BOOK

Alfred.

V.

Boetius.

This is the only port

That will last for ever;

After the waves

Of our troubles,

Of every storm,
Always mild.

This is the place of peace,
And the only comforter
Of all distresses,

After this world's troubles.

This is the pleasant station
After these miseries

To possess.
And I earnestly know
That the gilded vessel,
The silvery treasure,
The stone fortress of gems,
Or riches of the world
To the mind's eye
Can never bring any light.
Nothing can recompense
Its acuteness,
But the contemplation
Of the truer riches;

But such things strongly
The mind's eye
Of every one of men
Blind in their breast,

When they to it

Are made brighter.
But all things

That in this present

Life so please,

Are slender,
Earthly things,

And to be fled from.

But wonderful is that
Beauty and brightness,
Which every creature
With beauty illuminates,

Not all that Tagus may give in its golden sands, or Hermus from its glittering bank, or Indus near the warm circle mingling green gems with white, can enlighten the sight; but they make the mind more blind from their darkening effects.

Whatever of these pleases and excites the mind, earth nourishes in its lowest caverns.

The radiance by which Heaven is governed and flourishes, shuns the obscured ruins of the soul.

To the winter days,
Wonderously short

Times hast thou appointed.

Thou, to the trees
Givest the south and west,
Which before, black storms
From the north and east
Had deprived
Of every leaf

By the more hostile wind.

Oh! how on earth
All creatures
Obey thy command,
As in the heavens
Some do

Boetius.

As now the moon, with her full horn of light imbibing all her brother's flames, hideth the lesser stars now pale with ob. scure horn, nearer to Phobus loses her lustre.

As Hesperus in the first hours of night emerges with chilling beams; and again as the morn ing star, when Phœbus rises, changes his accustomed rule.

Thou, with the cold of the leaf-flowing frost, confinest the light to a shorter stay: thou, when the fervid summer shall come, dividest the active hours of the night.

Thy power tempers the various year, so that the leaves which the breath of Boreas takes away, the mild zephyr re-clothes; and the seeds which Arcturus beheld, Sirius burns in their tall harvest.

Nothing, forsaking its ancient law, quits the work of its own station. Governing all things with a certain end, Thou, deservedly our ruler !

The bright arts.

The unrighteous always

Have in contempt

Those that are, than them

Wiser in right;

Worthier of power.
The false lot is

A long while

Covered by frauds.

But perverse manners sit on the lofty throne, and the guilty tread on the righteous necks by an unjust change.

Virtue hidden in obscurity lives unseen, bright in its darkness. The just endure the crime of the wicked.

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IV.