“Or has your good woman, if one you have,
      In Cornwall ever been? 
    For an if she have, I’ll venture my life
      She has drunk of the Well of St. Keyne.”

   “I have left a good woman who never was here,”
      The stranger he made reply;
   “But that my draught should be better for that,
      I pray you answer me why,”

   “St. Keyne,” quoth the countryman, “many a time
      Drank of this crystal well,
    And before the angel summoned her
      She laid on the water a spell.

   “If the husband of this gifted well
      Shall drink before his wife,
    A happy man thenceforth is he,
      For he shall be master for life.

   “But if the wife should drink of it first,
      God help the husband then!”
    The stranger stoop’d to the Well of St. Keyne,
      And drank of the waters again.

   “You drank of the well, I warrant, betimes?”
      He to the countryman said;
    But the countryman smiled as the stranger spake,
      And sheepishly shook his head.

   “I hastened as soon as the wedding was done,
      And left my wife in the porch,
    But i’ faith she had been wiser than me,
      For she took a bottle to church,”

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

 THE NAUTILUS AND THE AMMONITE.

“The Nautilus and the Ammonite” finds a place here out of respect to a twelve-year-old girl who recited it at one of our poetry hours years ago.  It made a profound impression on the fifty pupils assembled, I never read it without feeling that it stands test.  Anonymous.

    The nautilus and the ammonite
      Were launched in friendly strife,
    Each sent to float in its tiny boat
      On the wide, wide sea of life.

    For each could swim on the ocean’s brim,
      And, when wearied, its sail could furl,
    And sink to sleep in the great sea-deep,
      In its palace all of pearl.

    And theirs was a bliss more fair than this
      Which we taste in our colder clime;
    For they were rife in a tropic life—­
      A brighter and better clime.

    They swam ’mid isles whose summer smiles
      Were dimmed by no alloy;
    Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm,
      And life one only joy.

    They sailed all day through creek and bay,
      And traversed the ocean deep;
    And at night they sank on a coral bank,
      In its fairy bowers to sleep.

    And the monsters vast of ages past
      They beheld in their ocean caves;
    They saw them ride in their power and pride,
      And sink in their deep-sea graves.

    And hand in hand, from strand to strand,
      They sailed in mirth and glee;
    These fairy shells, with their crystal cells,
      Twin sisters of the sea.

    And they came at last to a sea long past,
      But as they reached its shore,
    The Almighty’s breath spoke out in death,
      And the ammonite was no more.