Not on the vulgar mass

Called "work," must sentence pass,

Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,

The low world laid its hand,

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumb

And finger fail'd to plumb,

So pass'd in making up the main account;

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

That weigh'd not as his work, yet swell'd the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be pack'd

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke thro' language and escaped:

All I could never be,

All, men ignored in me,

This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,

That metaphor! and feel

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay

Thou, to whom fools propound,

When the wine makes its round,

"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

Fool! All that is, at all,

Lasts ever, past recall;

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure;

What enter'd into thee,

That was, is, and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

He fixt thee mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance,

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent,

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently imprest.

What tho the earlier grooves

Which ran the laughing loves

Around thy base, no longer pause and press !

What tho about thy rim,

Skull-things in order grim

Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

Look not thou down but up!

To uses of a cup,

The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,

The new wine's foaming flow,

The Master's lips a-glow!

Thou, Heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with

earth's wheel?

But I need, now as then,

Thee, God, who moldest men!

And since, not even while the whirl was worst,

Did I-to the wheel of life

With shapes and colors rife,

Bound dizzily-mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

So, take and use Thy work,

Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!

My times be in Thy hand!

Perfect the cup as plann'd!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

MY NATIVE LAND

Selection from "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High tho his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down,
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

THE THREE FISHERS

BY CHARLES KINGSLEY

Three fishers went sailing out into the west,

Out into the west as the sun went down;

Each thought on the woman who loved him the best;
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Tho the harbor bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,

And they trimm'd the lamps as the sun went down; They look'd at the squall, and they look'd at the shower, And the night rack came rolling up ragged and brown! But men must work, and women must weep,

Tho storms be sudden, and waters deep,

And the harbor bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands

In the morning gleam as the tide went down,

And the women are weeping and wringing their hands
For those who will never come back to the town;

For men must work, and women must weep,

And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep-
And good-by to the bar and its moaning.

ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight

To me did seem

Apparel'd in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is now as it hath been of yore-
Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare;

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,