"I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"

All day, within the dreary house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue-fly sang i' the pane; the mouse
Behind the mould'ring wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd through the doors;
Old footsteps trod the upper floors;
Old voices called her from without:
She only said, "My life is dreary--
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moated sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping towards his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary--
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"

TENNYSON.

* * * * *

RISE OF POETRY AMONG THE ROMANS.

The Romans, in the infancy of their state, were entirely rude and
unpolished. They came from shepherds; they were increased from the
refuse of the nations around them; and their manners agreed with their
original. As they lived wholly on tilling their ground at home, or on
plunder from their neighbours, war was their business, and agriculture
the chief art they followed. Long after this, when they had spread their
conquests over a great part of Italy, and began to make a considerable
figure in the world--even their great men retained a roughness, which
they raised into a virtue, by calling it Roman spirit; and which might
often much better have been called Roman barbarity. It seems to me, that
there was more of austerity than justice, and more of insolence than
courage, in some of their most celebrated actions. However that be, this
is certain, that they were at first a nation of soldiers and husbandmen:
roughness was long an applauded character among them; and a sort of
rusticity reigned, even in their senate-house.

[Illustration: ANCIENT ROMAN CENTURION.]

In a nation originally of such a temper as this, taken up almost always
in extending their territories, very often in settling the balance of
power among themselves, and not unfrequently in both these at the same
time, it was long before the politer