VIII.

"A quinsy choke thy cursed note!" Then waxed her anger stronger. "Go, take the goose, and wring her throat, I will not bear it longer."

IX.

Then yelped the cur, and yawled the cat;
Ran Gaffer, stumbled Gammer.

The goose flew this way and flew that,
And filled the house with clamor.

X.

As head and heels upon the floor
They floundered all together,
There strode a stranger to the door,

And it was windy weather:

XI.

his

arm,

He took the goose upon

He uttered words of scorning;

"So keep you cold, or keep you warm,

It is a stormy morning."

XII.

The wild wind rang from park and plain,

And round the attics rumbled,

Till all the tables danced again,

And half the chimneys tumbled.

XIII.

The glass blew in, the fire blew out,
The blast was hard and harder.

Her

cap blew off, her gown blew up,

And a whirlwind cleared the larder;

XIV.

And while on all sides breaking loose Her household fled the danger, Quoth she, "The Devil take the goose, And God forget the stranger!"

THE EPIC.

AT Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve,

The

of forfeits done · game the girls all kissed Beneath the sacred bush and past away The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall, The host and I, sat round the wassail-bowl, Then half-way ebbed: and there we held a talk, How all the old honor had from Christmas gone,

Or
gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bumped the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard

The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissioners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith

Right through the world—" at home was little left,
And none abroad: there was no anchor, none,
To hold by." Francis, laughing, clapt his hand
On Everard's shoulder, with "I hold by him."
"And I," quoth Everard, "by the wassail-bowl.”

66

Why yes," I said, "we knew your gift that way At college but another which you had,

I mean of verse, (for so we held it then,)

What came of that?" "You know," said Frank, "he hung His epic of King Arthur in the fire!"

And then to me demanding why? "O, sir,

He thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said 't was nothing — that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day:
God knows he has a mint of reasons: ask.
It pleased me well enough." "Nay, nay," said Hall,
Why take the style of those heroic times?
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? these twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing worth,
Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt."
Said Francis, "picked the eleventh from this hearth,
And have it keep a thing, its use will come.

I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes."

“ But I,”

He laughed, and I, though sleepy, like a horse
That hears the corn-bin open, pricked my ears;
For I remembered Everard's college fame
When we were Freshmen: then at my request
He brought it; and the poet, little urged,
But with some prelude of disparagement,
Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,
Deep-chested music, and to this result.

MORTE D'ARTHUR.

So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,

Had fallen in Lyonness about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,

Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,

A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.