THE BURIAL OF AN INFANT. BY HENRY VAUGHAN. [HENRY VAUGHAN, "the Silurist" (ie., South Welshman), English poet and mystic, was born in Skethiog, Wales, in 1621. He graduated at Jesus College, Oxford, studied and was in literary society in London, and published a volume of poems in 1646. Taking a medical course, he settled as a physician in his native town. His works thenceforth were: "Silex Scintillans" (sacred poems), 1650 and 1655; "Olor Iscanus" (secular), 1651; "The Mount of Olives" (prose, mystical), 1652; and translations. In 1678 a friend collected his miscel laneous poems as "Thalia Rediviva." He died in 1693.] BLEST infant bud, whose blossom life Did only look about, and fall Sweetly didst thou expire: thy soul Softly rest all thy virgin crumbs Lapt in the sweets of thy young breath, To dress them, and unswaddle death! THE BIRD. BY HENRY VAUGHAN. HITHER thou com'st. The busy wind all night And harmless head; And now as fresh and cheerful as the light THE DEATH OF RADZIVILL. BY HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ. (From "The Deluge."1) (HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ, the foremost living Polish novelist, was born of Lithuanian parents at Vola Okrzejska in the Lukowschen, in 1846. After pursuing his studies at the University of Warsaw, he adopted a wandering existence, and in 1876 proceeded to America, where he spent considerable time in southern California, and wrote for the Warsaw papers numerous stories and impressions of travel. He subsequently returned to Poland and took up literature as a profession. Nearly all of his works have been translated into English, and enjoy great popularity in the United States and England. The most important are: "Children of the Soil"; "With Fire and Sword," "The Deluge," and "Pan Michael, forming a trilogy of historical novels; "Quo Vadis," a tale of the time of Nero; "Yanko the Musician"; "Without Dogma"; "Hania."] THE others marched toward the castle in darkness and wind, which rose from the north and blew with increasing force, howling, storming, bringing with it clouds of snow broken fine. "A good night to explode a petard!" said Volodyovski. "But also for a sortie," answered Pan Yan. "We must keep a watchful eye and ready muskets." 66 "God grant," said Pan Tokarzevich, "that at Chenstohova there is a still greater storm. It is always warmer for our men behind the walls. But may the Swedes freeze there on guard, may they freeze ! " "A terrible night!" said Pan Stanislav; "do you hear, gentlemen, how it howls, as if Tartars were rushing through the air to attack?" "Or as if devils were singing a requiem for Radzivill!" said Volodyovski. But a few days subsequent the great traitor in le castle was looking at the darkness coming down on the snowy shrouds and listening to the howling of the wind. The lamp of his life was burning out slowly. At noon of that day he was still walking around and looking through the battlements, at the tents and the wooden huts of Sapyeha's troops; but two hours later he grew so ill that they had to carry him to his chambers. From those times at Kyedani in which he had striven for a crown, he had changed beyond recognition. The hair on his head had grown white, around his eyes red rings had formed, 1 Copyright, 1891, by Little, Brown & Co. his face was swollen and flabby, therefore it seemed still more enormous, but it was the face of a half corpse, marked with blue spots and terrible through its expression of hellish suffering. And still, though his life could be measured by hours, he had lived too long, for not only had he outlived faith in himself and his fortunate star, faith in his own hopes and plans, but his fall was so deep that when he looked at the bottom of that precipice to which he was rolling, he would not believe himself. Everything had deceived him : events, calculations, allies. He, for whom it was not enough to be the mightiest lord in Poland, a prince of the Roman Empire, grand hetman, and voevoda of Vilna; he, for whom all Lithuania was less than what he desired and was lusting after, was confined in one narrow, small castle in which either Death or Captivity was waiting for him. And he watched the door every day to see which of these two terrible goddesses would enter first to take his soul or his more than half-ruined body. Of his lands, of his estates and starostaships, it was possible not long before to mark out a vassal kingdom; now he is not master even of the walls of Tykotsin. Barely a few months before he was treating with neighboring kings; to-day one Swedish captain obeys his commands with impatience and contempt, and dares to bend him to his will. When his troops left him, when from a lord and a magnate who made the whole country tremble, he became a powerless pauper who needed rescue and assistance himself, Karl Gustav despised him. He would have raised to the skies a mighty ally, but he turned with haughtiness from the suppli cant. Like Kostka Napyerski, the footpad, besieged on a time in Chorshtyn, is he, Radzivill, besieged now in Tykotsin. And who is besieging him? Sapyeha, his greatest personal enemy. When they capture him they will drag him to justice in worse fashion than a robber, as a traitor. His kinsmen have deserted him, his friends, his connections. Armies have plundered his property, his treasures and riches are blown into mist, and that lord, that prince, who once upon a time astonished the court of France and dazzled it with his luxury, he who at feasts received thousands of nobles, who maintained tens of thousands of his own troops, whom he fed and supported, had not now wherewith to nourish his own failing strength; and terrible to relate, he, Radzivill, in the last moments of his life, almost at the hour of his death, was hungry! In the castle there had long been a lack of provisions; from the scant remaining supplies the Swedish commander dealt stingy rations, and the prince would not beg of him. If only the fever which was devouring his strength had deprived him of consciousness; but it had not. His breast rose with increasing heaviness, his breath turned into a rattle, his swollen feet and hands were freezing, but his mind, omitting moments of delirium, omitting the terrible visions and nightmares which passed before his eyes, remained for the greater part of the time clear. And that prince saw his whole fall, all his want, all his misery and humiliation; that former warrior victor saw all his defeat, and his sufferings were so immense that they could be equaled only by his sins. Besides, as the Furies tormented Orestes, so was he tormented by reproaches of conscience, and in no part of the world was there a sanctuary to which he could flee from them. They tormented him in the day, they tormented him at night, in the field, under the roof; pride could not withstand them nor repulse them. The deeper his fall, the more fiercely they lashed him. And there were moments in which he tore his own breast. When enemies came against his country from every side, when foreign nations grieved over its hapless condition, its sufferings and bloodshed, he, the grand hetman, instead of moving to the field, instead of sacrificing the last drop of his blood, instead of astonishing the world like Leonidas or Themistocles, instead of pawning his last coat like Sapyeha, made a treaty with enemies against the mother, raised a sacrilegious hand against his own king, and imbrued it in blood near and dear to him. He had done all this, and now he is at the limit not only of infamy, but of life, close to his reckoning, there beyond. What is awaiting him? The hair rose on his head when he thought of that. For he had raised his hand against his country, he had appeared to himself great in relation to that country, and now all had changed. Now he had become small, and the Commonwealth, rising from dust and blood, appeared to him something great and continually greater, invested with a mysterious terror, full of a sacred majesty, awful. And she grew, increased continually in his eyes, and became more and more gigantic. In presence of her he felt himself dust as prince and as hetman, as Radzivill. He could not understand what that was. Some unknown waves were rising around him, flowing toward him, with roaring, with thunder, flowing ever nearer, rising more terribly, and he understood that he must be drowned in that immensity, hundreds such as he would be drowned. But why had he not seen this awfulness and this mysterious power at first; why had he, madman, rushed against it? When these ideas roared in his head, fear seized him in presence of that mother, in presence of that Commonwealth; for he did not recognize her features, which formerly were so kind and so mild. The spirit was breaking within him, and terror dwelt in his breast. At moments he thought that another country altogether, another people, were around him. Through the besieged walls came news of everything that men were doing in the invaded Commonwealth, and marvelous and astonishing things were they doing. A war of life or death against the Swedes and traitors had begun, all the more terrible in that it had not been foreseen by any man. The Commonwealth had begun to punish. There was something in this of the anger of God for the insult to majesty. When through the walls of Tykotsin came news of the siege of Chenstohova, Radzivill, a Calvinist, was frightened; and fright did not leave his soul from that day, for then he perceived for the first time those mysterious waves which, after they had risen, were to swallow the Swedes and him; then the invasion of the Swedes seemed not an invasion, but a sacrilege, and the punishment of it inevitable. Then for the first time the veil dropped from his eyes, and he saw the changed face of the Commonwealth, no longer a mother, but a punishing queen. All who had remained true to her and served with heart and soul rose and grew greater and greater; whoso sinned against her went down. "And therefore it is not free to any one to think," said the prince to himself, "of his own elevation, or that of his family, but he must sacrifice life, strength, and love to her." But for him it was now too late; he had nothing to sacrifice; he had no future before him save that beyond the grave, at sight of which he shuddered. From the time of besieging Chenstohova, when one terrible |