POETRY.

A ROMAN VILLA. (CHEDWORTH).

ONE evening when his ferret strayed,

The keeper turned about,

And fetched a lantern and a spade

To dig the truant out.

Dark weeds the autumn sunset wore, Wild winds were in the wood ; The black leaves of the sycamore Lay trampled in the mud.

It seemed as though the Earth were sad, That she must show again Those ancient mysteries she had Concealed from common men.

The goodman dug, and paused awhile To hear the owlets call, And then his mattock stuck a tile, And then a buried walL Here where the shelving valley fills The streams of reedy Leach, Where this green theatre of hills

Is clothed with rustling beech, He made his home and saw the

SIM

Turn westward day by day, And marked the changing sea- sons run From blossom to decay.

Far from the camp and city's strife, We trace his easy path, The cycle of his careless life, The peristyle and bath. And so we stand to-day and trace The Roman's lost abode, And feel the sun that browned his face, And tread the stones he trod.

Here through the livelong summer hours

He dreamed his span away, And loved the scented Southern flowers, The breath of new-mown bay.

The pears and fig-trees row and

TOW,

The plot of herbs and spice, The trellised alleys all aglow With golden helichryse.

He loved the song of rustling trees, He loved to hear the hum Of lazy-droning summer bees Round his triclinium.

Pass gently through his corridor With sherds of shattered frieze, [floor Tread lightly on the pictured These mellow effigies.

Here's Summer, crowne 1 with bearded ears Full flushed with harvesting, The Autumn with his bull-rush spears The birds that sang in spring.

And Winter's face, jocund and red, With coat and buskins tanned, The cap drawn tight about his head, The rabbit in his hand. Methinks 'twas here his laughtlar

rang [frog, When Leach was tied with When flaming beech - logs cracked and sang

Deep in his hypocaust.

Old Roman in these woodland By Leach's reedy flow, [dells

Amid the snow-white lily bells You planted long ago,

We wonder who you were, aucT now

If still your memory clings To this fair home on Cotswol d's brow, To these sweet earthly things I

Or do your bones forgetful sleep In some forgotten tomb, [keep,

With all those other bones that The same oblivious gloom ?- The Saxon with the battle-shout And ruin in his train, font, The Dane who drove the S.ix)n.

The Frank who slew the Dane.

What though the gloom wait us, and those That shall be yet to come, Till every song at evening closer And singers all are dumb, — Thou and thy works shall never- But still from age to age [die,.

Are with us everlastingly A deathless heritage.

J. M. F.