It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven is on the sea;
Listen! the mighty being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder-everlastingly.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

WORDSWORTH.

Learn to labor and to wait. - LONGFELLOW.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing, morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;

No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

GRAY.

༩༥༢༩

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done,
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

All day thy wings have fanned

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

TENNYSON.

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,

And scream among thy fellows;

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

reeds shall bend,

- BRYANT.

Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of

singers,

Swinging aloft on a willowy spray that hung o'er the water,

Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music,

That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent
to listen.

Plaintive at first were the tones, and sad; then soaring to madness
Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes.
Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation;
Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision,

As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops

Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches. LONGFELLOW.

Over his keys the musing organist,

Beginning doubtfully and far away,
First lets his fingers wander as they list,

And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay;
Then, as the touch of his loved instrument

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme,

First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent

Along the wavering vista of his dream. — Lowell.

And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,

I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,

At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,

When man in the bush with God may meet?-EMERSON.

'Twas twilight and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters; like a veil

Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown
Of one whose hate is masked but to assail.
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale,

And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear
Been their familiar, and now Death was here. - BYRON.

And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb,

When all in mist the world below was lost

What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime,

Like shipwrecked mariner on desert coast,

And view the enormous waste of vapor, tossed

In billows, lengthening to the horizon round,

Now scooped in gulfs, with mountains now embossed,
And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound,

Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound!

BEATTIE.

NOTE

In addition to the foregoing poetical selections, those previously given may be analyzed with reference to form, content, and mood. Their beauty or excellence will now be more clearly understood. Furthermore, it is recommended that the teacher assign brief poems, either from our standard authors or from current literature, for full analysis and criticism. The blank verse of Tennyson, Shelley, Milton, and Shakespeare might be investigated and compared at considerable length in order to determine the average length of their sentences, the place of the cæsural pause, and the proportion of "end-stopt" or "run-on” lines.

CHAPTER VIII

KINDS OF POETRY

55. Classification. Poetry may be divided into four general types or classes: (1) didactic poetry, which is chiefly concerned with instruction; (2) lyric poetry, which generally gives expression to some emotion; (3) epic poetry, which is devoted principally to narration; and (4) dramatic poetry, which deals with direct representation. All these types or classes have variations and subdivisions, which call for consideration in some detail.

56. Didactic Poetry. The term " didactic" as applied to poetry involves a seeming contradiction. Instruction is a function peculiar to prose; but in the hands of a genuine poet, didactic verse may be so adorned by the imagination and so warmed by the feelings as to lift it sometimes into the realm of genuine poetry. Thus Dryden's Religio Laici, the first didactic poem of special note in our language, is essentially prosaic in theme and purpose. But its opening lines, by a happy simile, are unmistakably poetic:

"Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars

To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,

Is Reason to the soul; and as on high

Those rolling fires discover but the sky,

Not light us here, so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day."