Inexorable laws must have their way.

Were any breach of law allowed, who knows
What infinite disasters would ensue !

Such certainty is safest, we suppose,
For creatures such as Men are.

Trite and true!

Yet such a hell of havoc as we saw

To-day makes one half dubious of such law;
Results so dire, alas! who would not call
Demoniac still-if what we see were all ! "

V.

When from the beach with swollen corpses strewn
Like seaweed, 'mid the waste of wreck upthrown
His sea-chest had been brought, and honestly
Returned him-as he much desired

More of this people and their land to see—
(Reports all made—leave asked and given first)
To the far neighbouring continent he sent,
To pay for food and service as required,
For woven stuffs and many an implement
And trinket these barbarians most admired.
Their language then he set himself to learn
With zeal, until the vessel's slow return;

And when in that, and their strange customs versed,
With followers often changed and cheaply paid
From place to place and tribe to tribe he strayed:

And so his way, amused and loitering, made

Into the interior far-to slake the thirst
Adventurous no disasters had allayed.

Canto the First.

The Rescue.

1. Ranolf, after a boar-hunt, his dog killed, fancies an after life for lower animals. 2. A new Italy. 3. His joyous and imaginative temperament. 4. A shriek. 5. Amohia. 6. A rescue. 7. Her story. 8. She returns to the Isle in the Lake. 9. His thoughts of her.

I.

"GLORIOUS! this life of lake

And hill-top! toil and tug through tangled brake,
Dense fern, and smothering broom;

And then such rests as now I take

In sunflecked soft cathedral-gloom

Of forests immemorial! Noble sport
Boar-hunting! yet that furious charge, the last
Of the dead monster there had cut it short
For me, and once for all, belike,

Had not his headlong force impaled
The savage on my tough wood-pike

That, propped with planted knee and foot,

Its butt against a rata-root,

From chest to chine right through him passed