General Notes.-Read the life of Sir Francis Drake in an English history text-book. Note that the poem is written in the Devonshire dialect. Drake died on his ship off Portobello. near Nombre de Dies Bay, coast of Panama, on 28th January, 1596. He was buried in a leaden coffin. Plymouth Hoe is a lofty and rocky ridge just outside the town of Plymouth, in Devonshire. The "drum" was evidently used as a call to quarters when the enemy was in sight. Write a little essay on " Great English Seamen."LESSON 32
SWAllOWS
Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
I, the nightingale, all spring through,
O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,
All spring through till the spring be done, Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,Take flight and follow, and find the sun.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Those swallows! No one has described them; no one has sung their praises worthily. That fatal poverty of language! It makes us impotent. What can we say of our feelings towards the ocean, the swallow, or the rose? How can we pluck out the heart of Nature"s mysteries, and cage her wild force and heavenly beauty in mere twigs and wires of words?
The swallow is a wonder and a delight to me. I could watch those ineffably swift, beautiful, and graceful creatures on the wing for hour after hour. They fill me always with a vague yearning, a strangely mingled feeling of loving admiration and unquenchable desire. If I could but fly with them for one sunny hour! If I could but understand their language! Times out of number have I stood and watched them dipping and flashing and gliding and wheeling in the sunshine and sweet air, and wondered and wondered, What do they mean? What are they? Why am I doomed to crawl like a caterpillar on this dull clay ball, and envy these children of the air their joy, and speed, and power of flight?
Think of it-the glory of the sudden turn, the swift rise, the wide, circle in the warm, spicy air, and then the long, long dive, fifty feet down from the crown of the elm to the nodding plumes of the scented clover!
No, we know nothing of the swallow. He baffles us, delights us, tantalizes us with his superiority; and then, when the grey web of the winter begins to weave in the corner of the sky; he shakes his glossy wings and swims away in the golden track of departing summer.
Robert Blatchford.
Author.-Robert Blatchford, born in 1851, English journalist and author, sometime joint editor of The Clarion. His chief books are Merrie England, A Son of the Forge, Britain for the British, Not Guilty, and The Sorcery Shop.
General Notes.-What is there of " wild force" and " heavenly beauty" in a swallow? " Ineffably" is inexpressibly. " Tantalizes" has reference to Tantalus, who, according to Greek myth, was tortured in the Underworld by being placed in the midst of a lake whose waters reached to his chin, but receded whenever he attempted to allay his thirst, while over his head hung branches laden with choice fruits, which likewise receded whenever he stretched out his hands to grasp them. Write an essay on " What I have Noticed about Swallows."LESSON 33
THE ENglISH FlAg
What is the Flag of England? Winds of the world, declare !
The North Wind blew: "From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go;I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disco Floe;By the great north lights above me, I work the will of God,And the liner splits on the ice-field, or the Dogger fills with cod.
"I barred my gates with iron. I shuttered my doors withflame,
Because, to force my ramparts, your nutshell navies came;I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.
"The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night.
The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the northernlight;
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare,Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!"The South Wind sighed : "From the Virgins, my mid-sea course was ta"enOver a thousand islands lost in an idle main,Where the sea-egg flames on the coral, and the long- backed breakers croonTheir endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.
"Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,I waked the palms to laughter, I tossed the scud in the breeze;Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.
"I have wrenched it free from the halliard, to hang for a wisp on the Horn;I have chased it north to the Lizard ribboned and rolled and torn;I have spread its folds o"er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
"My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross, Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the SouthernCross.
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare, Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!"The East Wind roared: " From the Kuriles. the Bitter Seas.
I come.
And me men call the Home-wind, for I bring the English home.
Look-look well to your shipping ! By the breath of my mad typhoon.
I swept your close-packed prays and beached your best at Kowloon!
"The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead-I plundered Singapore! I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose;And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.
"Never the lotus closes, never the wild-fowl wake,But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for Eng- land"s sake-Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid-Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
"The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows,The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.