The eyes of soft-haired virgins. Horrid was His rough appearance to them; the hard pass He had at sea stuck by him. All in flight The virgins scattered, frighted with this sight, About the prominent windings of the flood. All but Nausicaa fled; but she fast stood: Pallas had put a boldness in her breast, And in her fair limbs tender fear comprest. And still she stood him, as resolved to know What man he was; or out of what should grow His strange repair to them. THE DUKE OF BYRON IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH From the 'Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron' By horror of death, let me alone in peace, And leave my soul to me, whom it concerns; You have no charge of it; I feel her free: How she doth rouse, and like a falcon stretch Her silver wings; a threatening death with death; At whom I joyfully will cast her off. I know this body but a sink of folly, The groundwork and raised frame of woe and frailty; The bond and bundle of corruption; A quick corse, only sensible of grief, A walking sepulchre, or household thief: A glass of air, broken with less than breath, A slave bound face to face to death, till death. And what said all you more? I know, besides, That life is but a dark and stormy night Of senseless dreams, terrors, and broken sleeps; A tyranny, devising pains to plague And make man long in dying, racks his death; And death is nothing: what can you say more? I bring a long globe and a little earth, Am seated like earth, betwixt both the heavens, That if I rise, to heaven I rise; if fall, I likewise fall to heaven; what stronger faith Hath any of your souls? what say you more? Why lose I time in these things? Talk of knowledge, It serves for inward use. I will not die Like to a clergyman; but like the captain That prayed on horseback, and with sword in hand, Threatened the sun, commanding it to stand; These are but ropes of sand. FRANCOIS RENE AUGUSTE CHATEAUBRIAND (1768-1848) [Illustration: CHATEAUBRIAND] Viscount de Chateaubriand, the founder of the romantic school in French literature, and one of the most brilliant and polished writers of the first half of the nineteenth century, was born at St. Malo in Brittany, September 14th, 1768. On the paternal side he was a direct descendant of Thierri, grandson of Alain III., who was king of Armorica in the ninth century. Destined for the Church, he became a pronounced skeptic, and entered the army. In his nineteenth year he was presented at court, and became acquainted with men of letters like La Harpe, Le Brun, and Fontanes. At the outbreak of the Revolution he quitted the service, and embarked for America in January, 1791. Tiring of the restraints of civilization, civilization, he plunged into the virgin forests of Canada, and for several months lived with the savages. This remarkable experience inspired his most notable romantic work.