rk is but begun!
With quick seed his end is rife
Whose long tale of conquering strife
Shows no triumph like his life
Lost and won._

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.--1828-1882.
_On Wellington's Funeral, Nov. 18th, 1852._

LX. THE DIVER.

EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON.--1805-1873.

_Translated from the German of Schiller_.

"O where is the knight or the squire so bold
As to dive to the howling Charybdis below?--
I cast in the whirlpool a goblet of gold,
And o'er it already the dark waters flow;
Whoever to me may the goblet bring,
Shall have for his guerdon that gift of his king."

He spoke, and the cup from the terrible steep,
That, rugged and hoary, hung over the verge
Of the endless and measureless world of the deep,
Swirl'd into the maelstrom that madden'd the surge.
"And where is the diver so stout to go--
I ask ye again--to the deep below?"

And the knights and the squires that gather'd around,
Stood silent--and fix'd on the ocean their eyes;
They look'd on the dismal and savage profound,
And the peril chill'd back every thought of the prize.
And thrice spoke the monarch: "The cup to win,
Is there never a wight who will venture in?"

And all as before heard in silence the king,
Till a youth with an aspect unfearing but gentle,
'Mid the tremulous squires stepp'd out from the ring,
Unbuckling his girdle, and doffing his mantle;
And the murmuring crowd, as they parted asunder,
On the stately boy cast their looks of wonder.

As he strode to the marge of the summit, and gave
One glance on the gulf of that merciless main,
Lo! the wave that for ever devours the wave,
Casts roaringly up the Charybdis again:
And, as with the swell of the far thunder-boom,
Rushes foamingly forth from the heart of the gloom.

And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars,
As when fire is with water commix'd and contending,
And the spray of its wrath to the welkin up-soars,
And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending;
And it never _will_ rest, nor from travail be free,
Like a sea that is laboring the birth of a sea.

Yet, at length, comes a lull o'er the mighty commotion,
And dark through the whiteness, and still through the swell,
The whirlpool cleaves downward and downward in ocean
A yawni