personation of Gluck's Orpheus—Madame Garcia
Viardot.

The passion-plays of Shakespeare must form
our second act; the comedies and songs our
third.

BROUGHT TO LIGHT.

SOME miners were sinking a shaft in Wales
    (I know not where; but the facts have fill'd
A chink in my brain, while other tales

Have been swept away, as when pearls are spill'd,
    One pearl rolls into a chink in the floor)—
Somewhere, then, where God's light is kill'd,

And men tear, in the dark, at the earth's heart-core,
     These men were at work, when their axes knock'd
A hole in a passage, closed years before.

A slip in the earth, I suppose, had block'd
    This gallery suddenly up, with a heap
Of rubble, as safe as a chest is lock'd,

Till these men pick'd it; and 'gan to creep
     In on all- fours. Then a loud shout ran
Round the black roof, "Here's a man asleep!"

They all push'd forward; and scarce a span;
    From the mouth of the passage, in sooth, the
        lamp
Fell on the upturn'd face of a man!

No taint of death, no decaying damp
    Had touch'd that fair young brow, whereon
Courage had set its glorious stamp.

Calm as a monarch upon his throne,
    Lips hard-clenched,—no shadow of fear,—
He sat there, taking his rest alone.

He must have been there for many a year.
    The spirit had fled; but there was its shrine,
In clothes of a century old, or near!

The dry and embalming air of the mine
    Had arrested the natural hand of decay;
Nor faded the flesh, nor dimm'd a line.

Who was he then? . . . No man might say
     When the passage had suddenly fallen in.
Its memory, even, was past away!

In their great rough arms, begrimed with coal,
    They took him up, as a tender lass
Will carry a babe, from that darksome hole,

To the outer world of the short warm grass.
    Then up spake one. "Let us send for Bess,—
She is seventy-nine, come Martinmas;

"Older than any one here, I guess!
    Belike, she may mind when the wall fell there,
And remember the lad, by his comeliness." . . .

So they brought old Bess, with her silver hair,
    To the side of the hill, where the dead man lay,
Ere the flesh had crumbled in outer air.

And the crowd around him all gave way,
    As with tottering steps old Bess drew nigh,
And bent o'er the face of the unchanged clay.

Then suddenly rang a sharp low cry! . . .
    Bess sank on her knees, and wildly toss'd
Her wither'd arms in the summer sky.

"O Willie! Willie! My lad! My lost! . . .
    The Lord be praised! After sixty years
I see ye again! . . . . The tears ye cost,

"Willie, darlin'! were bitter tears . . .
     They never look'd for ye under ground!
They told me a tale to mock my fears!

"They said ye were over the sea . . . ye'd found
    A lass ye loved better nor me,—to explain
How ye'd a-vanish'd fro' sight and sound!

"O darlin'! . . . . A long, long night o'pain
    I ha' lived since then!—and now I'm old,
Seems a'most as if youth was come back again,—

"Seeing ye there, wi' your locks o'gold,
    And limbs so straight as ashen beams,—
I a'most forget how the years ha' roll'd

"Between us! . . . Willie! how strange it seems
    To see ye here, as I've seen ye oft,
Over and over again—in dreams!" . . .

In broken words like these, with soft
    Low wails, she rock'd herself. And none
Of the rough men around her scoff'd.

For surely a sight like this, the sun
    Had rarely look'd upon. Face to face,
The old dead love, and the living one!—

The dead, with its undimm'd fleshly grace,
    At the end of threescore years; the quick,
Pucker'd, and wither'd, without a trace

Of its warm girl-beauty;—a wizard's trick,
    Bringing the love and the youth that were,
Back to the eyes of the old and sick.

Those bodies were just of one age! yet there,
     Death, clad in youth, had been standing still,
While Life had been fretting itself threadbare!

But the moment was come, as a moment will
    To all who have loved, and been parted here,
And have toil'd alone, up the thorny hill;

When, at the top, as their eyes see clear,
    Over the mists in this vale below,
Mere specks their trials and toils appear,

Beside the eternal rest they know!
   —Death came to old Bess that night, and gave
The welcome summons that she should go.

And now, though the rains and winds may rave,
    Nothing can part them. Deep and wide,
The miners, that evening, dug one grave.

So at last, while the summers and winters glide,
Old Bess and young Willie sleep, side by side.

THE TENTH OF MARCH.

IT is good to see every kind and variety of
beautiful thing in the world. It is good to
stand by moonlight on the deck of a ship, and
watch the flash of the phosphorus in the vessel's
wake; good to ascend the Jura heights and
look across the Geneva lake to where the
whitened peaks of the Alps are lost among the
vapours of the sky; good to saunter in the
well-ordered walks of a flower-garden; or to
pass the best half of a summer night among the
ruined temples of Pæstum. Such pleasures as
these are, to a certain extent, at a man's
command. He may enjoy them again and again,
and return to them often. But there are
some sights of which this may not be said.