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"No, no!" cried the crowd of his varlets,
Waving with velvet and gold,

All shaking their colours and ribbons,
And tossing their banner's fringed fold.
To heighten the insolent clamour,

The drummers, beginning to beat,

Bid the trumpets sound quick for the mounting-
Never sound to my ear was so sweet.

For the varlets were flocking round Richard,
To hurry him down from his seat;
I saw him look fierce at the rabble,
Disdaining to back or retreat.

That moment the drums and the trumpets
Made all the proud ears of them ring,
As slowly, his cheek flushed with anger,
Rode into the tilt-yard the king.

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Dick lifted his eyes up and smil'd,

Oh! it brought the blood hot to my cheek;
I could see from his lips he was praying
That God would look down on the weak.

He seemed to be grown to his saddle,
I felt my brain tremble and reel,
He moved like a fire-ruling spirit,
Blazing from helmet to heel.

The king gave the sign, and the trumpet
Seemed to madden the horses, and drive

Them fast as the leaves in a tempest,

With a shock the tough iron would rive.
Both lances flew up, and the shivers
Leapt over the banners and flags,
As the champions, reining their chargers,
Sat holding the quivering jags,

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Soon, slowly through the dusky gate,
To the light that lay beyond,
Trod all the dusty pilgrims,

Happy as men from bond;
Pointing out tower and steeple

To the boys with the palmi-leaf crown, Chanting the songs of Zion,

To welcome the stately town.

The old men, tired and travel-worn,
Were telling tales of home;
Prating of many dangers past,
Of desert or sea-foam.

They sang one hymn together,
Though a few looked sadly down,
The rest with glad flushed faces
Entered the stately town.

In the dark midnights of winter,
Oft came, with bloody plume,
With dinted helm and bleeding horse,
The trooper and the groom;
Red-hot from rout and rally,

"Once they were stricken down,”Spurring, with wild and staring eyes, Into the stately town.

In the merry April mornings,
The laughing players come;
One blows a pipe and capers,
Another beats a drum:
One bawls out strings of ballads,
And a boy in a woman's gown
Screams scraps of "dying Juliet,”
As they enter the stately town.

With a blaze of cloak and feather,
Of fluttering cloth of gold,
Through the dull white fogs of autumn,
With crimson wreath and fold,

Rode knights unto the tournay,

Trampling over the down,

Grand as a cloud of summer,
Into the stately town.

Driven before the pikemen,
Half naked, pale, aghast,
Flying like leaves of autumn
Before the chasing blast,
Now hurry bleeding burghers,

Their gashed heads bending down,
Urged on with shouts and curses,
Fast from the stately town.

In the dreadful year of famine,
When black Death moved about,
Three livid, maddened creatures,
With groans and a shrieking shout,
Ran naked through the gateway,
Their shorn heads bandaged down,
From the red-crossed door left open,
To scare the stately town.

When bells shook every steeple,

And flags deck'd every roof;
"Bess" on a milk-white palfrey,
Trapped with a purple woof,
Smiled, as the pursy alderman,
With the massy keys knelt down;
Then through a flame of cannon
Swept into the stately town.

In a balmy noon of summer,
With clash and shock of drums,
'Midst roar of guns and waving flags,
Hoarse shouts and rabble hums,
The iron Cromwell entered,

His stern eyes looking down,
Not heeding all the pomp and wealth
That filled the stately town.

THE JESTER'S SERMON.

THE Jester shook his hood and bells, and leaped upon a chair,
The pages laughed, the women screamed, and tossed their scented hair;
The falcon whistled, stag-hounds bayed, the lap-dog barked without,
The scullion dropped the pitcher-brown, the cook railed at the lout;
The steward, counting out his gold, let pouch and money fall,
And why? because the Jester rose to say grace in the hall !

The page played with the heron's plume, the steward with his chain,
The butler drummed upon the board, and laughed with might and main;
The grooms beat on their metal cans, and roared till they turned red,
But still the Jester shut his eyes, and rolled his witty head;
And when they grew a little still, read half a yard of text,

And waving hand, he struck the desk, and frowned like one perplexed.

"Dear sinners all," the fool began, "man's life is but a jest,
A dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapour at the best.
In a thousand pounds of law I find not a single ounce of love:
A blind man killed the parson's cow in shooting at the dove;
The fool that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well;
The wooer who can flatter most will bear away the bell.

Let no man haloo he is safe till he is through the wood;
He who will not when he may, must tarry when he should.
He who laughs at crooked men should need walk very straight;
And he who once has won a name may lie a-bed till eight.
Make haste to purchase house and land, be very slow to wed;
True coral needs no painter's brush, nor need be daubed with red.

The friar, preaching, cursed the thief (the pudding in his sleeve).
To fish for sprats with golden hooks is foolish, by your leave-
To travel well-an ass's ears, ape's face, hog's mouth and ostrich legs.
He does not care a pin for thieves who limps about and begs.
Be always first man at a feast and last man at a fray;
The short way round in spite of all is still the longest way.

When the hungry curate licks the knife there's not much for the clerk When the pilot, turning pale and sick, looks up the storm grows dark.” Then loud they laughed, the fat cook's tears ran down into the pan; The steward shook, that he was forced to drop the brimming can; And then again the women screamed, and every stag-hound bayed-And why? because the motley fool so wise a sermon made!

EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.*

"OH" exclaims the reader, "this is an antiquarian article; we need not cut the leaves; we have enough to do in this nineteenth century to read the leading article in the Times; or, if we want poetry, there are Tennyson and Longfellow, without digging up the mouldering crudities of the reign of Edward III. We have no sympathy with the plodding Dryasdust, the laudator temporis acti, who values a coin not for its intrinsic worth, but for the rust with which it is overlaid." By your leave, gentle reader, you mistake us altogether. We are not Dryasdust; we have as little sympathy as you with the mere antiquary; we never quarrel with a Victoria sovereign fresh from the mint; but if we happen to meet with a Rose Noble of the reign of Edward III., the quaintness of the image and superscription does not prevent us from recognizing the ring of the sterling metal upon which they are stamped. If you never get beyond the large type in the Times, or Tennyson's last, we cannot expect to enlist your sympathies in the poetry of a century ago; even Dryden must be a sealed book to you. But if you have at all profited by the instruction in the true principles of taste which we have been ever careful to provide for your improvement, you will introduce yourself to, and cultivate the closest intimacy with, genial, joyous, humorous, tender, old Geoffrey Chaucer.

It was in the days of our undergraduateship that we first became acquainted with him. We had made our escape for the vacation, from those long stories that Euclid tells about triangles and rhomboids, when, in the library of a country house, where we were on a visit, we happened to meet with Speght's black-lettered edition of 1604. The quaint wood-cut on the title-page, in which a knight is represented charging against the walls of a castle among lilies as high as the battlements, arrested our attention. We read a few lines of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, saying to ourself, "I wonder what strange stuff

is this!" But it ended in our reading the folio through, in spite of all the difficulties of black-letter, corrupt text, and incorrect punctuation. And ever since that time, when a winter evening hangs heavily on our hands; or when the still, sultry air of a summer's day invites to sit under the old medlartree on the grass-plot before our study window; when the air is loaded with the perfume of the bean-fields, and the joyous laugh of the troop of peasant-girls who are weeding in the wheat comes mellowed by the distance; or the harvest-horn is heard dismissing the reapers from their toil, we take down the old volume, and dream over the sweet pictures of English country-life and home-scenery-the stately dances of knights and ladies, or the gorgeous pageants and banquets of feudal magnificence, which the enchanter raises before our imagination with such life-like reality. Don't call us Dryasdust for loving old Geoffrey. It is because his pictures are so fresh-it is because the men and women who move before us on his page are the very men and women whom we have seen in the flesh in this year of our Lord, 1856— whom we travel with in the rail-road carriage-whom we sit under at the proprietary chapel, or sit beside at the market-ordinary of the country town to which we resort on a Saturday-who do our little law-business for us in Westminster-hall, or act the lady-bountiful in our parish, that they never fail to secure our attention and command our sympathy, whether their mood be humourous or pathetic.

There is a healthy and genial tone about Chaucer's poetry and philosophy which disposes us to be pleased with the world in which we live ; and we are inclined to think that in this he caught the real aspect of nature. Discontent and misanthropy are the offspring of over-civilization. Chaucer always prefers the sunny side of nature. He delights in May mornings, gazes with rapture on the sloping lawns, the stately oaks, the daisy spreading its petals to the sun, the

Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited by Robert Bell. 8 vols. foolscap octavo. J. W. Parker and Son: London, 1854-5.

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