Thy convent bell, dim lake, and homeward dove;
Thine evening star that through the bowered alcove
Silvers the white flight of the circling moth.

He sang thy best and worst; false love, fierce war,
Renaissance craft, child-graces, saintly Art,
Old pomps from "Casa Guidi's" Windows seen:
There dwelt he happy; there that Minstrel-Queen
Who shared his poet-crown but gladdened more
To hold unshared her Poet's manly heart.

(TENNYSON)

None sang of Love more nobly; few as well;
Of Friendship none with pathos so profound;
Of Duty sternliest-proved when myrtle-crowned;
Of English grove and rivulet, mead and dell;
Great Arthur's Legend he alone dared tell;
Milton and Dryden feared to tread that ground;
For him alone o'er Camelot's faery bound
The "horns of Elf-land" blew their magic spell.
Since Shakespeare and since Wordsworth none hath sung
So well his England's greatness; none hath given
Reproof more fearless or advice more sage:
None inlier taught how near to earth is Heaven;
With what vast concords Nature's harp is strung;

How base false pride; faction's fanatic rage.

SIR FRANCIS DOYLE

[SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE, 2nd Baronet; born 1810; educated at Eton and Christ Church; 1st Class Lit. Hum., Fellow of All Souls. Was Receiver-General of Customs, 1846-69, then Commissioner of Customs till 1883. Published Miscellaneous Verses, 1834, and some other volumes of verse at intervals; the greater part were republished in one volume in 1883. Was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1867, and held the post ten years, publishing two volumes of lectures. Died 1888.]

Sir Francis Doyle came of a family of soldiers; the Dictionary mentions five of his near relatives who were generals and colonels. It is not surprising, then, that his verses, when he came to write and publish, dealt largely with action, and that the poem by which he is best known celebrates the heroism of a British soldier. But he himself lived the quiet life of a civilian office-holder—he was Receiver-General of Customs for over twenty years of his middle life. But he was distinguished intellectually in his youth, at Eton and Oxford; his first class (1832) and his Fellowship of All Souls, and his close intimacy with Gladstone and a number of other young leaders, which began in the Eton Debating Society, marked him out as one of the chosen. He and Gladstone, however, parted company when the latter joined the Liberals, and Doyle's Toryism only grew stronger with years. In 1883, when the Liberals were planning memorable measures, he wrote: "I try not to despair of the future of my country," this lugubrious mood taking no account of the fact that the government of Egypt had just passed into British hands; and many of his verses, at all dates, contain little hits at Whigs, past and present. But it must be granted that, beyond a general conservatism in their outlook, the Essays and Lectures, which he delivered as Professor of Poetry at Oxford before and after 1870, do not mix party with literature, and the same may be said of the Poems. These latter are honest and strenuous, though perhaps in many cases they do not rise above the commonplace; but his translations from Pindar and Sophocles, and from several French poets, are excellent; The Private of the Buffs is, in its way, a classic, and the selections which we give

from the early poem The Doncaster St. Leger are a spirited reflexion of feelings universal in West Yorkshire seventy years ago. They are a sort of Yorkshire counterpart of the racing verses of the Australian poet Lindsay Gordon which we print elsewhere.

EDITOR.

FROM "THE DONCASTER ST. LEGER"

A hundred yards have glided by,
And they settle to the race,

More keen becomes each straining eye,
More terrible the pace.

Unbroken yet o'er the gravel road

Like maddening waves the troop has flowed,
But the speed begins to tell;

And Yorkshire sees, with eye of fear,

The Southron stealing from the rear.
Ay! mark his action well!
Behind he is, but what repose!
How steadily and clean he goes!
What latent speed his limbs disclose!
What power in every stride he shows!
They see, they feel, from man to man
The shivering thrill of terror ran,
And every soul instinctive knew
It lay between the mighty two.
The world without, the sky above,

Have glided from their straining eyes-
Future and past, and hate and love,

The life that wanes, the friend that dies,
E'en grim remorse, who sits behind
Each thought and motion of the mind,
These now are nothing, Time and Space
Lie in the rushing of the race;

As with keen shouts of hope and fear
They watch it in its wild career.
Still far ahead of the glittering throng
Dashes the eager mare along,

And round the turn, and past the hill,
Slides up the Derby winner still.
The twenty-five that lay between

Are blotted from the stirring scene,
And the wild cries which rang so loud,
Sink by degrees throughout the crowd,

To one deep humming, like the tremulous roar
Of seas remote along a northern shore.

In distance dwindling to the eye
Right opposite the stand they lie,

And scarcely seem to stir;

Though an Arab scheich his wives would give
For a single steed, that with them could live
Three hundred yards, without the spur.
But though so indistinct and small,
You hardly see them move at all,

There are not wanting signs, which show
Defeat is busy as they go.

Look how the mass, which rushed away
As full of spirit as the day,

So close compacted for a while,
Is lengthening into single file.

Now inch by inch it breaks, and wide
And spreading gaps the line divide.
As forward still, and far away
Undulates on the tired array,
Gay colours, momently less bright,
Fade flickering on the gazer's sight,
Till keenest eyes can scarcely trace
The homeward ripple of the race.
Care sits on every lip and brow.

"Who leads? who fails? how goes it now?"
One shooting spark of life intense,
One throb of refluent suspense,
And a far rainbow-coloured light
Trembles again upon the sight.
Look to yon turn! Already there

Gleams the pink and black of the fiery mare,
And through that, which was but now a gap,
Creeps on the terrible white cap.

Half-strangled in each throat, a shout
Wrung from their fevered spirits out,

Booms through the crowd like muffled drums,

"His jockey moves on him. He comes!"

Then momently like gusts, you heard,

"He's sixth-he 's fifth-he 's fourth-he 's third";

And on, like some glancing meteor-flame,

The stride of the Derby winner came.

And during all that anxious time,
(Sneer as it suits you at my rhyme)
The earnestness became sublime;
Common and trite as is the scene,
At once so thrilling, and so mean,
To him who strives his heart to scan,
And feels the brotherhood of man,
That needs must be a mighty minute,
When a crowd has but one soul within it.
As some bright ship, with every sail
Obedient to the urging gale,

Darts by vext hulls, which side by side,
Dismasted on the raging tide,

Are struggling onward, wild and wide,
Thus, through the reeling field he flew,
And near, and yet more near he drew;
Each leap seems longer than the last,
Now-now-the second horse is past,
And the keen rider of the mare,
With haggard looks of feverish care,
Hangs forward on the speechless air,
By steady stillness nursing in
The remnant of her speed to win.
One other bound-one more 'tis done;
Right up to her the horse has run,
And head to head, and stride for stride,

New market's hope, and Yorkshire's pride,
Like horses harnessed side by side,

Are struggling to the goal.

Ride! gallant son of Ebor, ride!

For the dear honour of the north,

Stretch every bursting sinew forth,

Put out thy inmost soul,—

And with knee, and thigh, and tightened rein,

Lift in the mare by might and main.