The damsel clung to her mother's knee,
And dared not let the shriek go free ;
Low she crouched by the lady's chair,
And shrank blindfold in her fallen hair,
And whispering said, The spears are there!"
The lady stooped aghast from her place,
And cleared the locks from her daughter's face.
"More's to see, and she swoons, alas!
Look, look again, ere the moment pass!
One shadow comes but once to the glass.
"See you there what you saw but now?"
"I see eight men 'neath the willow-bough.
All over the weir a wild growth 's spread :
Ah me! it will hide a living head
As well as the water hides the dead.

They lie by the broken water-gate
As men who have a while to wait.

The chief's high lance has a blazoned scroll,
He seems some lord of tithe and toll
With seven squires to his bannerole.
"The little pennon quakes in the air,
I cannot trace the blazon there :-
Ah! now I can see the field of blue,
The spurs and the merlins two and two ;-
It is the Warden of Holycleugh !"

"God be thanked for the thing we know ! You have named your good knight's mortal foe. Last Shrovetide in the tourney-game

Ay, child, your road is o'er moor and moss, Past Holycleugh to Holy Cross.

Our hunters lurk in the valley's wake,

As they knew which way the chase would take :
Yet search the hills for your true love's sake."

"Swift and swifter the waste runs by,
And nought I see but the heath and the sky;
No brake is there that could hide a spear,
And the gaps to a horseman's sight lie clear
Still past it goes, and there's nought to fear."

"Fear no trap that you cannot see,-
They'd not lurk yet too warily.
Below by the weir they lie in sight,
And take no heed how they pass the night
Till close they crouch with the morning light."

"The road shifts ever and brings in view
Now first the heights of Holycleugh:
Dark they stand o'er the vale below,
And hide that heaven which yet shall show
The thing their master's heart doth know.

"Where the road looks to the castle steep,
There are seven hill-clefts wide and deep:
Six mine eyes can search as they list,
But the seventh hollow is brimmed with mist;
If aught were there, it might not be wist."

"Small hope, my girl, for a helm to hide
In mists that cling to a wild moorside:
Soon they melt with the wind and sun,
And scarce would wait such deeds to be done.
God send their snares be the worst to shun."
"Still the road winds ever anew
As it hastens on towards Holycleugh;
And ever the great walls loom more near,
Till the castle-shadow, steep and sheer,
Drifts like a cloud, and the sky is clear."
Rose Mary's great effort was now over.
It had been ascertained that, supposing
her to have read aright, the ambush was
by the road along the river, and not by
the road over the hills. Her lover
must, therefore, be induced to go to
Holy Cross over the hills past Holy-
cleugh. Yet as the mother wrapped the
magic stone in her robe again, some-
thing happened which disturbed her,
though she could not explain it :

As the globe slid to its silken gloom,
Once more a music rained through the room;
Low it splashed like a sweet star-spray,
And sobbed like tears at the heart of May,
And died as laughter dies away.

The lady held her breath for a space,
And then she looked in her daughter's face :
But wan Rose Mary had never heard ;
Deep asleep like a sheltered bird
She lay with the long spell minister'd.
Knowing well that the spirits of the
Beryl had the power of sealing sinful
eyes, and also of deceiving them by
showing the truth by contraries, the
lady was appalled by this laughter, and,
after she had left Rose Mary alone, she
read over once more the well-remem-
bered verse engraved upon the Beryl's
surface:

She breathed the words in an undertone :—

44 And oh!" she said,

"None sees here but the e pure alone." what rose may be In Mary's bower more pure to see Than my own sweet maiden Rose Mary ?" She could not doubt that her daughter was still an innocent child, as when she used to compel by force of her innocency the spirits of the Beryl to speak truth; and yet if Rose Mary were innocent no longer, and had, consequently, been deceived by the spirits of the Beryl, the mother knew that a terrible tragedy was at hand. There is, perhaps, no more striking and pathetic sit

uation in romantic poetry; but to do justice to the imaginative power with which the sequel is rendered would be impossible within our limits, and we can only refer the reader to the book.

The subject of "The King's Tragedy" is the murder, on the 20th of February, 1437, of James I. of Scots. Possibly it is the greatest historical ballad in the language. Here, again, very much of the success is due to Mr. Rossetti's ex

traordinary mastery over the supernatural, though no doubt the simply human interest of the poem is almost as strong as poetry, to be pleasurable, can bear. The story is told by Catherine Douglas, who, in honor of the heroic courage with which she barred the door with her arm against the murderers, received (according to tradition) the popular name of Barlass, which name remains to her descendants, the Barlas family, in Scotland, who bear for their crest a broken arm. She married Alexander Lovell of Bolunnie.

That eve was clenched for a boding storm,
'Neath a toilsome moon half seen;
The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
And where there was a line of the sky,

Wild wings loomed dark between.

And on a rock of the black beach-side,
By the veiled moon dimly lit,
There was something seemed to heave with life
As the King drew nigh to it.

And was it only the tossing furze
Or brake of the waste sea-wold?
Or was it an eagle bent to the blast?
When near we came we knew it at last
For a woman tattered and old.

But it seemed as though by a fire within
Her writhen limbs were wrung;
And as soon as the King was close to her,
She stood up gaunt and strong.

'Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack

On high in her hollow dome;

And still as aloft with hoary crest
Each clamorous wave rang home,

Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed
Amid the champing foam.

And the woman held his eyes with her eyes :"O King, thou art come at last;

But thy wraith has haunted the Scotish Sea To my sight for four years past. "Four years it is since first I met, 'Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu, A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud, And that shape for thine I knew. "" A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle, I saw thee pass in the breeze, With the cerecloth risen above thy feet And wound about thy knees.

"And yet a year, in the Links of Forth, As a wanderer without rest,

Thou cam'st with both thine arms i' the shroud That clung high up thy breast.

"And in this hour I find thee here, And well mine eyes may note

That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast And risen around thy throat.

And when I meet thee again, O' King, That of death hast such sore drouth,Except thou turn again on this shore,— The winding-sheet shall have moved once more And covered thine eyes and mouth.

"O King, whom poor men bless for their King,

Of thy fate be not so fain;

But these my words for God's message take, And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake Who rides beside thy rein !"'

Heedless of the warning, however, the king determined to proceed, and arrived at the Charterhouse, where the conspirators had already been secretly at work. The bolts and locks of the doors had been tampered with by Robert Stuart, the chamberlain, and hurdle bridges had been prepared to be, at the proper moment, thrown over the moat, on the other side of which lurked Sir Robert Græme, his son, Sir John Hall, Sir Thomas Hall, and the rest of the traitors. On a wild night in February, while the king and queen and ladies were disporting" after the Christmas feast, a strange woman demanded admittance, bringing, as she said, news of life and death to the king. It was the same prophetess whom they had encountered on the road. The king, fearing to alarm the queen, refused to see the woman, whereupon her voice was heard wailing outside the casement in the wind and rain :

"And no moon woke, but the pale dawn broke,
And still thy soul stood there ;
And I thought its silence cried to my soul
As the first rays crowned its hair.

"Since then have I journeyed fast and fain
In very despite of Fate,

Lest Hope might still be found in God's will:
But they drove me from thy gate.

"For every man on God's ground, O King,
His death grows up from his birth
In a shadow-plant perpetually:
And thine towers high, a black yew-tree,
O'er the Charterhouse of Perth !"

In his robes of state he lay asleep,

With orb and sceptre in hand;
And by the crown he wore on his throne
Was his kingly forehead spann'd.

And, girls, 'twas a sweet sad thing to see
How the curling golden hair,
As in the day of the poet's youth,

From the King's crown clustered there.

And if all had come to pass in the brain
That throbbed beneath those curls,
Then Scots had said in the days to come
That this their soil was a different home
And a different Scotland, girls!

And the Queen sat by him night and day,

And oft she knelt in prayer,

All wan and pale in the widow's veil
That shrouded her shining hair.

And I had got good help of my hurt :
And only to me some sign

She made; and save the priests that were there,
No face would she see but mine.

And the month of March wore on apace;
And now fresh couriers fared

With news of the traitors snared.
And still as I told her day by day,

Like iron felt my arm, as through

The staple I made it pass :Alack it was flesh and bone-no more! Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door, But I fell back Kate Barlass.

For a while the traitors were baffled, but eventually remembered the crypt under the chamber, and found and, after a deadly struggle, slew the king.

But their day of reckoning was close at hand. They had not counted upon the terrible avenger a simple, loving woman will become when robbed of the man she loves. Within an incredibly short space of time the queen had hunted down Græme and all his accomplices, who were executed after undergoing tortures such as are, happily, rarer among Teutonic than among Latin races. And here the poem rises to an epic great

ness :

'Twas in the Charterhouse of Perth,

In the fair-lit Death-chapelle,

That the slain King's corpse on bier was laid
With chaunt and requiem-knell.

And all with royal wealth of balm
Was the body purified ;

And none could trace on the brow and lips
The death that he had died.

Her pallor changed to sight,
And the frost grew to a furnace-flame
That burnt her visage white.

And evermore as I brought her word,

She bent to her dead King James,
And in the cold ear with fire-drawn breath
She spoke the traitors' names.

But when the name of Sir Robert Græme
Was the one she had to give,

I ran to hold her up from the floor;
For the froth was on her lips, and sore
I feared that she could not live.

And the month of March was nigh to its end,
And still was the death-pall spread ;
For she would not bury her slaughtered lord
Till his slayers all were dead.

And now of their dooms dread tidings came,
And of torments fierce and dire;
And nought she spake, she had ceased to
speak,-

But her eyes were a soul on fire. But when I told her the bitter end Of the stern and just award,

She leaned o'er the bier, and thrice three times She kissed the lips of her lord.

And then she said,-"My King, they are dead !"

And she knelt on the chapel-floor, And whispered low with a strange proud smile,

-"James, James, they suffered more !"
Last she stood up to her queenly height,
But she shook like an autumn leaf,
As though the fire wherein she burned
Then left her body, and all were turned
To winter of life-long grief.

she said,

"Alas for the woful thing,

That a poet true and a friend of man,
In desperate days of bale and ban,
Should needs be born a King !"

The ballad of "The White Ship" tells the story of the loss by drowning of the children of Henry I. on the 25th of November, 1120. The narrator is Berold, the butcher of Rouen, the only survivor of that terrible catastrophe. We have not room to quote from it, but it is a poem of great power.

We have not left ourselves space to say much about the sonnets, 126 in number, which comprise all those of the "House of Life" before printed with many important additions to that series. With regard to several of these additions, it is evident, as the poet says, they are still the work of earlier years. Some of them, however, have that unmistakable strength and simple directness which shows the masterful hand only given to the thoroughly mature work of a poet, and are finer than the finest of those the reader is familiar with in the previous volume. In the sonnet Mr. Rossetti has from the first held a place so peculiarly his own, that no comparison between him and any of his predecessors will be found satisfactory. In the gift of rendering by means of highly figurative language a passion still vital and palpitating his sonnets are more like Shakespeare's than any others; but between the rhythmic medium adopted by Shakespeare (that of a simple group of quatrains clenched by a couplet) and the sonorous swell and subtle modulations of a harmony as contrapuntal almost as that of blank verse itself (which are the characteristics of the regular sonnet of octave and sestet) there is a difference in kind. It is a singular mistake of popular criticism to suppose that the regular sonnet of octave and sestet belongs to that kind of poetry which, when speaking of the rondeau, rondel, etc., we have called "the poetry of ingenuity." Elaborate as is the rhyme-structure of the sonnet, it belongs no more to the poetry of ingenuity than do the rispetto and stornello in which the Italian peasant expresses, in a certain predetermined and recognized form, his unsophisticated emotions. though, in a language like ours, it does

Al

nuity to construct a satisfactory sonnet of octave and sestet, this ingenuity is only a means to an end, the end being always that a single wave of emotion shall be embodied and expressed in a single metrical flow and return; and, with this view, no other number of lines and no other rhyme arrangement, at present discovered, are so convenient as those of the regular sonnet. The crowning difficulty, however, of this form is that the rhythm of the prescribed structure has to be handled in so masterful a fashion as to seem in each individual sonnet the inevitable and natural rhythm demanded by the emotion which gives the individual sonnet birth.

This, of course, is the reason why, in many specimens of the sonnet, the beautiful thought which should display itself with perfect tranquillity in the octave lies struggling behind a web of rhymes as a fish lies gasping and iridescent in a net. When to this demand of structure there is added the demand for Shakespearean richness of presentment, which is the special feature of the Rossettian sonnet-a richness which by most writers can only be achieved in such simple structures as couplets and single quatrains, where the mere metrical demands, and especially the rhyme demands, are small-the sonnet, as exampled in this volume, so richly laden and yet in most cases so fluent, becomes a poetic form whose difficulty is equalled by none other. Of this Shakespearean quality of richness Keats, who never departed from simple metres save in the sonnet, has, perhaps, shown more than all the other nineteenth century poets who preceded Mr. Tennyson; for, although Coleridge had a finer and rarer imagination than Keats or than any other poet who has lived since Shakespeare, his touch was too ethereal to produce in any conspicuous manner this terrene richness of work, and Wordsworth's magnificent lines are more Miltonic in timbre than Shakespearean. In this quality, however, Mr. Rossetti very likely equals Mr. Tennyson (it would be hard indeed to surpass him), and surpasses all his other contemporaries; for, while Mr. Browning's coruscating lines have the brilliance of the diamond rather than the opalescence sweet and