I saw, and asked not its name. I knew no language was so wealthy,
Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in cloudless majesty, at length
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life
Shall e'er prevail against us or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
Wordsworth's Lines on Revisiting the Wye.
That Heaven hath chastened thee. Behold this vine! I found it a wild tree, whose wanton strength
Hath swoln into irregular twigs
And bold excrescences,
And spent itself in leaves and little rings,
So in the flourish of its outwardness
Wasting the sap and strength
That should have given forth fruit;
But when I pruned the tree,
Then it grew temperate in its vain expense
Of useless leaves, and knotted, as thou seest,
Into these full, clear clusters, to repay
The hand that wisely wounded it.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know,
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Pope's Essay on Man.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribb'd ice ;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!-'t is too horrible!
The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Shakspere's Measure for Measure.
Many are the poets that are sown
By Nature; men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty Divine
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse
(Which in the docile season of their youth
It was denied them to acquire, through lack
Of culture and the inspiring aid of books,
Or haply by a temper too severe,
Or a nice backwardness afraid of shame),
Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led
By circumstance to take into the height
The measure of themselves, these favoured beings,
All but a scattered few, live out their time,
Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave unthought of.
Within the soul a faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample Moon
In the deep stillness of a summer eve,
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of life
In the green trees! and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene; like power abides
In man's celestial spirit; Virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the encumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment,-nay, from guilt;
And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of despair.
One of those heavenly days which cannot die,
When forth I sallied from our cottage-door,
And with a wallet o'er my shoulder slung,
A nutting crook in hand, I turned my steps.
Towards the distant woods, a figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of beggar's weeds
Put on for the occasion, by advice
And exhortation of my frugal dame.
Motley accoutrements! of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, and in truth,
More ragged than need was. Among the woods,
And o'er the pathless rocks, I forced my way,
Until, at length, I came to one dear nook,
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation, but the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung
A virgin scene!
Wordsworth's Nutting.
Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
SPELLING AND DICTATION BOOKS.
1.-The Complete English Spelling and Dictation Book (New Edition),
For Home and School use, containing, in carefully graduated Spelling Lessons, a complete view of all the Difficulties and Irregularities of the English language, with copious Dictation Exercises. Royal 18mo, strong cloth, Is. 6d.
Lists of all Common Words the spelling of which needs learning, in the order of their difficulty.
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Verbal Distinctions. Dictation Exercises.
Difficult Pronunciations, including Foreign Words and Phrases.
Rules for Spelling, with Long Dictation Exercises.
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