And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,

Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

RIPPLING through thy branches goes the sunshine,
Among thy leaves that palpitate forever;

Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned,

The soul once of some tremulous inland river,
Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever!

While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine,
Holds up its leaves in happy, happy stillness,

Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended,

I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands,

And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence.

On the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet,

Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad,

Dripping round thy slim white stem, whose shadow
Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet,

Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled
Naiad.

Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers;

Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping;
Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience,
And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping
Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping.

Thou art to me like my beloved maiden,

So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences;
Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets
Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses,
And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.
Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble,
Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet,
I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river,
Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it
My heart is floated down into the land of quiet.

Ov'id, a Roman poet. Lowell thinks | Dry'ad, a wood nymph, whose life was that Ovid would have made some bound up with that of her tree.

such pretty story as this about the Na'iad, a water nymph.

tree.

THE MIND

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

FOR 'tis the mind that makes the body rich:
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,
So honor peereth in the meanest habit.
What is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?

Or is the adder better than the eel,

Because his painted skin contents the eye?

peer'eth, appears; may be seen, although poorly clothed.

THE SHIPWRECK

CHARLES READE

This selection is from "The Cloister and the Hearth," one of the great historical novels. The event described is supposed to have taken place soon after the middle of the fifteenth century.

THE natives of a little maritime place between Naples and Rome were flocking to the beach, with eyes cast seaward at a ship that labored against a stiff gale blowing dead on the shore. At times she seemed likely to weather the danger, and then the spectators congratulated her aloud; at others the wind and sea drove her visibly nearer, and the lookers-on were not without a secret satisfaction they would not have owned even to themselves.

The poor ship, though not scientifically built for sailing, was admirably constructed for going ashore, with her extravagant poop that caught the wind, and her lines like a cocked hat reversed. To those on the beach, that battered, laboring frame of wood seemed alive and struggling against death with a panting heart. But could they have been transferred to her deck, they would have seen she had not one beating heart, but many, and not one nature, but a score, were coming out clear in that fearful hour.

The mariners stumbled wildly about the deck, handling the ropes as each thought fit, and cursing

waves.

and praying alternately. The passengers were huddled together round the mast, some sitting, some kneeling, some lying prostrate and grasping the bulwarks as the vessel rolled and pitched in the mighty One comely young man whose ashy cheek, but compressed lips, showed how hard terror was battling in him with self-respect, stood a little apart, holding tight by a shroud, and wincing at each sea. It was the ill-fated Gerard. Meantime prayers and vows rose from the trembling throng amidships, and, to hear them, it seemed there were almost as many gods about as men and women.

Suddenly, a more powerful gust than usual catching the sail at a disadvantage, the rotten shrouds gave way, and the sail was torn out with a loud crack and went down the wind smaller and smaller, blacker and blacker, and fluttered into the sea half a mile off like a sheet of paper; and, ere the helmsman could put the ship's head before the wind, a wave caught her on the quarter and drenched the poor wretches to the bone, and gave them a foretaste of chill death.

Two petty Neapolitan traders stood shivering. One shouted at the top of his voice, "I vow to St. Christopher at Paris a waxen image of his own weight, if I win safe to land." Others lay flat, and prayed to the sea. "O most merciful sea! O sea most glorious! O bountiful sea! O beautiful sea, be gentle, be kind, preserve us in this hour of