"That germ of kindness in the womb
Of mercy caught, did not expire:
Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom,
And friends me in the pit of fire.

"Once every year, when carols wake
On earth the Christmas night's repose,
Arising from the sinners' lake,

I journey to these healing snows.

"I stanch with ice my burning breast, With silence balm my whirling brain. O Brandan! to this hour of rest

That Joppan leper's ease was pain."

Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes;
He bowed his head, he breathed a prayer-
Then looked, and lo, the frosty skies!
The iceberg, and no Judas there!

SONNET: ON FIRST LOOKING INTO
CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

JOHN KEATS.

MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been,
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold,
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific,—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

ADONAIS.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

HERE pause these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,

Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,

Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.

What Adonais is, why fear we to become?

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky,

Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
A light is past from the revolving year,

And man, and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.

The soft sky smiles, - the low wind whispers near: 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,

No more let Life divide what Death can join together.

That light whose smile kindles the Universe,

That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse

Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea,

Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and spherèd skies are riven!

I am borne darkly, fearfully afar;

Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

HESTER.

CHARLES LAMB.

WHEN maidens such as Hester die,
Their place ye may not well supply,
Though ye among a thousand try,
With vain endeavor.

A month or more hath she been dead,
Yet cannot I by force be led
To think upon the wormy bed
And her together.

A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step did indicate

Of pride and joy no common rate
That flushed her spirit;

I know not by what name beside
I shall it call,—if 'twas not pride,
It was a joy to that allied

She did inherit.

Her parents held the Quaker rule
Which doth the human feeling cool,

But she was trained in Nature's school-
Nature had blessed her.

A waking eye, a prying mind,

A heart that stirs is hard to bind,

A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blindYe could not Hester.

My sprightly neighbor gone before
To that unknown and silent shore!
Shall we not meet as heretofore
Some summer morning,

When from thy cheerful eyes, a ray
Hath struck a bliss upon the day-
A bliss that would not go away-
A sweet forewarning?

LUCY.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

THREE years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown ;
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse; and with me

The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

"The floating clouds their state shall lend

To her; for her the willow bend:

Nor shall she fail to see,