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TALES FROM SHAKSPEARE.

grass, they sang repose to her departed spirit, and covering her over with leaves and flowers, Pohdore said, "While summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I will daily strew thy sad grave. The pale primrose, that flower most like thy face; the blue-bell, like thy clear veins; and the leaf of eglantine, which is not sweeter than was thy breath; all these I will strew over thee. Yea, and the furred moss in winter, when there are no flowers to cover thy sweet corse."

When they had finished her funeral obsequies, they departed very sorrowful.

Imogen had not been long left alone, when, the effect of the sleepy drug going off", she awaked, and easily shaking off the slight covering of leaves and flowers they had thrown over her, she arose, and imagining she had been dreaming, she said, "I thought I was a cave-keeper, and cook to honest creatures; how came I here, covered with flowers?" Not being able to find her way back to the cave, and seeing nothing of her new companions, she concluded it was certainly all a dream; and once more Imogen set out on her weary pilgrimage, hoping at last she should find her way to MilfordHaven, and thence get a passage in some ship bound for Italy; for all her thoughts were still with her husband Posthumus, whom she intended to seek in the disguise of a page.

But great events were happening at this time, of which Imogen knew nothing; for a war had suddenly broken out between the Roman emperor Augustus Cæsar, and Cymbeline the king of Britain: and a Roman army had landed to invade Britain, and was advanced into the very forest over