We bore it through the marshes in a half-score battered chests,

Sinking, in the sucking quagmires to the sunburn on our

breasts,

Heaving over tree-trunks, gasping, damning at the flies and heat,

Longing for a long drink, out of silver, in the ship's cool lazareet.3

The moon came white and ghostly as we laid the treasure down,

There was gear there'd make a beggarman as rich as Lima Town,*

Copper charms and silver trinkets from the chests of Spanish crews,

Gold doubloons and double moydores, louis d'ors and ortagues,"

Clumsy yellow-metal earrings from the Indians of Brazil, Uncut emeralds out of Rio, bezoar stones from Guaya

quil,

Silver, in the crude and fashioned, pots of old Arica bronze,

Jewels from the bones of Incas desecrated by the Dons.s

We smoothed the place with mattocks, and we took and blazed the tree,

Which marks yon where the gear is hid that none will

3.

4.

ever see,

Lazareet. A store-room near a vessel's stern.

Lima Town. Lima, capital of Peru, from which the Spaniards

got a great amount of gold.

5. Doubloons, moydores, louis d'ors, portagues. Gold coins worth from about $5 to $22.50.

6. Bezoar. A stone, to drive out poison.

7. Incas. Indians of South America.

8. Dons. Spaniards.

And we laid aboard the ship. again, and south away we

steers,

Through the loud surf of Los Muertos which is beating

in my ears.

I'm the last alive that knows it.

their ways

All the rest have gone

Killed, or died, or come to anchor in the old Mulatas Cays, And I go singing, fiddling, old and starved and in despair, And I know where all that gold is hid, if I were only there.

It's not the way to end it all. I'm old and nearly blind, And an old man's past's a strange thing, for it never leaves his mind.

And I see in dreams, awhiles, the beach, the sun's disc dipping red,

And the tall ship, under topsails, swaying in past Nigger

Head.

I'd be glad to step ashore there.

and go

Glad to take a pick

To the lone blazed coco-palm tree in the place no others

know,

And lift the gold and silver that has mouldered there

for years

By the loud surf of Los Muertos which is beating in my

ears.

27

"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM ·GHENT TO AIX" 1

ROBERT BROWNING

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gatebolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; At Düffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the halfchime,

So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past,

1. "There is no sort of historical foundation about 'Good News from Ghent.' I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel off the African coast, after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate, even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse 'York,' then in my stable at home."-Browning.

And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

"

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence,-ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
We'll remember at Aix”—for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,

And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"—and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,

Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or

good,

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is-friends flocking round

As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from
Ghent.2

28

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE1

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town tonight,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,-
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

2. From Ghent, Belgium, to Aix, Prussia, is ninety miles. 1. Paul Revere was one of a group of men who formed a secret organization just before, the breaking out of the Revolutionary War to watch the movements of the British officials. When the British planned to capture some military supplies stored at Concord, about twenty miles northwest of Boston, the plan was discovered and Paul Revere gave the alarm to the colonists all along the road from Boston to Lexington. A little way out of Lexington he was captured by a British patrol. The alarm had been given, however, and the colonists were ready.