70 AFTER BLENHEIM. AFTER BLENHEIM. It was a summer evening, She saw her brother Peterkin In playing there had found; He came to ask what he had found That was so large and smooth and round. Old Kaspar took it from the boy Who stood expectant by: And then the old man shook his head, ""Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "I find them in the garden, For there's many here about; The ploughshare turns them out. AFTER BLENHEIM. "Now tell us what 'twas all about," Young Peterkin he cries; And little Wilhelmine looks up With wonder-waiting eyes; "Now tell us all about the war, And what they fought each other for." "It was the English," Kaspar cried, "My father lived at Blenheim then, They burnt his dwelling to the ground, So with his wife and child he fled, Nor had he where to rest his head. "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide, And many a childing mother then And newborn baby died: But things like that, you know, must be "They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won; For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun: But things like that, you know, must be 71 72 OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT. "Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, "Nay.. nay.. my little girl,” quoth he, "And everybody praised the Duke "Why that I cannot tell," said he, Robert Southey. OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT. I MET a traveller from an antique land "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: P. B. Shelley. THE NILE. 73 THE NILE. IT flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands. And the void weighs on us; and then we wake, Leigh Hunt. FANTASTIC sleep is busy with my eyes: Sultry and still-a realm of mysteries; A wide-browed Sphinx, half buried in the sand, With orbless sockets stares across the land, The wofullest thing beneath these brooding skies Where all is woful weird-lit vacancy. 'Tis neither midnight, twilight, nor moonrise. The nebulous clouds are downward slowly drawn, |