By night we dragg'd her to the college tower
From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair
With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,
And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.
Large range of prospect had the mother sow,
And but for daily loss of one she loved,

As one by one we took them but for this

As never sow was higher in this world

Might have been happy: but what lot is pure ?

We took them all, till she was left alone
Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,

And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty.

John. They found you out?

James. Not they.

John. Well-after all

What know we of the secret of a man?

His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound,

That we should mimic this raw fool the world,

Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,

As ruthless as a baby with a worm,
As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows
To Pity-more from ignorance than will.

But put your best foot forward, or I fear

That we shall miss the mail: and here it comes

With five at top: as quaint a four-in-hand

As

you shall see

- three pyebalds and a roan.

ST. SIMEON STYLITES.

ALTHO' I be the basest of mankind,

From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,

I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold

Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,

Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,

Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God, This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years, Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,

In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold.

In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps

A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud,

Patient on this tall pillar I have borne

Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;

And I had hoped that ere this period closed

Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
Denying not these weather-beaten limbs

The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.
O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.
Pain heap'd ten-hundred-fold to this, were still
Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,

Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd
My spirit flat before thee.

O Lord, Lord,

Thou knowest I bore this better at the first,

For I was strong and hale of body then ;

And though my teeth, which now are dropt away,
Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard
Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon,

I drown'd the whoopings of the owl with sound
Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw
An angel stand and watch me, as I
sang.

Now am I feeble grown : my end draws nighI hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am, So that I scarce can hear the people hum About the column's base, and almost blind, And scarce can recognise the fields I know. And both my thighs are rotted with the dew, Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry,

While my stiff spine can hold my weary head, Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone, Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin.

O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,

Who

may be saved? who is it may be saved? Who may be made a saint, if I fail here ? Show me the man hath suffer'd more than I. For did not all thy martyrs die one death? For either they were stoned or crucified, Or burn'd in fire, or boil'd in oil, or sawn In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here To-day, and whole years long, a life of death. Bear witness, if I could have found a way (And heedfully I sifted all my thought)

More slowly-painful to subdue this home