them.

For these are kindly ministers of nature,

To soothe all covert hurts and dumb distress;

Pretty they be, and very small of stature,

For mercy still consorts with littleness; Wherefore the sum of good is still the less, And mischief greatest in this world of wrong; So do these charitable dwarfs redress The tenfold ravages of giants strong, To whom great malice and great might belong. THOMAS HOOD.

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.

WHA

HAT was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river;

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river;
The limpid water turbidly ran,

And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sate the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river,
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard, bleak steel at the patient
reed,

Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan;
How tall it stood in the river!

Then drew the pith like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,

Then notched the poor dry empty thing In holes as he sate by the river.

This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,
Laughed while he sate by the river,
The only way since gods began

To make sweet music, they could suc-
ceed."

Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

He blew in power by the river.

Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

The sun on the hills forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river;
Making a poet out of a man;

The true gods sigh for the cost and the
pain,

For the reed that grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

FROM "THE BLESSED
DAMOZEL."

HE blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe ungirt from clasp to hem,

Nor wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift
For service, meetly worn;
And her hair hanging down her back,
Was yellow like ripe corn.

It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on,

By God built over the starry depth,
The which is space begun,

So high that looking downward thence,
She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in heaven, across the flood
Of ether like a bridge.
Beneath the tides of day and night

With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.

Heard hardly some of her new friends
Amid their loving games,
Spake evermore among themselves
Their virginal chaste names:
And the souls mounting up to God,
Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bowed herself, and stooped
Out of the circling charm,