Thus mute my voice when thou art gone, And thus my vigil waits thine eyes; But when once more I view their dawn, My matin song will gladly rise, E’er may it reach a willing ear, And welcome prove, when thou art near. * * * * * =A POET’S THOUGHT.= =BY WM. ALBERT SUTLIFFE.= A thought that lay anear a Poet’s heart, Found utterance into this cloudy world, And stirred some souls with rapture. This poor bard, Whose home was where the rugged mountains stoop Their foreheads o’er small streams that plash their feet, Sang a sweet note that through a palace stole, Fluttering a queen’s proud breast until she wept. For the same God doth deftly tune the strings Of all men’s souls to one melodious strain, And Nature runs one silver chord through all, Which, sadly touched, gives each a tearful thrill. * * * * * =THE COUNTESS OF MONTFORT;= =OR, THE RELIEF OF HENNEBON.= =BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.= I wish now to return to the Countess of Montfort, who possessed the courage of a man and the heart of a lion. Froissart—Chronicles, VOL. I. C. 72. The age of knight errantry, as we read of it, and in some degree believe, as recited in the Morte d’Arthur, and the other British or Breton romances, had never any real existence more than its heroes, Lancelot du Lac, Tristran le Blanc, or Pellinant or Pellinore, or any of the heroes of “the table round;” the very date of whose alleged existence, centuries before chivalry or feudalism was heard of, precludes the possibility of their identity. The age of chivalry, however, had a real being; it was in very truth “the body of a time, its form and pressure;” and that was the age of Edward the Third, and the Black Prince of England, of the Captal de Buch and Sire Eustache de Ribeaumont, of Bertrand du Gueselin, and Charles of Luxemburg, the valiant blind king of Bohemia, and those who won or died at Crecy and Poictiers. That was the age, when knights shaped their conduct to the legends which they read in the old romances, which were to them the code of honor, bravery and virtue.