122 ODE TO A PIG. (WHILE HIS NOSE WAS BEING BORED- ·) ROBERT SOUTHEY. HARK! hark! that pig! the hideous note, You foolish beast so rudely to withstand Your master's will, to feel such foolish fears! Why, pig, there's not a lady in the land Who has not also bored and ringed her ears. Pig! 'tis your master's pleasure-then be still, you do! To man o'er every beast the power was given, Pig, hear the truth and never murmur more! Would you rebel against the will of Heaven? You impious beast, be still and let them bore. The social pig resigns his natural rights When first with man he covenants to live; He barters them for safer stye delights, For grains and wash, which man alone can give. Sure is provision on the social plan Secure the comforts that to each belong: And you resist! you struggle now because Society finds needful to impose. Go to the forest, piggy, and deplore See how the young pigs fly from the great boar, Behold their hourly danger, when who will And when, at last, the closing hour of life And when, at last, the death wound yawning wide, To think that for your master's good you die? THE RAVEN. S. T. COLERIDGE. Underneath a huge oak tree Then they trotted away, for the wind grew high; Flew low in the rain, and his feathers not wet. He went high and low, Over hill, over dale, did the black Raven go. Many autumns, many springs, I can't tell half his adventures. At length he came back, and with him a she, At length he brought down the poor Raven's own oak. The boughs from the trunk the woodman did sever He heard the last shriek of the perishing souls-- Right glad was the Raven, and off he went fleet, THE BALLAD OF THE KING'S DAUGIIter. BESSY RAYNER PARKES. [Miss Bessie Rayner Parkes, one of the most gifted of the fair sisterhood of song, was born 1829, and is the daughter of the late Joseph Parkes, Esq., of the Court of Chancery. Her poems indicate a close study of the imaginative school of Shelley (to whose memory one of her volumes is dedicated), and abound in fine thoughts and well-turned metaphors. Her works are "Poems" (1855), "Gabriel" (1856), "Essays on Woman's Work," and a prose story, full of fine fancies and quiet humour, "The History of our Cat, Aspasia” (1856), &c.] [How the king's daughter, having married me, a peasant, for love, heareth of the death of her only brother, and taketh her little son to the king.] I. SHE twisted up her royal lengths Of fallen hair with a silver pin, Her eyes were frowning, molten depths Which stirred to flame when I looked within: Dressed in a gown of velvet black, With a diamond clasp, and a silver band, More like in his eyes to her than me: The queen would have bartered her ivory throne Heavily over the far hill-tops Booms the bell in the minster-tower, From city to city between the hills Echo the bells at the burial hour: "Amen!" saith the bough in the ten-mile forest; "Amen!" saith the sea from its cavernous bed; "Amen!" saith the people, when bowed at the sorest: "Who is dead?" said the rooks, "who is dead? who is dead?" The young man is dead, in his strength, in his beauty, Loud cry the people and priests at the altar; Low in the midst of the Church of the Merciful His sword is sheathed and his coronet broken, "Babe, child, brave youth!" wept the Queen, in her closet; "Heir of my name !" sighed the King on his throne; "Who leads us to battle?" cried they of the market; "My lover!" looked one face as cold as a stone. Slow tolled the bells from the north to the southern sea, Winds caught them up with a desolate cry: Solemn he lies under darkening arches, The hand of eternity pressed on each eye. II. The market-cross with its sculptured Christ, 'Mid the crush and the trample stood steady and strong; The welded masses of voiceless folk As a sea at midnight rolled along. Booming bells, as they struck the ear, And each gabled house was alive with eyes. But lo! in the distance a shadowy file, They move to the beat of a muffled drum; The waves recede as for Israel's march, And the thick crowd mutters, "They come, they come!" Where the bier was borne by the central fount, She stood as still as the carven stone, Saying, "O King, behold my boy: His smile is the dead's, and his eye is your own." "From my broad domain in one true man's heart, Of his rippling smiles, they heard her say, |