OUR POETICAL FAVORITES.

SECOND SERIES.

LONGER POEMS.

From the Merchant of Venice.

Ho

OW sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But while this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Jes. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lor. The reason is your spirits are attentive.
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,

Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood:

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet

Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods:
Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus :

Let no such man be trusted.-Mark the music.
Por. That light we see is burning in my hall.
How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Ner. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less:

A substitute shines brightly as a king,

Until a king be by; and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters. Music! hark!

Ner. It is your music, madam, of the house.
Por. Nothing is good, I see, without respect:
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Ner. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.
Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
When neither is attended: and, I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.

How many things by season seasoned are
To their right praise and true perfection!—
Peace! How the moon sleeps with Endymion,
And would not be awaked!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

A

The Exequy.

CCEPT, thou shrine of my dead saint,
Instead of dirges, this complaint;

And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse

Receive a strew of weeping verse

From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see

Quite melted into tears for thee.

Dear loss ! since thy untimely fate,

My task hath been to meditate

On thee, on thee; thou art the book,
The library whereon I look,

Though almost blind; for thee (loved clay)
I languish out, not live, the day,

Using no other exercise

But what I practice with mine eyes ;
By which wet glasses I find out
How lazily Time creeps about
To one that mourns: this, only this,
My exercise and business is:
So I compute the weary hours
With sighs dissolved into showers.

Nor wonder if my time go thus
Backward and most preposterous;
Thou hast benighted me; thy set
This eve of blackness did beget,
Who wast my day (though overcast
Before thou hadst thy noontide passed),
And I remember must in tears

Thou scarce hadst seen so many years
As day tells hours: by thy clear Sun
My love and fortune first did run :

But thou wilt never more appear
Folded within my hemisphere,

Since both thy light and motion
Like a fled star is fallen and gone,
And 'twixt me and my soul's dear wish
The earth now interposed is,

Which such a strange eclipse doth make
As ne'er was read in Almanac.

I could allow thee for a time
To darken me, and my sad clime:
Were it a month, or year, or ten,
I would thy exile live till then.
And all that space my mirth adjourn,
So thou would'st promise to return,
And, putting off thy ashy shroud,
At length disperse this sable cloud.

But woe is me! the longest date
Too narrow is to calculate
These empty hopes : never shall I
Be so much blest as to descry

A glimpse of thee, till that day come
Which shall the earth to cinders doom,
And a fierce fever must calcine

The body of this world like thine,
(My little world!) : that fit of fire
Once off, our bodies shall aspire
To our souls' bliss: then we shall rise,
And view ourselves with clearer eyes
In that calm region where no night
Can hide us from each other's sight.

Meantime thou hast her, Earth: much good

May my harm do thee! Since it stood

With Heaven's will I might not call

Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-lived right and interest
In her whom living I loved best.

With a most free and bounteous grief
I give thee what I could not keep.
Be kind to her, and, prithee, look
Thou write into thy doom's-day book
Each parcel of this Rarity

Which in thy casket shrined doth lie.
See that thou make thy reckoning straight,
And yield her back again by weight:
For thou must audit on thy trust
Each grain and atom of this dust,
As thou wilt answer Him that lent,
Not gave thee, my dear monument.
So, close the ground, and 'bout her shade
Black curtains draw: my bride is laid.

Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed Never to be disquieted!

My last good-night! Thou wilt not wake Till I thy fate shall overtake:

Till age or grief, or sickness must

Marry my body to that dust

It so much loves, and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there: I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay;
I am already on the way,

And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And every hour a step towards thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,
Than when Sleep breathed his drowsy gale.
Thus from the Sun my bottom steers,
And my day's compass downward bears: