Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs as heretofore. Ah, singing birds, your happy music pour; Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile; Flit to these ancient gods we still adore: "It may be we shall touch the happy isle." Translation of Andrew Lang. BALLADE DES PENDUS Where wide the forest bows are spread, Where Flora wakes with sylph and fay, Are crowns and garlands of men dead, All golden in the morning gay; Within this ancient garden gray Are clusters such as no man knows, Where Moor and Soldan bear the sway: _This is King Louis's orchard close_! These wretched folk wave overhead, With such strange thoughts as none may say; A moment still, then sudden sped, They swing in a ring and waste away. The morning smites them with her ray; They toss with every breeze that blows, They dance where fires of dawning play: _This is King Louis's orchard close_! All hanged and dead, they've summonèd (With Hell to aid, that hears them pray) New legions of an army dread. Now down the blue sky flames the day; The dew dies off; the foul array Of obscene ravens gathers and goes, With wings that flap and beaks that flay: _This is King Louis's orchard close_! ENVOI Prince, where leaves murmur of the May, A tree of bitter clusters grows; The bodies of men dead are they! _This is King Louis's orchard close_! Translation of Andrew Lang. ANNA LÆTITIA BARBAULD (1743-1825) When Lætitia Aikin Barbauld was about thirty years old, her friend, Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, wishing to establish a college for women, asked her to be its principal. In her letter of refusal Mrs. Barbauld said:--"A kind of Academy for ladies, where they are to be taught in a regular manner the various branches of science, appears to me better calculated to form such characters as the _Précieuses_ or _Femmes Savantes_ than good wives or agreeable companions. The very best way for a woman to acquire knowledge is from conversation with a father or brother.... The thefts of knowledge in our sex are only connived at while carefully concealed, and if displayed are punished with disgrace." It is odd to find Mrs. Barbauld thus reflecting the old-fashioned view of the capacity and requirements of her own sex, for she herself belonged to that brilliant group--Hannah More, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Joanna Baillie, Mary Russell Mitford--who were the living refutation of her inherited theories. Their influence shows a pedagogic impulse to present morally helpful ideas to the public. [Illustration: ANNA L. BARBAULD] From preceding generations whose lives had been concentrated upon household affairs, these women pioneers had acquired the strictly practical bent of mind which comes out in all their verse, as in all their prose.