and flat;

Nor care to sit beside her where she sits

Ah pity-hint it not in human tones, But breathe it into earth and close it up With secret death for ever, in the pits Which some green Christmas crams with weary bones.

VII.

XII.

Tis'n them as 'as munny as breaks into 'ouses an' steals,

Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taäkes their regular meals.

nowt when 'e's dead,

Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and addle * her bread :

Why? fur 'e's nobbut a curate, an' weänt nivir git naw 'igher;

An' 'e maade the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e coom'd to the shire.

a meal's to be 'ad.

[This poem is founded upon a story in Boccaccio. A young lover, Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister,

Camilla, has been wedded to his friend and rival, Lionel, endeavors to narrate the story of his own love for her and the strange sequel of it. He speaks of having been haunted in delirium by visions and the sound of bells, sometimes tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he ap

proaches the Event, and a witness to it completes the

HE flies the event: he leaves the event

to me:

Poor Julian - how he rush'd away; the bells,

Those marriage-bells, echoing in ear and heart

Can chill you all at once": then starting, thought

His dreams had come again. "Do I wake or sleep?

Or am I made immortal, or my love Mortal once more?" It beat -the heart -it beat :

Faint but it beat: at which his own began

To pulse with such a vehemence that it drown'd

The feebler motion underneath his hand. But when at last his doubts were satisfied, He raised her softly from the sepulchre, And, wrapping her all over with the cloak

Not know? with such a secret to be known.

them both,

And all the house had known the loves of both;

There the good mother's kindly min

istering,

With half a night's appliances, recall'd Her fluttering life: she rais'd an eye that ask'd

"Where?" till the things familiar to her youth

Had made a silent answer: then she spoke, "Here! and how came I here?" and learning it

(They told her somewhat rashly as I think) At once began to wander and to wail, "Ay, but you know that you must give me back:

Send! bid him come"; but Lionel was away

Stung by his loss had vanish'd, none knew where.

"He casts me out," she wept, “and goes" a wail

That seeming something, yet was nothing, born

Net from believing mind, but shatter'd nerve,

Yet haunting Julian, as her own reproof
At some precipitance in her burial.
Then, when her own true spirit had re-
turn'd,

"O yes, and you," she said, "and none

but you. For you have given me life and love again, And none but you yourself shall tell him of it,

And you shall give me back when he returns."

Had died almost to serve them any way, And all the land was waste and solitary : And then he rode away; but after this, An hour or two, Camilla's travail came Upon her, and that day a boy was born, Heir of his face and land, to Lionel.

And thus our lonely lover rode away, And pausing at a hostel in a marsh, There fever seized upon him: myself was then

Travelling that land, and meant to rest an hour;

And sitting down to such a base repast,
It makes me angry yet to speak of it
I heard a groaning overhead, and climb'd
The moulder'd stairs (for everything was
vile)

And in a loft, with none to wait on him,
Found, as it seem'd, a skeleton alone,
Raving of dead men's dust and beating
hearts.