LAST LINES.

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere : I see Heaven's glories shine,

And faith shines equal, arousing me from fear.

O God, within my breast,

Almighty, ever-present Deity!

Life that in me has rest,

As I undying Life — have power in thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one

Holding so fast by thine infinity;
So surely anchored on

The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love

Thy spirit animates eternal years,

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,

Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,

Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou- THOU art Being and Breath,

And what THOU art may never be destroyed.

EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON.

THE WIFE OF MILETUS.22

IN that dread time when Gaul her ravening swarms Launched upon Greece, the Matrons of Miletus, Honoring the yearly rites of Artemis,

With songs and offerings, gathered to the temple

That stands unwalled, six stadia from the town;
And, in the midst of their melodious hymnings,
A barbarous band down from the mountains swooped
Sudden as swoops on clustered doves the eagle.

When with their spoil the Gauls resought their land, Freeing a Greek of rank whom they had captured, They sent him to Miletus, with these words,

'The Gauls in war respect the nuptial altars,

'And accept ransom, paid within a year,

For the fair captives seized within your temple, Their honor sacred till the year expire,

But if unransomed then- the slaves of conquest.

'Each Greek, who comes with ransom for his wife, Safe as a herald when he cross our borders; Hervor the Celt, in the Massalian port,

Will to all seekers give instruction needful.'

Milesian husbands heard and answered Good!'

Yet made no haste to profit by the message. The way was long, of dire repute the Gaul, Few foxes trust the honor of the lion;

And, as no sum was fixed, 't were treasure lost
To take too much pains lost to take too little.
Among these widowed spouses, one alone,

Xanthus, although his lost delight, Erippe,

Had with no dowry swelled his slender means,
Prized his wife more than misers prize their coffers;
And that the ransom might not fall too short,

He sold his house, his herds, his fields, and vineyards ;

And having thus converted into coin

His all, and all compared with her seemed nothing, He sailed for Gaul to buy the priceless back;

Reaching the seaport founded by Phocæa,

He learnt Erippe's whereabout, and, led

By a Celt guide across the Gaul's wild borders, Paused at the cone-shaped palace of a chief Lifted to rule upon the shields of battle.

There, at the door, the Greek beheld his wife Carding the wool for her barbarian captor. 'Joy, joy!' he cried; 'I see thee once again,

Freed save from love, for I have brought the ransom.'

And while, with kisses broken by his sobs,

He clasped her to his breast, out strode the Chieftain, Roused by strange voices and his barking dogs. Head taller than the rest; his long locks yellowing

The cold clear air, with undulating gleam;

His ample front serene with power unquestioned,

A wolf's-hide mantle for his robe of state;

In his right hand a boar-spear for a sceptre.

Already versed in the barbarian tongue,

Erippe, breaking from her lord's embraces,
Said, 'Lo my husband! he hath crossed the seas,
And brought, if thou accept it still, my ransom.'

The Gaul looked down a moment; the wolf's hide
Stirred with a fuller swell of his strong life-blood;
Then raising the clear light of his blue eyes,

He stretched his vast hand o'er the brows of Xanthus ;

'Sacred,' he said, ‘are marriage and man's hearth;

Pass through these doors, a guest; the guest is sacred.' The guide by Hervor lent, as one who knew

The Grecian tongue, explained these words to Xanthus ;

For here, as if by joy or by surprise

Quite overcome, Erippe trembled voiceless,
And, when her lord's eye sought her, she was gone,
Lost in the inner labyrinths of that dwelling.

The Gaul placed meats and mead before his guest,
To whom, when thus refreshed, he spoke, —‘Milesian,
Thou com'st in time while yet the promised year
Lacks a brief moon of the completed circle;

'Had the year lapsed the woman's face is fair,
And I am wifeless - haply I had loved her.
Enough - — now tell me what thy worldly wealth,
And what proportion thou wouldst yield as ransom.'

Speaking thus thro' the interpreter, the Greek
Thro' the interpreter replied: 'My father,
Tho' nobly born, left me but scanty lands;
These I have sold in haste at no slight losses.

'A thousand golden staters have I brought.'
More had he said, the Gaul cut short the sentence.
'Hold there! I see thine is no niggard soul:

That which thou gainest, and I yield, has value

'To be assessed according as it seems

Singled from millions as the world's one woman; 'Tis all or nought. Thou wouldst concede thine all; I can take nought: the fourth part is my people's,

'The rest our law makes mine - I give it back.
Go, tell thy wife she is no more my captive;
The morrow's sun shall light ye homeward both.'
Then by a stern-faced handmaid to the chamber,
Where his wife waited him, the Greek was led,
And left to tell Erippe his glad tidings.
How the gods favor me! A kiss!' he cried.

Had adverse winds delayed my Cyprian galley,

This wolf-skin wearer says he might have loved, And made thee horror! - wife of a barbarian. But be we just! the savage hath a soul

Not found among the traffickers of Hellas;

'And of the thousand staters I proposed,

Takes but a fourth; small ransom for Erippe.' She, curious as her sex, then made her lord

Tell, word by word, all Greek and Gaul had uttered;

And having heard, cried, 'Thou hast lost us both:
I know how void thy chest; a thousand staters!
Thou canst not have the tenth of such a sum,

And when the Gaul detects thee in this falsehood'.

'Hush!' said the husband; 'I have sold our all, Our house, our herds, our cornfields, and our vineyards;

I named one thousand staters to the Gaul,

Meaning to add, but his impatience stopped me,

"That sum is half my all; the other half

Is also here, sewed up in my slaves' garments; If half suffice not, take the whole!" These Gauls

Guess not the price at which we Greeks rate beauty.

'What! coy as ever? Well, I love thee so!'

At early dawn, while yet her Xanthus slumbered, She who had slept not, slipped from his side,

Donned her silk robe, and sleeked her amber tresses;