D 2 8 MAY 1953

LIBRARY

***Some of the pieces contained in this Volume have already
appeared in "All the Year Round," "The English Woman's
Journal," &c.

A LEGEND OF PROVENCE.

HE lights extinguished, by the hearth

I leant,

Half weary with a listless discontent. The flickering giant-shadows, gathering near, Closed round me with a dim and silent fear. All dull, all dark; save when the leaping flame, Glancing, lit up a Picture's ancient frame. Above the hearth it hung. Perhaps the night, My foolish tremors, or the gleaming light, Lent power to that Portrait dark and quaintA Portrait such as Rembrandt loved to paintThe likeness of a Nun. I seemed to trace A world of sorrow in the patient face,

B

In the thin hands folded across her breast

Its own and the room's shadow hid the rest.

I gazed and dreamed, and the dull embers stirred,
Till an old legend that I once had heard
Came back to me; linked to the mystic gloom
Of that dark Picture in the ghostly room.

In the far south, where clustering vines are hung;
Where first the old chivalric lays were sung,
Where earliest smiled that gracious child of France,
Angel and knight and fairy, called Romance,

I stood one day. The warm blue June was spread
Upon the earth; blue summer overhead,

Without a cloud to fleck its radiant glare,
Without a breath to stir its sultry air.

All still, all silent, save the sobbing rush

Of rippling waves, that lapsed in silver hush

Upon the beach; where, glittering towards the

strand,

The purple Mediterranean kissed the land.

All still, all peaceful; when a convent chime
Broke on the mid-day silence for a time,
Then trembling into quiet, seemed to cease,

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