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39 
pathetic a subject to be disbelieved. The consequence is that 
every poet and poetaster who visits the Strid finds the poetic 
afflatus working within him so powerfully that he must make a 
poem on the incident. We have only space to make a selection 
of two—Rogers and Wordsworth. Rogers’ poem is entitled ‘‘ The 
Boy of Egremond.” I may premise that there is much more 
local colouring in Rogers’ poem than in that of Wordsworth’s : 
Say what remains when hope is fled ? 
She answered, ‘‘ Endless weeping! ”’ 
For in the herdsman’s eyes she read, 
Who in his shroud lay sleeping. 
At Embsay rang the matin bell, 
The stag was roused on Barden Fell; 
And mingled sounds were swelling, dying, 
And down the Wharfe a horn was flying ; 
When near the cabin in the wood ; 
In tartan clad and forest green, 
With hound in leash and hawk in hood, 
The Boy of Egremond was seen. 
Blithe was his song, a song of yore; 
But where the rock is rent in two 
And the river rushes through 
The voice was heard no more! 
Then but a step, the gulph he passed 
But that step, it was his last, 
As through the mist he winged his way 
(A cloud that hovers night and day) 
The hound hung back, and back he drew 
His master and his merlin too ; 
That narrow place of noise and strife 
Received their little all of life. 
Before reading the second stanza it may be necessary to remark 
that good as it is this is not a fair specimen of Rogers’ best 
poetry. His nephew, Mr. Samuel Sharpe, who wrote his life, 
says ‘‘The lines entitled ‘The Boy of Egremond’ are perhaps 
the least valuable of his poetry.”” This seems to me a rather 
severe criticism, because there is considerable dramatic pathos 
in Rogers’ poem. 
There now the matin bell is rung, 
The ‘‘ miserere” duly sung; 
And holy men in cowl and hood 
Are wandering up and down the wood, 
But what avail they? Ruthless lord, 
Thou didst not shudder when the sword 
Here on the young its fury spent, 
The helpless and the innocent, 
Sit now and answer groan for groan 
The child before thee is thine own, 
And she who sadly wanders there 
The mother in her long despair 
Shall oft remind thee waking, sleeping, 
Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping. 
Of those who would not be consoled 
When red with blood the river rolled. 
