Page images
PDF
EPUB

In all their affliction he was afflicted,

And the angel of his presence saved them;
In his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
And he bare them and carried them all the days of old.
But they rebelled and vexed his Holy Spirit;
Therefore he has turned to be their enemy,

And he fought against them.

4. Then he remembered the days of old, Moses and his people, saying, Where is He that brought them up out of the sea

With the shepherd and his flock?

Where is He that put his Holy Spirit within him?

That led them by the right hand of Moses, with his glorious arm, Dividing the water before them,

To make himself an everlasting name?

That led them through the deep,

As a horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble?

5. Look down from heaven,

And behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory;
Where is thy zeal and thy strength,

The sounding of thy bowels, and of thy mercies toward me?
Are they restrained?

Doubtless thou art our father,

Though Abraham be ignorant of us,

And Israel acknowledge us not;

Thou, O Lord! art our Father,

Our Redeemer: thy name is from everlasting.

ISAIAH, OH. LXIII.

LESSON CCXIII.

APOSTROPHE TO MONT BLANC.

1. HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, oh sovereign +Blanc !
The Arnè, and the Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly, while thou, dread mountain form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,

Deep is the sky and black: +transpicuous deep,
An tebon mass! Methinks thou piercest it,

As with a wedge! but when I look again,

It seems thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.

2. Oh dread and silent form! I gazed on thee,

Till thou, still present to my bodily eye,

Didst vanish from my thought. +Entranced in prayer,
I worshiped the Invisible alone;

Yet thou, methinks, wast working on my soul,
E'en like some deep, enchanting melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it.

3. But I awake, and with a busier mind,
And active will, self-conscious, offer now,
Not as before, involuntary prayer
And passive adoration.

4.

Hand and voice,
Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake!
Green fields and icy cliffs, all join my hymn!
And thou, O silent mountain, sole and bare,
O! blacker than the darkness, all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink,
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! wake, oh wake, and utter praise!

5. Who sank thy sunless pillars in the earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee father of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad,
Who called you forth from night and utter death?
From darkness let you loose, and icy dens,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you +invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

6. And who commanded, and the silence came,
"Here shall the billows stiffen and have rest?
Ye ice-falls! ye that from yon dizzy hights
Adown enormous ravines steeply slope;
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty noise,
And stopped at once, amid their maddest plunge,
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

7. Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with lovely-flowers
Of living blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! God! the torrents like a shout of nations
Utter; the ice-plain bursts, and answers, God!
God! sing the meadow-streams with gladsome voice,
And pine groves with their soft and soul-like sound:
The silent snow-mass, loosening, thunders, God!

8. Ye dreadless flowers, that fringe the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, bounding by the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain blast!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!

Ye signs and wonders of the elements,
Utter forth God! and fill the hills with praise!

9. And thou, oh silent form, alone and bare,
Whom, as I lift again my head, bowed low
In silent adoration, I again behold,

And to thy summit upward from thy base
Sweep slowly, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Awake, thou mountain form! Rise, like a cloud;
Rise, like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills!
Thou dread tembassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, calls on God.

COLERIDGE.

LESSON CCXIV.

THUNDER-STORM ON THE ALPS.

1. CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wide world I dwell in, is a thing
Which warns me with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
To waft me from distractions; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,

That I with stern delight should e'er have been so moved.

2. All heaven and earth are still; though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:
All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,
All is concentered in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all, creator and defense.

3. The sky is changed! and such a change! O night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong!
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling *crags among,
Leaps the live thunder!-not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue;
And Jura answers through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

+

+

4. And this is in the night :-Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight-
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines!-a phosphoric sea!
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!
And now again, 't is black; and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
5. Now, where the swift Rhone +cleaves his way between
Hights, which appear as lovers who have parted

In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;
Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
Love was the very root of the fond rage,

Which blighted their life's bloom, and then-departed!—
Itself expired, but leaving them an age

Of years, all winters-war within themselves to wage;

6. Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,
The mightiest of the storms has ta'en his stand!
For here, not one, but many make their play,
And fling their thunder-bolts from hand to hand,
Flashing, and cast around! Of all the land,
The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
His lightnings- -as if he did understand,

That in such gaps as desolation worked,

There, the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.

BYRON.

LESSON CCXV.

THE DISCONTENTED PENDULUM.

1. AN old clock, that had stood for fifty years in a farmer's kitchen, without giving its owner any cause of complaint, early one summer's morning, before the family was stirring, suddenly stopped. Upon this, the dial-plate (if we may credit the fable) changed countenance with alarm; the hands made a vain effort to continue their course; the wheels remained motionless with surprise; the weights hung speechless; and each member felt disposed to lay the blame on the others. At length, the dial instituted a formal inquiry as to the cause of the stagnation; when hands, wheels, weights, with one voice, protested their innocence.

+

2. But now, a faint tick was heard below, from the pendulum, who thus spoke: "I confess myself to be the sole cause of the present stoppage; and I am willing, for the general satisfaction.

to assign my reasons. The truth is, that I am tired of ticking." Upon hearing this, the old clock became so enraged, that it was on the very point of striking. "Lazy wire?" exclaimed the dial-plate, holding up its hands. "Very good!" replied the pendulum; "It is vastly easy for you, Mistress Dial, who have always, as every body knows, set yourself up above me, it is vastly easy for you, I say, to accuse other people of laziness! you, who have had nothing to do, all your life, but to stare people in the face, and to amuse yourself with watching all that goes on in the kitchen. Think, I beseech you, how you would like to be shut up for life in this dark closet, and to wag backward and forward, year after year, as I do."

3. "As to that," said the dial, is there not a window in your house, on purpose for you to look through ?" "For all that," resumed the pendulum, "it is very dark here; and, although there is a window, I dare not stop even for an instant, to look out at it. Besides, I am really tired of my way of life; and if you wish, I'll tell you how I took this disgust to my employment. I happened, this morning, to be calculating, how many times I should have to tick in the course of only the next twenty-four hours; perhaps some one of you, above there, can give me the exact sum."

[ocr errors]

4. The minute-hand being quick at figures, presently replied, "Eighty-six thousand, four hundred times." "Exactly so,' replied the pendulum. "Well, I appeal to you all, if the very thought of this was not enough to fatigue any one; and when I began to multiply the strokes of one day by those of months and years, really it is no wonder if I felt discouraged at the prospect. So, after a great deal of reasoning and hesitation, thinks I to myself, I'll stop."

5. The dial could scarcely keep its countenance during this +harangue; but resuming its gravity, thus replied: "Dear Mr. Pendulum, I am really astonished that such a useful, industrious person as yourself, should have been seized by this sudden weariness. It is true, you have done a great deal of work in your time; so have we all, and are likely to do; which, although it may fatigue us to think of, the question is, whether it will fatigue us to do. Would you now do me the favor to give about half a dozen strokes, to illustrate my argument?"

6. The pendulum complied, and ticked six times at its usual pace. "Now," resumed the dial, "may I be allowed to inquire if that exertion is at all fatiguing or disagreeable to you?" "Not in the least," replied the pendulum; "it is not of six strokes that I complain, nor of sixty, but of millions." "Very good," replied the dial; but recollect that, although you may think of a million

« PreviousContinue »