Kath'rine! to many an hour of mine
Light wings and sunshine you have lent;
And so adieu, and still be thine
The all-in-all of life-Content!

ADELGITHA.

THE ordeal's fatal trumpet sounded,
And sad pale Adelgitha came,
When forth a valiant champion bounded,
And slew the slanderer of her fame.

She wept, delivered from her danger;
But when he knelt to claim her glove-
"Seek not," she cried, "oh! gallant stranger,
For hapless Adelgitha's love.

"For he is in a foreign far land

Whose arms should now have set me free; And I must wear the willow garland

For him that's dead or false to me."

"Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!"
He raised his vizor-At the sight
She fell into his arms and fainted;
It was indeed her own true knight!

SONG.

Он, how hard it is to find

The one just suited to our mind!
And if that one should be
False, unkind, or found too late,
What can we do but sigh at fate,

And sing Woe's me-Woe's me!

Love's a boundless burning waste,
Where Bliss's stream we seldom taste,
And still more seldom flee

Suspense's thorns, Suspicion's stings;
Yet somehow Love a something brings

That's sweet-even when we sigh" Woe's me!"

THE RITTER BANN.

THE Ritter Bann from Hungary
Came back, renowned in arms,
But scorning jousts of chivalry,
And love and ladies' charms.

While other knights held revels, he
Was wrapped in thought of gloom,
And in Vienna's hostelrie

Slow paced his lonely room.

There entered one whose face he knew,-
Whose voice, he was aware,

He oft at mass had listened to
In the holy house of prayer.

'Twas the abbot of St. James's monks,
A fresh and fair old man :
His reverend air arrested even
The gloomy Ritter Bann.

But seeing with him an ancient dame
Come clad in Scotch attire,
The Ritter's colour went and came,
And loud he spoke in ire:

"Ha! nurse of her that was my bane,
Name not her name to me;

I wish it blotted from my brain :
Art poor ?-take alms, and flee."

"Sir Knight," the abbot interposed, "This case your ear demands;"

And the crone cried, with a cross enclosed In both her trembling hands :

"Remember, each his sentence waits;
And he that shall rebut

Sweet Mercy's suit, on him the gates
Of Mercy shall be shut.

"You wedded, undispensed by Church,
Your cousin Jane in spring;
In autumn, when you went to search
For churchmen's pardoning,

"Her house denounced your marriage-band, Betrothed her to De Grey,

And the ring you put upon her hand
Was wrenched by force away.

"Then wept your Jane upon my neck,
Crying, 'Help me, nurse, to flee
To my Howel Bann's Glamorgan hills;'
But word arrived-ah me !-

"You were not there; and 'twas their threat,
By foul means or by fair,
To-morrow morning was to set
The seal on her despair.

"I had a son, a sea-boy, in

A ship at Hartland Bay ; By his aid from her cruel kin I bore my bird away.

"To Scotland from the Devon's

Green myrtle shores we fled;

And the Hand that sent the ravens
To Elijah, gave us bread.

"She wrote you by my son, but he
From England sent us word
You had gone into some far countrie,
In grief and gloom he heard.

"For they that wronged you, to elude
Your wrath, defamed my child;
And you-ay, blush, sir, as you should---
Believed, and were beguiled.

"To die but at your feet, she vowed To roam the world; and we

Would both have sped and begged our bread, But so it might not be.

"For when the snow-storm beat our roof,
She bore a boy, Sir Bann,

Who grew as fair your likeness proof
As child e'er grew like man.

""Twas smiling on that babe one morn
While heath bloomed on the moor,
Her beauty struck young Lord Kinghorn
As he hunted past our door.

"She shunned him, but he raved of Jane,
And roused his mother's pride:

Who came to us in high disdain,—
'And where's the face,' she cried,

"Has witched my boy to wish for one
So wretched for his wife ?-
Dost love thy husband? Know, my son
Has sworn to seek his life.'

"Her anger sore dismayed us,

For our mite was wearing scant, And, unless that dame would aid us, There was none to aid our want.

"So I told her, weeping bitterly,
What all our woes had been ;
And, though she was a stern ladie,
The tears stood in her een.

"And she housed us both, when, cheerfully, My child to her had sworn,

That even if made a widow, she
Would never wed Kinghorn."-

Here paused the nurse, and then began The abbot, standing by :"Three months ago a wounded man' To our abbey came to die.

"He heard me long, with ghastly eyes
And hand obdurate clenched,

Speak of the worm that never dies,
And the fire that is not quenched.

"At last by what this scroll attests
He left atonement brief,
For years of anguish to the breasts
His guilt had wrung with grief.

"There lived,' he said, 'a fair young dame Beneath my mother's roof;

I loved her, but against my flame
Her purity was proof.

"I feigned repentance, friendship pure;

That mood she did not check,

But let her husband's miniature

Be copied from her neck,

"As means to search him; my deceit
Took care to him was borne

Nought but his picture's counterfeit,
And Jane's reported scorn.