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CXVII.-SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE.

AN ENGLISH PICTURE.- Tennyson.
Nor wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells.
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies

A league of grass, washed by a slow, broad stream,
That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar,
Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on,

Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crowned with the minster towers.

MAN CARED FOR BY ANGELS.

Spenser.

And is there care in heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,
That may compassion of their evils move?
There is: else much more wretched were the case
Of men than beasts. But O, the exceeding grace
Of highest God, that loves his creatures so,
And all his works with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed angels he sends to and fro,

To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe!

How oft do they their silver bowers leave,
To come to succor us that succor want!
How oft do they with golden pinions cleave
The fleeting skies, like flying pursuivant
Against foul fiends to aid us militant!
They for us fight, they watch and duly ward,

And their bright squadrons round about us plant ;

And all for love, and nothing for reward.

O, why should heavenly God to men have such regard?

INGRATITUDE.-Shakspeare.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind;
Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude.

Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky;
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot.

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy tooth is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

FABLE.-Schiller, translated by Coleridge.
For fable is Love's world, his home, his birthplace;
Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays, and talismans,
And spirits, and delightedly believes

Divinities, being himself divine.

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,

The power, the beauty, and the majesty,

That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,

Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and watery depths,-all these have vanished; They live no longer in the faith of reason.

But still the heart doth need a language, still

Doch the old instinct bring back the old names.

THE GOOD GREAT MAN.- Coleridge.

How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits,
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.

For shame, dear friend; renounce this canting strain.
What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain ?
Place, titles, salary, a gilded chain-

Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain?
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man; three treasures—love, and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;

And three firm friends, more sure than day and night—
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.

THE DYING GLADIATOR.*.

I see before me the gladiator lie;
He leans upon his hand

Byron.

his manly brow

Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his drooped head sinks gradually low;

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder shower; and now

The arena swims around him

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he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who

won.

He heard it, but he heeded not- his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,

* A celebrated marble statue in the Capitol at Rome

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play;
There was their Dacian mother he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday:

All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire !

NIGHT.-J. Blanco White.

Mysterious night! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven came;
And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O sun? or who could find,
While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we then shun death, with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

ON LUCY, COUNTESS OF BEDFORD. - Ben Jonson. This morning, timely rapt with holy fire,

I thought to form unto my zealous muse
What kind of creature I could most desire
To honor, serve, and love; as poets use.
I meant to make her fair, and free, and wise,
Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great;
I meant the daystar should not brighter rise,

Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat;
I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness-pride;

I meant each softest virtue there should meet, Fit in that softer bosom to reside.

Only a learned and a manly soul

I purposed her; that should, with even powers,
The rock, the spindle, and the shears control
Of destiny, and spin her own free hours.

Such when I meant to feign, and wished to see,
My muse bade, Bedford write, and that was she.

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sprang;

In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberer's gang,
Where from a hundred lakes
young rivers
He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;
Where feeds the moose and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
He heard when in the grove at intervals,
With sudden roar, the aged pine tree falls
One crash, the death hymn of the perfect tree,
Declares the close of its green century.

Low lies the plant to whose creation went
Sweet influence from every element;

Whose living towers the years conspired to build,

Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild.

MUSIC OF NATURE.- Coleridge.

Methinks it should have been impossible

Not to love all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute, still air
Is music slumbering on her instrument.

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