.

"Your fetters I allow,
As a strong man may bow
His sportive neck to meet a child's command,
And curb the conscious power
That in one awful hour
Could whelm your halls and temples where they stand.

"When infant Rurik first
His Norseland mother nursed,
My willing flood the future chieftain bore:
To Alexander's fame
I lent my ancient name,
What time my waves ran red with Pagan gore.

"Then Peter came. I laughed
To feel his little craft
Borne on my bosom round the marshy isles:
His daring dream to aid,
My chafing floods I laid,
And saw my shores transfixed with arrowy piles.

"I wait the far-off day
When other dreams shall sway
The House of Empire builded by my side,--
Dreams that already soar
From yonder palace-door,
And cast their wavering colors on my tide,--

"Dreams where white temples rise
Below the purple skies,
By waters blue, which winter never frets,--
Where trees of dusky green
From terraced gardens lean,
And shoot on high the reedy minarets.

"Shadows of mountain-peaks
Vex my unshadowed creeks;
Dark woods o'erhang my silvery birchen bowers;
And islands, bald and high,
Break my clear round of sky,
And ghostly odors blow from distant flowers.

"Then, ere the cold winds chase
These visions from my face,
I see the starry phantom of a crown,
Beside whose blazing gold
This cheating pomp is cold,
A moment hover, as the veil drops down.

"Build on! That day shall see
My streams forever free.
Swift as the wind, and silent as the snow,
The frost shall split each wall:
Your domes shall crack and fall:
My bolts of ice shall strike your barriers low!"

On palace, temple, spire,
The morn's descending fire
In thousand sparkles o'er the city fell:
Life's rising murmur drowned
The Neva where he wound
Between his isles: he keeps his secret well.

ROBSON.

In the whole of London there is not a dirtier, narrower, and more
disreputable thoroughfare than Wych Street. It runs from that lowest
part of Drury Lane where Nell Gwyn once had her lodgings, and stood at
her door in very primitive costume to see the milkmaids go a-Maying, and
pa