"Giant of battles, he at length must fall!

Hasten, brave people," cry the despot train;
"Freedom herself shall spread his funeral pall,
And saved by you, by you alone we'll reign."
The giant sinks, - the dwarfs forgetful swear

In slavish yoke the universe to tame; Alas for Glory! doubly cheated there!

Ne'er shall my verse be saddened by that name.

But hold! the scions of another age

Even now the causes of my grief demand; Why should this wreck, in truth, their thoughts engage? Their buoyant cradles floated safe to land. May they be happy! their ascending star

Of that disastrous day blots out the shame! Still, were that day but some vain dream afar, Ne'er should my verse be saddened by its name. Pierre Jean de Béranger. Tr. William Young.

WATERLOO.

HEY stood upon these plains, and side by side

THEY

Did battle for the world, too long enthralled
To the universal tyrant; one was called,

And one was left to cross the homeward tide:
Both in their glory, as in arms allied:

But the loud voice of fame is hushed asleep,
Their sires are goue, no more their widows weep,
Their orphan sons forget them in their pride.
Yet deem not that they sold their lives for naught:
Who, that hath springing in his breast the fount

Of self-devoting love, the cost would count,
So might he in those favored ranks have fought,
Increasing by his single strength's amount
That blessed victory for freedom wrought?

Henry Alford.

IN

Ypres.

THE STATUE IN THE MARKET-PLACE.

I.

N the market-place of Ypres, three hundred years ago, A crumbling statue, old, and rent by many a lightning blow,

Stood

sad and stern, and grim and blank upon its mossy base;

The woes of many centuries were frozen in its face.

It was a Cæsar some men said, and some said Char

lemagne,

Yet no one knew when he it aped began or ceased to

reign,

Nor who it was, nor what it was, could any rightly

say,

For the date upon its pedestal was fretted quite away.

When blue and ghastly moonshine fell, severing the shadows dark,

And stars above were shining out with many a diamond

spark,

It used to cast its giant shade across the market square, And through the darkness and the shine it fixed its stony stare.

'Twas said that where its shadow fell on a certain day and year,

An hour at least past midnight, when the moon was up and clear,

Near to that statue's mouldy base, deep hid beneath the ground,

A treasure vast of royal wealth was certain to be found.

Slow round, as round a dial-plate, its sharp dark shadow passed,

On fountain and cathedral roof by turns eclipse it cast; Before it fled the pale blue light, chased as man's life by death,

And deep you heard the great clock tick, like a sleeping giant's breath.

II.

In that same market-place there lived an alchemist of

fame,

A lean and yellow dark-eyed man, Hans Memling was

his name;

In scarlet hood and blood-red robe, in crimson vest and

gown,

For twenty years, the moonlight through, he 'd sat and watched the town.

Like one flame-lit he used to peer between the mullions

there,

As yonder stars shot blessed light through the clear midnight air;

When chessboard-checkered, black and white, part silver and part jet,

The city lay in light and shade, barred with the moonbeams' net.

When gable-ends and pinuacles and twisted chimneystalks

Rose thick around the market square and its old cloistered walks,

When gurgoyles on the Minster tower made faces at the moon,

The convent gardens were as bright as if it had been

noon,

Memling the miser alchemist - then left his crimson

vials,

His Arab books, his bottled toads, his sulphurous fiery

trials,

His red-hot crucibles, and dyes that turned from white to blue,

His silver trees that starry rose the crystal vases through.

The room was piled with ponderous tomes, thick ribbed and silver clasped,

The letters twined with crimson flowers, the covers golden hasped,

With dripping stills and furnaces, whose doors were smouldered black,

With maps of stars and charts of seas lined with untraversed track.

Slow round, as round a dial-plate, the statue's shadow passed,

On fountain and cathedral roof by turns eclipse it cast, Before it fled the pale blue light, chased as man's life by death,

Deep, low you heard the great clock tick, like a sleeping giant's breath.

III.

The moonbeams in cascades of light poured from the poplar's crown,

Rippling in silvery lustre the leafy columns down, They roofed the town-hall fair and bright with bonny silver slates,

They even turned to argent pure the bars of the prison gates.

The maiden slumbering in her bed awoke that blessed

night,

And thought her angel sisters three had come all veiled

in light;

The wild-beast felon in his cell started and thought it

day,

Cursing the torturer who, he dreamt, had chid him

for delay.