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Then Dian sees a right strange sight
As, bidding him a fond good-night,
She flings a silvery kiss to light

In that deep oak-tree hollow,
And finds that gold and crimson nose
A moving, munching, ravenous rose
That up and down unceasing goes,
Save when he stops to swallow!
He finds it hard to swallow !

Ay, now his best becomes his worst,
For honey cannot quench his thirst,
Though he should eat until he burst;
But, ah, the skies are kindly,

And from their tender depths of blue
They send their silver-sliding dew.
So Bill thrusts out his tongue anew
And waits to catch it-blindly!

For ah, the stars are kindly!

And sometimes, with a shower of rain,
They strive to ease their prisoner's pain:
Then Bill thrusts out his tongue again

With never a grace, the sinner!
And day and night and day goes by,
And never a comrade comes anigh,
And still the honey swells as high
For supper, breakfast, dinner!

Yet Bill has grown no thinner!

The young moon grows to full and throws
Her buxom kiss upon his nose,
As nightly over the tree she goes,

And peeps and smiles and passes,

Then with her fickle silver flecks

Our old black galleon's dreaming decks;
And then her face, with nods and becks,
In midmost ocean glasses.

'Twas ever the way with lasses!

Ah, Didymus, hast thou won indeed
That Paradise which is thy meed?
(Thy tale not all that run may read !)
Thy sweet hath now no leaven!
Now, like an onion in a cup

Of mead, thou liest for Jove to sup,
Could Polyphemus lift thee up
With Titan hands to heaven!

This great oak-cup to heaven!

The second canto ceased; and, as they raised
Their wine-cups with the last triumphant note,
Sir Francis Bacon raised his grating voice-
"This honey which, in some sort, may be styled
The Spettle of the Stars . . ." 'Bring the Canary!"
Ben Jonson roared. "It is a moral wine

And suits the third, last canto!" At one draught
John Davis drained it and began anew.

BLACK BILL'S HONEY-MOON.

CANTO THE THIRD.

A month went by. We were hoisting sail!
We had lost all hope of Bill;

Though, laugh as you may at a seaman's tale,
He was fast in his honey-comb still!
And often he thinks of the chaplain's word
In the days he shall see no more,-

How the Sweet, indeed, of the Sour hath need;
And the Sea, likewise, of the Shore.

Chorus: The Chaplain's word of the Air and a Bird;
Of the Sea, likewise, and the Shore!

"O, had I the wings of a dove, I would fly

To a heaven, of aloes and gall!

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I have honeyed," he yammers, my nose and mine eye,
And the bees cannot sting me at all!

And it's O, for the sting of a little brown bee,
Or to blister my hands on a rope,

Or to buffet a thundering broad-side sea
On a deck like a mountain-slope!"

Chorus: With her mast snapt short, and a list to port
And a deck like a mountain-slope.

But alas, and he thinks of the chaplain's voice
When that roar from the woods out-brake-
R-r-re-joice! R-r-re-joice! Now, wherefore rejoice
In the music a bear could make?

"Tis a judgment, may-be, that I stick in this tree;
Yet in this I out-argued him fair!

Though I live, though I die, in this honey-comb pie,
By Pope Joan, there's no sense in a bear!

Chorus: Notes in a nightingale, plums in a pie,
By'r Lakin, no Sense in a Bear!

He knew not our anchor was heaved from the mud:
He was growling it over again,

When a strange sound suddenly froze his blood,
And curdled his big slow brain!—

A marvellous sound, as of great steel claws

Gripping the bark of his tree,

Softly ascended! Like lightning ended

His honey-comb reverie!

Chorus: The honey-comb quivered! The little leaves shivered! Something was climbing the tree!

Something that breathed like a fat sea-cook,

Or a pirate of fourteen ton!

But it clomb like a cat (tho' the whole tree shook)

Stealthily tow'rds the sun,

Till, as Black Bill gapes at the little blue ring

Overhead, which he calls the sky,

It is clean blotted out by a monstrous Thing
Which-hath larded its nose and its eye.

Chorus: O, well for thee, Bill, that this monstrous Thing
Hath blinkered its little red eye.

Still as a mouse lies Bill with his face

Low down in the dark sweet gold,

While this monster turns round in the leaf-fringed space!
Then-taking a good firm hold,

As the skipper descending the cabin-stair,
Tail-first, with a vast slow tread,
Solemnly, softly, cometh this Bear
Straight down o'er the Bo'sun's head.

Chorus: Solemnly-slowly-cometh this Bear,
Tail-first o'er the Bo'sun's head.

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Nearer-nearer-then all Bill's breath
Out-bursts in one leap and yell!

And this Bear thinks, "Now am I gripped from beneath
By a roaring devil from hell!"

And madly Bill clutches his brown bow-legs,

And madly this Bear doth hale,

With his little red eyes fear-mad for the skies
And Bill's teeth fast in his tail!

Small wonder a Bear should quail !

To have larded his nose, to have greased his eyes,
And be stung at the last in his tail.

Pull, Bo'sun! Pull, Bear! In the hot sweet gloom,
Pull Bruin, pull Bill, for the skies!

Pull-out of their gold with a bombard's boom
Come Black Bill's honeyed thighs!

Pull Up! Up! Up! with a scuffle and scramble,
To that little blue ring of bliss,

This Bear doth go with our Bo'sun in tow
Stinging his tail, I wis.

Chorus: And this Bear thinks-"Many great bees I know,
But there never was Bee like this!

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All in the gorgeous death of day

We had slipped from our emerald creek,
And our Cloud i the Sun was careening away
With the old gay flag at the peak,
When, suddenly, out of the purple wood,
Breast-high thro' the lilies there danced
A tall lean figure, black as a nigger,
That shouted and waved and pranced!

A gold-greased figure, but black as a nigger,
Waving his shirt as he pranced!

""Tis Hylas! "Tis Hylas!" our chaplain flutes,
And our skipper he looses a shout!

""Tis Bill! Black Bill, in his old sea-boots!
Stand by to bring her about!

Har-r-rd a-starboard!" And round we came,
With a lurch and a dip and a roll,

And a banging boom thro' the rose-red gloom
For our old Black Bo'sun's soul!

Alive! Not dead! Tho' behind his head
He'd a seraphin's aureole !

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And our chaplain he sniffs, as Bill finished his tale,
(With the honey still scenting his hair!)
O'er a plate of salt beef and a mug of old ale-
"By Pope John, there's no sense in a bear!"
And we laughed, but our Bo'sun he solemnly growls
-"Till the sails of yon heavens be furled,

It taketh-now, mark!—all the beasts in the Ark,
Teeth and claws, too, to make a good world!"

Till the great-blue-sails-be-furled,

It taketh-now, mark !-all the beasts in the Ark,
Teeth and claws, too, to make a good world!

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"Sack! Sack! Canary! Malmsey! Muscadel!"—
As the last canto ceased, the Mermaid Inn
Chorussed. I flew from laughing voice to voice;
But, over all the hubbub, rose the drone
Of the great lawyer,-"Now, this Muscovy
Is a cold clime, not favourable to bees
(Or love, which is a weakness of the south)
As well might be supposed. Yet, as hot lands.
Gender hot fruits and odoriferous spice,

In this case we may think that honey and flowers
Are comparable with the light airs of May
And a more temperate region. Also we see,
As Pliny saith, this honey being a swette
Of heaven, a certain spettle of the stars,
Which, gathering unclean vapours as it falls,
Hangs as a fat dew on the boughs, the bees
Obtain it partly thus, and afterwards
Corrupt it in their stomaches, and at last
Expel it through their mouths and harvest it
In hives; yet, of its heavenly source it keeps
A great part. Thus, by various principles
Of natural philosophy we observe

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And, as he leaned to Drayton, droning thus,
I saw a light gleam of celestial mirth

Flit o'er the face of Shakespeare-scarce a smile-
A swift irradiation from within

As of a cloud that softly veils the sun.

IN THE CRYPT OF ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL:

19TH OCTOBER 1910.

(A TRIBUTE TO CURZON WYLLIE.)

A SILENT company of sombreclad men and women is filing into the cathedral and is gradually filling up the aisles and passages of that portion of the ancient crypt upon whose walls hang tablets commemorating the lives and deaths of those who have served England in India. And those too who are passing in and peopling the dim-lit vacant spaces are all of them men who, whether at home or abroad, have given of their best years, and work we cannot buy, to the service of the Great Dependency; who have experienced some of the joys and many of the sorrows, the high hopes and aching disappointments of India; and who know well, and their women-kind perhaps best of all-since they also serve who stand and wait,—the toll which India takes of her servants and the ungrudged sacrifices her service entails.

it is perhaps something of a relief when the silver voices of the choir break unheralded into Barnby's glorious rendering of the 437th Hymn. It is less a song of lamentation than a chorus of triumph, praise of the soldier "faithful, true and bold," who out of strife and tribulation has come into his own again. To this follows the xxivth Psalm, read at Curzon Wyllie's grave and here again at the Memorial raised to him by those who knew and therefore loved him, and wherein we are reminded that it is only those-like our dear friend-who have clean hands and pure hearts who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord and rise up in His holy place.

Many of the great ones of England would have willingly pronounced the words whereby it is customary to commend Memorials such as this to the sacred keeping of the Church, but it was surely in every way most fitting that this duty should have been entrusted to the Indian soldier par excellence, the old Field-Marshal, who, himself beloved of all

Here in the heart of the crypt there is the hush almost of the grave-side the ceaseless roar of London's streets comes down to us in no more than an almost imperceptible murmur -and to the waiting mourners men, should know best how

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