So the Queen Boadicéa, standing loftily charioted, Brandishing in her hand a dart and rolling glances lioness-like, Yell’d and shriek'd between her daughters in her fierce volubility.

So the silent colony hearing her tumultuous adversaries
Clash the darts and on the buckler beat with rapid unanimous hand,
Thought on all her evil tyrannies, all her pitiless avarice,
Till she felt the heart within her fall and flutter tremulously,
Then her pulses at the clamouring of her enemy fainted away.
Out of evil evil flourishes, out of tyranny tyranny buds.
Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies.
Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valourous legionary.
Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulodúne.

IN QUANTITY.
ON TRANSLATIONS OF HOMER.

Hexameters and Pentameters.

THESE lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer !

No-but a most burlesque barbarous experiment. When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in England ?

When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon ? Hexameters no worse than daring Germany gave us,

Barbarous experiment, barbarous hexameters.

MILTON.

282

TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD IN BLANK VERSE.

Since I blush to belaud myself a mo

ment

As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.

SPECIMEN OF A TRANSLATION

OF THE ILIAD IN BLANK

VERSE.
So Hector spake ; the Trojans roard

applause;
Then loosed their sweating horses from

the yoke, And each beside his chariot bound his

own; And oxen from the city, and goodly

sheep In haste they drove, and honey-hearted

wine And bread from out the houses brought,

and heap'd Their firewood, and the winds from off

the plain Rollid the rich vapour far into the heaven.

And these all night upon the bridge of

war Sat glorying ; many a fire before them

blazed : As when in heaven the stars about the

moon Look beautiful, when all the winds are

laid, And every height comes out, and jutting

peak And valley, and the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest, and all the

stars Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his

heart : So many a fire between the ships and

stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of

Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire ;
And eating hoary grain and pulse the

steeds,
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden

dawn. Iliad vIII. 542-561.

THE WINDOW;

OR, THE SONG OF THE WRENS.

Four years ago Mr. Sullivan requested me to write a little song-cycle, German fashion, for him to exercise
his art upon. He had been very successful in setting such old songs as 'Orpheus with his lute,' and I
drest up for him, partly in the old style, a puppet, whose almost only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance
to Mr. Sullivan's instrument. I am sorry that my four-year-old puppet should have to dance at all in the
dark shadow of these days; but the music is now completed, and I am bound by my promise.
December, 1870.

A. TENNYSON.
THE WINDOW.
ON THE HILL.

A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover's eye ! The lights and shadows fly!

Oh is it the brook, or a pool, or her winYonder it brightens and darkens down on

dow pane, the plain.

When the winds are up in the morning? * Or, ridge.