* * * * *
THE TEST.
_Musa loquitur._
I hung my verses in the wind;
Time and tide their faults may find.
All were winnowed through and through;
Five lines lasted sound and true;
Five were smelted in a pot
Than the South more fierce and hot.
These the Siroc could not melt,
Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
And their meaning was more white
Than July's meridian light.
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor Time unmake what poets know.
Have you eyes to find the five
Which five thousand could survive?
RECOLLECTIONS OF KEATS.
_BY AN OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW._
In the village of Enfield, in Middlesex, ten miles on the north road
from London, was my father, John Clarke's school. The house had been
built by a West India merchant, in the latter end of the seventeenth or
beginning of the eighteenth century. It was of the better character of
the domestic architecture of that period,--the whole front being of the
purest red brick, wrought, by means of moulds, into rich designs of
flowers and pomegranates, with heads of cherubim over two niches in
the centre of the building.
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