Then off there flung in smiling joy,

And held himself erect

By just his horse's mane, a boy :

You hardly could suspeet,

(So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through)

You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.

"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace

We've got you Ratisbon !

The marshal's in the market-place,
And you'll be there anon

To see your flag-bird flap his vans
Where I, to heart's desire,

Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans

Soared up again like fire.

The chief's eye flashed; but presently

Softened itself, as sheaths

A film the mother eagle's eye

When her bruised eaglet breathes :

"You 're wounded!" "Nay," his soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said:

"I'm killed, sire! And, his chief beside,

Smiling the boy fell dead.

Robert Browning.

THE TORTURE-CHAMBER AT RATISBON.

DOWN the broad, imperial Danube,

As its wandering waters guide,

Past the mountains and the meadows, Winding with the stream, we glide.

Ratisbon we leave behind us,
Where the spires and gables throng,
And the huge cathedral rises,

Like a fortress, vast and strong.

Close beside it stands the town-hall,
With its massive tower, alone,
Brooding o'er the dismal secret,
Hidden in its heart of stone.

There, beneath the old foundations,
Lay the prisons of the state,
Like the last abodes of vengeance,
In the fabled realms of Fate.

And the tides of life above them
Drifted ever, near and wide,
As at Venice, round the prisons,
Sweeps the sea's incessant tide.

Never, like the far-off dashing,
Or the nearer rush of waves,
Came the tread or murmur downward,
To those dim, unechoing caves.

There the dungeon clasped its victim,
And a stupor chained his breath,
Till the torture woke his senses,
With a sharper touch than death,

Now, through all the vacant silence,
Reign the darkness and the damp,
Broken only when the traveller

Gropes his way, with guide and lamp,

Peering where, all black and shattered,
Eaten with the rust of time,
Lie the fearful signs and tokens
Of an age when law was crime.

Then the guide, with grim precision,
Tells the dismal tale once more,
Tells to living men the tortures
Living men have borne before.

As he speaks, the death-cold cavern
With a sudden life-gush warms,
And, once more, the Torture-Chamber
With its murderous tenants swarms.

Yonder, through the narrow archway,
Comes the culprit in the gloom,
Falters on the fatal threshold,
Totters to the bloody doom.

Here the executioner, lurking,

Waits, with brutal thirst, his hour,

Tool of bloodier men and bolder,
Drunken with the dregs of power.

There the careful leech sits patient,
Watching face and hue and breath,
Weighing life's fast-ebbing pulses
With the heavier chance of death.

Eking out the little remnant,
Lest the victim die too soon,
And the torture of the morning
Spare the torture of the noon.

Here, behind the heavy grating,
Sits the scribe, with pen and scroll,
Waiting till the giant terror

Bursts the secrets of the soul;

Till the fearful tale of treason
From the shrieking lips is wrung,
Or the final, false confession
Quivers from the trembling tongue!

But the gray old tower is fading,
Fades, in sunshine, from the eye,
Like some bird whose distant pinion
Dimly blots the morning sky.

So the ancient gloom and terror
Of the ages fade away,

In the sunlight of the present,

Of our better, purer day!

William Allen Butler.

Rhine, the River.

THE RHINE.

RTH rolled the Rhine-stream strong and deep

FORTH

Beneath Helvetia's Alpine steep,

And joined in youthful company

Its fellow-travellers to the sea.

In Germany embraced the Rhine,

The Neckar, the Mosel, the Lahu, and the Main,

And strengthened by each rushing tide,

Onward he marched in kingly pride.

But soon from his enfeebled grasp
The satraps of his power,

The current's flowing veins unclasp, --
He moves in pride no more.

Forth the confederate waters broke
On that rebellious day,

And, bursting from their monarch's yoke,
Each chose a separate way.

Wahl, Issel, Leck, and Wecht, all, all
Flowed sidewards o'er the land,

And a nameless brook, by Leyden's wall,
The Rhine sank in the sand.

From the German. Tr. Anon.