Their matin sound.

Is it not daylight?

Look up to the blue sky-
And these green boughs

Are fresh and fragrant round thee: every sense
Tells thee it is the cheerful early day.

Orra. Aye, so it is; day takes his daily turns,

Rising between the gulfy dells of night,

Like whiten'd billows on a gloomy sea.

Till glow-worms gleam, and stars peep through the dark,
And will-o'-the wisp his dancing taper light,

They will not come again. [Bending her ear to the ground,
Hark, hark! aye, hark!

They are all there: I hear their hollow sound

Full many a fathom down.

Theo. Be still, poor troubled soul! they'll ne'er return-
They are forever gone. Be well assured

Thou shalt from henceforth have a cheerful home,
With crackling fagots on thy midnight fire,
Blazing like day around thee; and thy friends-
Thy living, loving friends-still by thy side,
To speak to thee and cheer thee. See, my Orra!
They are beside thee now; dost thou not know them?
Orra. No, no! athwart the wavering, garish light,
Things move and seem to be, and yet are nothing.
Elea. My gentle Orra, hast thou then forgot me?
Dost not thou know my voice?

Orra. 'Tis like an old tune to my ear return'd.
For there be those who sit in cheerful halls,

And breathe sweet air, and speak with pleasant sounds;
And once I lived with such; some years gone by,-

I wot not now how long.

Hughobert. Keen words that rend my heart: thou hadst a home,

And one whose faith was pledged for thy protection.

Urston. Be more composed, my lord; some faint remembrance Returns upon her with the well-known sound

Of voices once familiar to her ear.

Let Alice sing to her some favorite tune

That may lost thoughts recall.

[ALICE sings.

Orru. Ha, ha! the witch'd air sings for thee bravely.

Hoot owls through mantling fog for matin birds?
It lures not me.--I know thee well enough:
The bones of murder'd men thy measure beat,
And fleshless heads nod to thee.-Off, I say!
Why are ye here? That is the blessed sun.

Elea. Ah, Orra! do not look upon us thus:
These are the voices of thy loving friends
That speak to thee; this is a friendly hand
That presses thine so kindly.

Hart. Oh, grievous state! what terror seizes thee!
Orra. Take it away! It was the swathed dead;

I know its clammy, chill, and bony touch.
Come not again; I'm strong and terrible now:
Mine eyes have look'd upon all dreadful things;
And when the earth yawns, and the hell-blast sounds,
I'll bide the trooping of unearthly steps,

With stiff, elench'd, terrible strength.

Hugh. A murderer is a guiltless wretch to me.
Hurt. Be patient; 'tis a momentary pitch;
Let me encounter it.

Orra. Take off from me thy strangely fasten'd eye;
I may not look upon thee-yet I must.

Unfix thy baleful glance. Art thou a snake?
Something of horrid power within thee dwells.
Still, still that powerful eye doth suck me in,
Like a dark eddy to its wheeling cōre.

Spare me! oh spare me, Being of strange power,
And at thy feet my subject head I'll lay.

Elea. Alas, the piteous sight! to see her thus,
The noble, generous, playful, stately Orra!

Theo. Out on thy hateful and ungenerous guile! Think'st thou I'll suffer o'er her wretched state The slightest shadow of a base control?

[Raising ORRA from the ground. No; rise, thou stately flower with rude blasts rent: As honor'd art thou with thy broken stem And leaflets strew'd, as in thy summer's pride. I've seen thee worship'd like a regal dame, With every studied form of mark'd devotion,

Whilst I, in distant silence, scarcely proffer'd
Even a plain soldier's courtesy; but now,
No liege man to his crownèd mistress sworn,
Bound and devoted is as I to thee;

And he who offers to thy alter'd state

The slightest seeming of diminish'd reverence,

Must in my blood-[To HARTMAN] Oh pardon me, my friend!

Thou'st wrung my heart.

Hart. Nay, do thou pardon me,-I am to blame:

Thy noble heart shall not again be wrung.

But what can now be done?
There must be some control.

O'er such wild ravings

Theo. O none! none! none! but gentle sympathy,
And watchfulness of love.-My noble Orra!
Wander where'er thou wilt, thy vagrant steps
Shall follow'd be by one who shall not weary,
Nor e'er detach him from his hopeless task;
Bound to thee now as fairest, gentlest beauty
Could ne'er have bound him.

Alice. See how she gazes on him with a look,
Subsiding gradually to softer sadness,

Half saying that she knows him.

Elea. There is a kindness in her changing eye.

BAILLIE.

JOANNA BAILLIE was born in 1762, at Bothwell, in Lanark, Scotland, of which place her father was the parish minister. She removed to London at an early age, and resided in that city, or its neighborhood, almost constantly. Her first volume of dramas, "Plays of the Passions," was published in 1798, her second in 1802, her third in 1812, and her fourth in 1836. A volume of her miscellaneous poems, of which some of the small ones are exceedingly good, appeared in 1841. Her tragedies, though not well adapted to the stage, are fine poems, noble in sentiment, and classical and vigorous in language. SCOTT numbered the description of ORRA's madness with the sublimest scenes ever written, and compared the language to SHAKSPEARE'S. Miss BAILLIE died at Hampstead in February, 1841.

1.

194. SATAN'S ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH.

BLACK it stood as night,

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart: what seem'd his head,

The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

Satan was now at hand; and from his seat

The morster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides: hell trembled as he strode.
The undaunted fiend what this might be admired—
Admired, not fear'd: God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valued he, nor shunn'd;
And with disdainful look thus first began:-

2. "Whence, and what art thou, execrable shape!
That darest, though grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated front athwart my way

To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass,
That be assured, without leave ask'd of thee:
Retire, or taste thy folly; and learn by proof,
Hellborn! not to contend with spirits of heaven!"
3. To whom the goblin, full of wrath replied :—
"Art thou that traitor ängel, art thou he,
Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith, till then
Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms

Drew after him the third part of heaven's sons,
Conjured against the Highest; for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemn'd
To waste eternal days in woe and pain?
And reckon'st thou thyself with spirits of heaven,
Hell-doom'd! and breathest defiance here and scorn,
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord! Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive! and to thy speed add wings;
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before."

4. So spake the grisly terror; and in shape,
So speaking, and so threatening, grew ten-fold
More dreadful and deform: on the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burn'd,

That fires the length of Ophiuchus' huge

Ophiuchus (of e 'kus), the Serpent-bearer; a cluster of fixed stars, whose center is nearly over the eq iator, opposite to Orion.

S

5.

In the Arctic sky, and from his hõrrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.

Each at the head

Level'd his deadly aim; their fatal hands

No second stroke intend; and such a frown
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds,
With heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian; then stand front to front
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid air:
So frown'd the mighty com'batants, that hell
Grew darker at their frown; so match'd they stood,
For never but once more was either like

To meet so great a Foe: and now great deeds
Had been achieved, whereof all hell had rung,
Had not the snaky sorceress that sat

Fast by hell-gate and kept the fatal key,

Risen, and with hideous outery rush'd between.

195. MURDER OF KING DUNCAN.

MACBETH.

MILTON

Is this a dagger which I see before me, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind; a false creütion,
Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fool o' th' other senses,
Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still;
And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood,

Prompted by ambition, and urged on by his wife, MACBETH resolves

to murder the king, then his guest, and seize the crown.