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LESSON CIX.

THE WINDS.

WE come! we come! and ye feel our might,
As we're hastening on in our boundless flight;
And over the mountains, and over the deep,
Our broad invisible pinions sweep

Like the spirit of liberty, wild and free,
And ye look on our works, and own 'tis we;
Ye call us the Winds; but can ye tell
Whither we go, or where we dwell?

Ye mark, as we vary our forms of power,
And fell the forests, or fan the flower,

When the hare-bell moves, and the rush is bent,
When the tower's o'erthrown, and the oak is rent,
As we waft the bark o'er the slumbering wave,
Or hurry its crew to a watery grave;

And ye say it is we! but can ye trace
The wandering winds to their secret place?

And whether our breath be loud and high,
Or come in a soft and balmy sigh,
Our threatenings fill the soul with fear,
Or our gentle whisperings woo the ear
With music aerial, still, 'tis we.

And ye list, and ye look; but what do you see?
Can you hush one sound of our voice to peace ?
Or waken one note, when our numbers cease?

Our dwelling is in the Almighty's hand;
We come and we go at his command,
Though joy, or sorrow, may mark our track,
His will is our guide, and we look not back
And if, in our wrath, ye would turn us away,
Or win us in gentle airs to play,
Then lift up your hearts to him who binds,
Or frees, as he will, the obedient Winds!

;

MISS H. F. GOULD.

LESSON CX.

MUSINGS.

I WANDERED out one summer night,
"T was when my years were few,
The breeze was singing in the light,
And I was singing too.

The moonbeams lay upon the hill,

The shadows in the vale,
And here and there a leaping rill
Was laughing at the gale.

One fleecy cloud upon the air
Was all that met my eyes,
It floated like an angel there

Between me and the skies.

I clapped my hands and warbled wild,
As here and there I flew,

For I was but a careless child,
And did as children do.

The waves came leaping o'er the sea,
In bright and glittering bands,
Like little children wild with glee,

They linked their dimpled hands.
They linked their hands, but ere I caught
Their mingled drops of dew,

They kissed my feet as quick as thought; Away the ripples flew !

The twilight hours like birds flew by,

As lightly and as free;

Ten thousand stars were in the sky,

Ten thousand in the sea.
For every wave with dimpled cheek,

That leaped upon the air,

Had caught a star in its embrace,

And held it trembling there.

The young moon, too, with upturned sides,

Her mirrored beauty gave,

And as a bark at anchor rides

She rode upon the wave.

The sea was like the heaven above,

As perfect and as whole,

Save that it seemed to thrill with love,

As thrills the immortal soul.

The leaves, by spirit-voices stirred,
Made murmurs on the air,

Low murmurs, that my spirit heard,
And answered with a prayer,
For 't was upon the dewy sod,
Beside the moaning seas,
I learned at first to worship God,
And sing such strains as these.

The flowers all folded to their dreams,
Were bowed in slumber free,
By breezy hills and murmuring streams,
Where'er they chanced to be.
No guilty tears had they to weep,
No sins to be forgiven;

They closed their eyes and went to sleep,
Right in the face of heaven.

No costly raiment round them shone,
No jewels from the seas,

Yet Solomon, upon his throne,
Was ne'er arrayed like these.
And just as free from guilt and art,
Were lovely human flowers,
Ere sorrow set her bleeding heart
On this fair world of ours.

I heard the laughing wind behind,
Playing with my hair,
The breezy fingers of the wind,

How cool and moist they were!
I heard the night bird warbling o'er
Its soft enchanting strain:

I never heard such sounds before,
And never shall again.

Then wherefore weave such strains as these,

And sing them day by day,

When every bird upon the breeze,

Can sing a sweeter lay?

I'd give the world for their sweet art,

The simple, the divine;

I'd give the world to melt one heart,

As they have melted mine.

MRS. A. B. WELBY.

LESSON CXI.

BYRON AND HIS POETRY.

NEVER had any writer so vast a command of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair. That Marah was never dry. No art could sweeten, no draughts could exhaust its perennial waters of bitterness. Never was there such variety of monotony as that of Byron. From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, there was not a single note of human anguish of which he was not master. Year after year, and month after month, he continued to repeat, that to be wretched is the destiny of all; that to be eminently wretched is the destiny of the eminent; that all the desires by which we are cursed, lead alike to misery; if they are not gratified, to the misery of disappointment; if they are gratified, to the misery of satiety. He always describes himself as a man of the same kind with his favorite creations; as a man whose heart had been withered, whose capacity for happiness was gone, and could not be restored; but whose invincible spirit dared the worst that could befall him here or hereafter.

How much of this morbid feeling sprang from an original disease of mind, how much from real misfortune, how much from the nervousness of dissipation, how much of it was fanciful, how much of it was merely affected, it is impossible for us, and would probably have been impossible for the most intimate friends of Lord Byron, to decide. Whether there ever existed, or can ever exist, a person answering to the description which he gave of himself, may be doubted; but that he was not such a person is beyond all doubt.

It is ridiculous to imagine that a man, whose mind really was imbued with scorn of his fellow-creatures, would have published three or four books every year to tell them so; or that a man who could say with truth, that he neither sought sympathy nor needed it, would have admitted all Europe to hear his farewell to his wife, and his blessings on his child. In the second canto of Childe Harold, he tells us that he is insensible to fame and obloquy:

"Ill may such contest now the spirit move,

Which heeds nor keen reproof nor partial praise."

Yet we know, on the best evidence, that, a day or two before he published these lines, he was greatly, nay, indeed, childishly elated, by the compliments paid to his maiden speech in the House of Lords.

Among the large class of young persons, whose reading is almost entirely confined to works of imagination, the popularity of Lord Byron was unbounded. They bought pictures of him, they treasured up the smallest relics of him; they learned his poems by heart, and did their best to write like him, and to look like him. Many of them practiced at the glass, in the hope of catching the curl of the upper lip, and the scowl of the brow, which appear in some of his portraits. A few discarded their neckcloths in imitation of their great leader. For some years, the Minerva press sent forth no novel without a mysterious, unhappy, Lara-like peer.

The number of hopeful undergraduates, and medical students who became things of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness of the heart ceased to fall like dew, whose passions had consumed themselves to dust, and to whom the relief of tears was denied, passes all calculation. This was not the worst. There was created, in the minds of many of these enthusiasts, a pernicious and absurd association between intellectual power and moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness. This affectation has passed away; and a few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron. To our children he will be merely a writer; and their impartial judgment will appoint his place among writers, without regard to his rank, or to his private history.

T. B. MACAULAY.

IN no productions of modern genius, is the reciprocal influence of morals and literature more distinctly seen, than in those of the author of Childe Harold. His character produced the poems, and it cannot be doubted that his poems are adapted to produce such a character. His heroes speak a language supplied not more by imagination than by consciousness. They are not those machines, that, by a contrivance of the artist, send forth a music of their own; but instruments through

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