ing under feather beds. But breathe and bestow themselves they do. The deep mother heart and the broad mother wings take them all in.

They penetrate her feathers, and open for themselves unseen little doors into the mysterious, brooding, beckoning darkness. But it is long before they can arrange themselves satisfactorily. They chirp, and stir, and snuggle, trying to find the softest and warmest nook. Now an uneasy head is thrust out, and now a whole tiny body; but it soon reënters in another quarter, and at length the stir and chirr grows still. You see only a collection of little legs, as if the hen were a banyan tree, and presently even they disappear. She. settles down comfortably, and all are wrapped in a slumberous silence.

And as I sit by the hour, watching their winning ways, and see all the steps of this sleepy subsidence, I can but remember that outburst of love and sorrow from the lips of Him who, though He came to earth from a dwelling place of ineffable glory, called nothing unclean because it was common, found no homely detail too homely or too trivial to illustrate the Father's love; but from the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the lilies of the field, the stones in the street, the foxes in their holes, the patch on the coat, the oxen in the furrow, the sheep in the pit, the camel under his burden, drew lessons of divine pity and patience, of heavenly duty and delight.

Standing in the presence of the great congregation, seeing, as never man saw, the hypocrisy and the iniquity gathered before him seeing too, alas! the calamities and the woe that awaited this doomed people, a godlike pity overbears his righteous indignation, and cries out in passionate appeal, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON

LORD BYRON

NOTE TO THE PUPIL. — Lord Byron was born in London in 1788. Perhaps his most noted work is "Childe Harold." He wrote much. His first published work, "Hours of Idleness," was severely criticised by the Edinburgh Review, and he replied in his satire "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." The chief of his other poems are "The Giaour," "The Corsair," "Lara," Manfred," Mazeppa," "Don Juan," "Sardanapalus." The story of "The Prisoner of Chillon " is not founded on fact save in part. The poet's hero and the historical one have few points of resemblance. Bonnivard, the Genevese patriot referred to, was confined for political, not religious, reasons,

and he had no brothers confined with him.

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Byron's life was an unhappy one. He separated from his wife and lived upon the Continent. He spent the greater part of his time in Switzerland and Italy, though he was in Greece for considerable time. In 1823 the Revolution in Greece aroused him, and he joined himself to the Greek cause, and in 1824 died at Missolonghi of a fever.

MY

but not with years,

hair is gray,
Nor grew it white

In a single night,

As men's have grown from sudden fears;
My limbs are bow'd, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,

For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are band'd and barr'd-forbidden fare;
But this was for my father's faith
I suffer'd chains and courted death;
That father perish'd at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;

And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling place;
We were seven, who now are one,
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finish'd as they had begun,

Proud of Persecution's rage;
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have seal'd;
Dying as their father died,

For the God their foes denied;
Three were in a dungeon cast,

Of whom this wreck is left the last.

There are seven pillars of Gothic mold,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
Dim with a dull imprison'd ray,

A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp;
And in each pillar there is a ring,
And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away,
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun to rise
I cannot count them o'er,

For years

I lost their long and heavy score

When my last brother droop'd and died,

And I lay living by his side.

They chain'd us each to a column stone,
And we were three-yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace,
We could not see each other's face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight;
And thus together - yet apart,
Fetter'd in hand, but joined in heart,
'Twas still some solace, in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other's speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope, or legend old,
Or song heroically bold;

But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon stone,

A grating sound-not full and free.
As they of yore were wont to be:
It might be fancy-but to me
They never sounded like our own.

I was the eldest of the three,
And to uphold and cheer the rest
I ought to do—and did - my best
And each did well in his degree,

The youngest, who my father loved,
Because our mother's brow was given
To him with eyes as blue as heaven,
For him my soul was sorely moved;
And truly might it be distress'd
To see such bird in such a nest;
For he was beautiful as day -

(When day was beautiful to me As to young eagles being free) A polar day, which will not see A sunset till its summer's gone,

Its sleepless summer of long light, The snow-clad offspring of the sun!

And thus he was as pure and bright,
And in his natural spirit gay,

With tears for naught but other's ills,
And then they flow'd like mountain rills,
Unless he could assuage the woe
Which he abhorred to view below.

The other was as pure of mind,

But form'd to combat with his kind;
Strong in his frame, and of a mood
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood,
And perish'd in the foremost rank

With joy :- but not in chains to pine;
His spirit wither'd with their clank,
I saw it silently decline-

And so perchance in sooth did mine;

But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.

He was a hunter of the hills,

Had follow'd there the deer and wolf; To him this dungeon was a gulf, And fetter'd feet the worst of ills.