A FOOTBALL PLAYER.

IF I could paint you, friend, as you stand there,
Guard of the goal, defensive, open-eyed,

Watching the tortured bladder slide and glide
Under the twinkling feet; arms bare, head bare,
The breeze a-tremble through crow-tufts of hair;
Red-brown in face, and ruddier, having spied
A wily foeman breaking from the side;
Aware of him, — of all else unaware;
If I could limn you, as you leap and fling

Your weight against his passage, like a wall;
Clutch him, and collar him, and rudely cling
For one brief moment till he falls
you fall:
My sketch would have what Art can never give —
Sinew and breath and body; it would live.

THE FLUTE OF DAPHNIS.

(From "Echoes from Theocritus.")

I AM the flute of Daphnis. On this wall

He nailed his tribute to the great god Pan, What time he grew from boyhood, shapely, tall,

And felt the first deep ardors of a man.

Through adult veins more swift the songtide ran, – A vernal stream where swollen torrents call

For instant ease in utterance. Then began That course of triumph reverenced by all.

Him the gods loved, and more than other men Blessed with the flower of beauty, and endowed

His soul of music with the strength of ten.
Now on a festal day I see the crowd

Look fondly at my resting-place, and when
I think whose lips have pressed me, I am proud.

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE, an English poet and novelist, born at Liverpool, Jan. 20, 1866. He was educated at Liverpool College, and at the age of sixteen he entered the office of an accountant. While here he privately printed his first volume of poetry, "My Ladie's Sonnets" (1887). In 1891 he was engaged as literary critic for the London Star, for which he wrote under the pen-name "Logroller." He also joined the staff of the Speaker and of the Daily Chronicle. He has contributed much to the Nineteenth Century, the New Review, the Pall Mall Budget, and The Book of the Rhymers' Club. His works include, also, "Volumes in Folio " (1889); "The Book-Bills of Narcissus " (1889); "George Meredith" (1889); " English Poems" (1892); "Prose Fancies " (1894).

SUNSET IN THE CITY.

ABOVE the town a monstrous wheel is turning,
With glowing spokes of red;

Low in the West its fiery axle burning;
And lost amid the spaces overhead,

A vague white moth, the moon, is fluttering.

Above the town an azure sea is flowing,

'Mid long peninsulas of shining sand; From opal into pearl the moon is growing,

Dropped like a shell upon the changing strand.

Within the town the streets grow strange and haunted,
And dark against the western lakes of green
The buildings change to temples, and unwonted
Shadows and sounds creep in where day has been.

TREE WORSHIP.

GIVE me to clasp this earth with feeding roots like thine,
To mount yon heaven with such star-aspiring head,
Fill full with sap and buds this shrunken life of mine,

And from my boughs, oh! might such stalwart sons be shed.

With loving cheek pressed close against thy horny breast,
I hear the roar of sap mounting within thy veins;
Tingling with buds, thy great hands open toward the west,
To catch the sweetheart winds that bring the sister rains.

O winds that blow from out the fruitful mouth of God,
O rains that softly fall from His all-loving eyes,
You that bring buds to trees and daisies to the sod -
O God's best Angel of the Spring, in me arise.

TENNYSON.

WE mourn as though the great good song he gave
Passed with the singer's own informing breath:
Ah, golden book, for thee there is no grave,

Thine is a rhyme that shall not taste of death.

One sings a flower, and one a voice, and one

Screens from the world a corner choice and small, Each toy its little laureate hath, but none

Sings of the whole: yea, only he sang all.

Fame loved him well, because he loved not Fame,
But Peace and Love, all other things before,
A man was he ere yet he was a name,

His song was much because his love was more.

AN EPITHALAMIUM.

SOMEWHERE Safe-hidden away
In a meadow of mortals untrod,
I saw in my dreaming to-day

A wonderful flower of God;
Somewhere deep buried in air,

In a flashing abysm afar,
I came in my dreaming aware

Of the beam of a mystical star:
And I knew that each wonderful thing
Was the song that I never may sing.

Yet still it may be for my glory,

Though never the priesthood to bear,
To bend in the shrine of your story,
As the lowliest acolyte there;
And would that the rhyme I am bringing,
A censer incuriously wrought,

Might seem not too poor for the swinging,
Nor too simple the gums I have brought:
No marvel of gold-carven censer,
No frankincense fragrance or myrrh.

And O, if some light from the splendor

Of mystical Host might strike through These wreaths as they rise and transfigure Their gray to a glory for you, A glory for you as the sunrise

Of the years that to-night have begun, What singer would sing for his song craft Boon richer than that I had won? What token to augur were given More bright with the blessing of Heaven!

JULES LEMAÎTRE.

JULES LEMAÎTRE, a French critic, born at Vennecy, April 25, 1853. His childhood was passed at Travers, near Beaugency. He completed his school-work in Paris, and received his baccalaureate degree in July, 1871. For five years he was Professor of Rhetoric in Havre, and in 1880 was nominated President of the Faculty of the High School of Literature of Algiers. Two years later he was represented on the Faculty of Besançon as head of the department of French literature. Doctor of Letters in 1883, he was offered a professorship on the Faculty of Grenoble. In 1884 he became editor of the Revue Bleue and dramatic critic for the Journal des Débats. He has written some Oriental verses and a collection of poems entitled "Les Médaillons," as well as some plays: "Le Théâtre de Dancourt," "Les Contemporains," and "Impressions de Théâtre." His novel "Sérénus" is the story of a martyr.

ON THE INFLUENCES OF RECENT NORTHERN LITERATURE. (From "Les Contemporains.")

ONCE more the Saxons and Germans, the Thracians and peoples of snow-covered Thule, have conquered Gaul: an important but not a surprising event.

One of our most pardonable faults is acknowledged to be a certain coquettish yet generous intellectual hospitality. As soon as a Frenchman has succeeded in acquiring not alone national and classical culture, but European culture as well, it is marvelous to see how, at one stroke, he sets himself free from all literary chauvinism. At this point the most serious clasp hands, so to speak, with the most frivolous; with the class emancipated from prejudices in favor of clean linen, as well as with those who, to use an expression henceforth symbolical, are "laundered in London."

It is evident that Renan, for instance, who as a matter of fact understood only superficially contemporary French literature, was always dominated by German science and genius, and laced Goethe, and even Herder, above all that is best among us.