8. "Now clear, pure, hard, bright, and one by one, like to hailstones,
Short words fall from his lips fast as the first of a shower,--
Now in twofold column, Spondee, Iamb, and Trochee,
Unbroke, firm-set, advance, retreat, trampling along,--
Now with a sprightlier springiness, bounding in triplicate syllables,
Dance the elastic Dactylics in musical cadences on;
Now, their voluminous coil intertangling like huge anacondas,
Roll overwhelmingly onward the sesquipedalian words."




SELECTIONS.

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HERVÉ RIEL.


On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
Did the English fight the French,--woe to France!
And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
Came crowding ship on ship to Saint Malo on the Rance,
With the English fleet in view.

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;