Prepared to plunge into the stream, he fears,

Not for himself, but for the charge he bears.

Anxious, he stops a while, and thinks in haste,

Then, desperate in distress, resolves at last.

A knotty lance of well-boiled oak he bore;

The middle part with cork he covered o'er:

He closed the child within the hollow space;

With twigs of bending osier bound the case,

Then poised the spear, heavy with human weight,

And thus invoked my favour for the freight:—