Stain'd the sad annals of a giddy reign ;10 Soon as the light of dawning Science spread The great deliverer he! who from the gloom With radiant finger points to heaven again. The great Creator sought? And why thy Locke, Through the deep windings of the human heart, THE GERMAN RHINE. Well moraliz'd, shines through the gothic cloud THOMSON. 95 ness, and cleanliness, that eminently distinguishes their occupiers."—M'Culloch's Geographical Dictionary. 5. What part of speech is saint here? and why his own muses in the succeeding line? 6. What historical facts are here referred to? and, in particular, show that the brutal tyrant's rage was useful? 7. What is meant by the maiden reign? 8. What foe? 9. In what sense is proved here used? 10. Whose reign is here referred to? and justify the epithet giddy. 11. By the British Cassius is meant Algernon Sydney. 12. Explain fully the meaning of the last three lines. XXIII. THE GERMAN RHINE. "ONCE during the morning a band of apprentices, with knapsacks, passed by, singing The Rhine! the Rhine! a blessing on the Rhine! O, the pride of the German heart in this noble river! And right it is, for of all the rivers of this beautiful earth there is none so beautiful as this. There is hardly a league of its whole course, from its cradle in the snowy Alps to its grave in the sands of Holland, which boasts not its peculiar charms. If I were a German I would be proud of it too; and of the clustering grapes that hang about its temples, as it reels onward through vineyards, in a triumphal march, like Bacchus, crowned and drunken."-Longfellow's Hyperion. THEY shall not-shall not have it, Shall wear its dark green vest; Shall cleave its rippling breast. They shall not-shall not have it, So long beneath its eddies, They shall not-shall not have it, They shall not-shall not have it, Till, buried 'neath its surges, Our last man's bones recline. BECKER. XXIV. THE POET'S WISH. "CERTAINLY in no heart did the love of country ever burn with a warmer glow than in that of Burns: 'a tide of Scottish prejudice,' as he modestly calls this deep and generous feeling, 'had been poured along his veins; and he felt that it would boil there till the floodgates shut in eternal rest.' It seemed to him, as if he could do so little for his country, and yet would so gladly have done all."-Carlyle. A WISH (I mind its power), The rough bur Thistle spreading wide I turned the weeder-clips aside, BURNS. POEMS OF WORK AND PROGRESS. I. THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. "WORK is the mission of man in this earth. A day is ever struggling forward, a day will arrive in some approximate degree, when he who has no work to do, by whatever name he may be named, will not find it good to show himself in our quarter of the solar system, but may go and look out elsewhere, if there be any idle planet discoverable. Let the honest working man rejoice that such law, the first of nature, has been made good on him; and hope that, by and by, all else will be made good. It is the beginning of all." * * "He that can work is a born king of something; is in communion with nature; is master of a thing or things, is a priest and king of nature so far. He that can work at nothing is but a usurping king, be his trappings what they may; he is the born slave of all things. Let a man honour his craftmanship--his can-do."- Carlyle. Compare these adjectives: * * * Give synonymes and opposites to these words: Stands. Earns. Looks. Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, Like a sexton ringing the village bell, And children coming home from school They love to see the flaming forge, And catch the burning sparks that fly He goes on Sunday to the church, He hears the parson pray and preach, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice He needs must think of her once more, And with his hard rough hand he wipes Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, Onward through life he goes; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 1. Put these two lines in their natural order. 2. Bands, what case? LONGFELLOW. 3. Tan, what part of speech? 4. Parse blow. 5. It, what? |