"And thou wilt banquet!--air and sea Will render up their hoards for thee; And golden cups for thee will hold Rich nectar, richer than the gold. The cunning caterer still must share The dainties which his toils prepare; The page's lip must taste the wine Before he fills the cup for thine!-- Wilt feast with me on Hecate's cheer? I dread no royal hemlock here! "And night will come; and thou wilt lie Beneath a purple canopy, With lutes to lull thee, flowers to shed Their feverish fragrance round thy bed, A princess to unclasp thy crest, A Spartan spear to guard thy rest.-- Dream, happy one!--thy dreams will be Of danger and of perfidy;-- The Persian lance,--the Carian club!-- I shall sleep sounder in my tub! "And thou wilt pass away, and have A marble mountain o'er thy grave, With pillars tall, and chambers vast, Fit palace for the worm's repast!-- I too shall perish!--let them call The vulture to my funeral; The Cynic's staff, the Cynic's den, Are all he leaves his fellow men,-- Heedless how this corruption fares,-- Yea, heedless though it mix with theirs!" * * * * [From Household Words.] THE LAST OF A LONG LINE. CHAPTER I. Sir Roger Rockville of Rockville was the last of a very long line. It Extended from the Norman Conquest to the present century. His first known ancestor came over with William, and must have been a man of some mark, either of bone and sinew, or of brain, for he obtained what the Americans would call a prime location. As his name does not occur in the Roll of Battle Abbey, he was, of course, not of a very high Norman extraction; but he had done enough, it seems, in the way of knocking down Saxons, to place himself on a considerable eminence in this kingdom. The center of his domains was conspicuous far over the country, through a high range of rock overhanging one of the sweetest rivers in England. On one hand lay a vast tract of rich marsh land, capable, as society advanced, of being converted into meadows; and on the other, as extensive moorlands, finely undulating, and abounding with woods and deer.