"SAY, what remains when Hope is fled?"
She answered, "Endless weeping!
For in the herdsman's eye she read
Who in his shroud lay sleeping.

At Embsay rung the matin-bell,
The stag was roused on Barden-fell;
The mingled sounds were swelling, dying,
And down the Wharfe a hern was flying;

When near the cabin in the wood,
In tartan clad and forest-green,

With hound in leash and hawk in hood,
The Boy of Egremond was seen. *
Blithe was his song, a song of yore;
But where the rock is rent in two,
And the river rushes through,

His voice was heard no more!
"Twas but a step! the gulf he passed;
But that step-it was his last!

As through the mist he winged his way,
(A cloud that hovers night and day,)
The hound hung back, and back he drew
The Master and his merlin too.

That narrow place of noise and strife
Received their little all of Life!

There now the matin-bell is rung;

The "Miserere!" duly sung;
And holy men in cowl and hood
Are wandering up and down the wood.
But what avail they? Ruthless Lord,

Thou didst not shudder when the sword

*In the twelfth century William Fitz-Duncan laid waste the valleys of Craven with fire and sword; and was afterwards established there by his uncle, David, King of Scotland.

He was the last of the race; his son, commonly called the Boy of Egremond, dying before him in the manner here related; when a Priory was removed from Embsay to Bolton, that it might be as near as possible to the place where the accident happened. That place is still known by the name of the Strid: and the mother's answer, as given in the first stanza, is to this day often repeated in Wharfedale.-See WHITAKER'S Hist. of Craven.

Here on the young its fury spent,
The helpless and the innocent.

Sit now and answer, groan for groan.
The child before thee is thy own.
And she who wildly wanders there,
The mother in her long despair,

Shall oft remind thee, waking, sleeping,
Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping;
Of those who would not be consoled

When red with blood the river rolled.

AN EPITAPH

ON A ROBIN-REDBREAST.*

TREAD lightly here, for here, 'tis said,
When piping winds are hushed around,
A small note wakes from underground,
Where now his tiny bones are laid.
No more in lone and leafless groves,
With ruffled wing and faded breast,
His friendless, homeless spirit roves;
-Gone to the world where birds are blest!
Where never cat glides o'er the green,
Or school-boy's giant form is seen;
But Love, and Joy, and smiling Spring
Inspire their little souls to sing!

* Inscribed on an urn in the flower-garden at Hafod.

ON... ASLEEP.

SLEEP on, and dream of Heaven awhile. Tho' shut so close thy laughing eyes, Thy rosy lips still wear a smile,

And move, and breathe delicious sighs!

Ah, now soft blushes tinge her cheeks,
And mantle o'er her neck of snow.
Ah, now she murmurs, now she speaks
What most I wish-and fear to know.

She starts, she trembles, and she weeps! Her fair hands folded on her breast. -And now, how like a saint she sleeps! A seraph in the realms of rest!

Sleep on secure! Above controul,
Thy thoughts belong to Heaven and thee!
And may the secret of thy soul
Remain within its sanctuary!