As they cannonade away! 
’Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!”
How hope succeeds despair on each Captain’s countenance! 
Out burst all with one accord,
“This is Paradise for Hell! 
Let France, let France’s King
Thank the man that did the thing!”
What a shout, and all one word,
“Herve Riel!”
As he stepped in front once more,
Not a symptom of surprise
In the frank blue Breton eyes,
Just the same man as before.

Then said Damfreville, “My friend,
I must speak out at the end,
Though I find the speaking hard. 
Praise is deeper than the lips: 
You have saved the King his ships,
You must name your own reward. 
’Faith, our sun was near eclipse! 
Demand whate’er you will,
France remains your debtor still. 
Ask to heart’s content and have! or my name’s not Damfreville.”

Then a beam of fun outbroke
On the bearded mouth that spoke,
As the honest heart laughed through
Those frank eyes of Breton blue: 
“Since I needs must say my say,
Since on board the duty’s done,
And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?—­
Since ’tis ask and have, I may—­
Since the others go ashore—­
Come!  A good whole holiday! 
Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!”
That he asked and that he got,—­nothing more.

Name and deed alike are lost: 
Not a pillar nor a post
In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
Not a head in white and black
On a single fishing smack,
In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack
All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. 
Go to Paris:  rank on rank
Search the heroes flung pell-mell
On the Louvre, face and flank! 
You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. 
So, for better and for worse,
Herve Riel, accept my verse! 
In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more
Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!

ROBERT BROWNING.

THE PROBLEM.

“The Problem” (by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-80) is quoted from one end of the world to the other.  Emerson teaches one lesson above all others, that each soul must work out for itself its latent force, its own individual expression, and that with a “sad sincerity.”  “The bishop of the soul” can do no more.

    I like a church; I like a cowl;
    I love a prophet of the soul;
    And on my heart monastic aisles
    Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles: 
    Yet not for all his faith can see
    Would I that cowled churchman be. 
    Why should the vest on him allure,
    Which I could not on me endure?

    Not from a vain or shallow thought
    His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
    Never from lips of cunning fell
    The thrilling Delphic oracle;
    Out from the heart of nature rolled