitchen, that maintain'd half-a-dozen old cooks;
Like an old courtier of the queen's,

And the queen's old courtier.

With an old hall hung about with pikes, guns, and bows, With old swords, and bucklers, that had borne many shrewd

blows,

And an old frieze coat to cover his worship's trunk hose,
And a cup of old sherry to comfort his copper nose;
Like an old courtier of the queen's,

And the queen's old courtier.

With a good old fashion when Christmas was come
To call in all his old neighbours with bagpipe and drum,
With a good cheer enough to furnish every old room,
And old liquor about to make a cat speak, and man dumb;
Like an old courtier of the queen's,

And the queen's old courtier.

With an old falconer, huntsman, and a kennel of hounds,
That never hawk'd nor hunted but in his own grounds,
Who like a wise man kept himself within his own bounds,
And when he died gave every child a thousand good pounds;
Like an old courtier of the queen's,

And the queen's old courtier.

Old Ballad.

36. THE WINCHESTER ODE.

In the days of our forefathers, the gallant days of old,
When Cressy's wondrous tale in Europe's ears was told;
When the brave and gentle Prince, with his heroic peers,
Met France and all her knighthood in the vineyards of Poictiers;
When captive kings on Edward's state right humbly did attend;
When England's chivalry began the gartered knee to bend;
Then in the foremost place, among the noblest of the land,
Stood Wykeham, the great Bishop, upon the king's right hand.
But when gracious Edward slept, and Richard wore the crown,
Forth came good William Wykeham, and meekly knelt him
down.

Then out spake young king Richard: "What boon can Wykeham ask,

“Which can surpass his worth, or our bounty overtask?

"For art thou not our Chancellor ? and where in all the realm "Is a wiser man or better, to guide the labouring helm? "And thou know'st the holy lore, and the mason's cunning skill: "So speak the word, good Wykeham, for thou shalt have thy will."

"I ask not wealth nor honour," the Bishop lowly said,

"Too much of both thy grandsire's hand heaped on a poor

monk's head:

presses down

my

soul;

“This world is a weary load, it “Fain would I pay my vows, and to Heaven restore the whole. "Grant me that two fair Colleges, beneath thy charters sure, "At Oxford and at Winchester, for ever may endure,

Which Wykeham's hands shall raise upon the grassy sod, "In the name of Blessed Mary, and for the love of God." The king he sealed the charters, and Wykeham traced the plan, And God, who gave him wisdom, prospered the lowly man: So two fair Colleges arose, one in calm Oxford's glade, And one where Itchen sparkles beneath the plane-tree shade.

There seventy true-born English boys be nourished year by year
In the nurture of good learning, and in God's holy fear;
And gave them steadfast laws, and bade them never move
Without sweet signs of brotherhood and gentle links of love.
They grew beside his pastoral throne, and kept his counsels sage,
And the good man rejoiced to bear such fruit in his old age:
He heard the pealing notes of praise, which morn and evening
rung

Forth from their vaulted chapel, by their clear voices sung;
His eye beheld them two by two their comely order keep
Along the Minster's sacred aisles, and up the beech-crowned

steep;

And, when he went to his reward, they shed the pious tear,
And
sang the hallowed requiem over his saintly bier.
Then came the dark and evil time, when English blood was shed
All over fertile England, for the White Rose or the Red;
But still in Wykeham's Chapel the notes of praise were heard,
And still in Wykeham's College they taught the Sacred Word;
And in the grey of morning, on every saint's day still,
That black-gowned troop of brothers was winding up the hill:
There in the hollow trench, which the Danish pirate made,
Or through the broad encampment, the peaceful scholars played.
Trained in such gentle discipline from childhood to their prime
Grew mighty men and merciful, in that distracted time,
Men on whom Wykeham's mantle fell, who stood beside their
king

Even in his place, and bore his staff and the same pastoral ring;
Who taught Heaven-destined monarchs to emulate his deeds
Upon the banks of Cam, and in Eton's flowery meads;
Founders of other Colleges by Cherwell's lilied side,
Who laid their bones with his, when in ripe old age they died.
And after that, when love grew cold, and Christendom was rent
And sinful Churches laid them down in sackcloth to repent;

When impious men bore sway, and wasted church and shrine And cloister and old abbey, the works of men divine;

Though upon all things sacred their robber hands they laid, They did not tear from Wykeham's gates the Blessed MotherMaid:

But still in Wykeham's cloisters fair wisdom did increase, And then his sons began to learn the golden songs of Greece.

And all through great Eliza's reign, those days of pomp and pride,

They kept the laws of Wykeham, and did not swerve aside:
Still in their vaulted Chapel, and in the Minster fair,
And in their lamp-lit chambers, they said the frequent prayer:
And when the Scottish plague-spot ran withering through the
land,

The sons of Wykeham knelt beneath meek Andrewes' fostering hand,

And none of all the faithless, who swore th'unhallowed vow, Drank of the crystal waters beneath the plane-tree bough. Dread was the hour, but short as dread, when from the guarded down

Fierce Cromwell's rebel soldiery kept watch o'er Wykeham's

town:

Beneath their pointed cannon all Itchen's valley lay,

St. Catherine's breezy side, and the woodlands far away,
The huge Cathedral sleeping in venerable gloom,

The modest College-tower, and the bedesmen's Norman home,
They spoiled the graves of valiant men, warrior and saint and

sage,

But at the grave of Wykeham good angels quenched their rage.

Good angels still were there, when the base-hearted son

Of Charles, the royal martyr, his course of shame did run:

Then in those cloisters holy Ken strengthened with deeper

prayer