Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight

breast,

Not for these I raise

The song
of thanks and praise ;
But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised, But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing,

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,

Feel the gladness of the May!

SCENE.CATO sitting in a thoughtful posture, with Plato's book on the Immortality of the Soul in his hand, and a drawn sword on the table by him.

IT must be so. - Plato, thou reasonest well! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'T is the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis Heaven itself, that points out a hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity! — thou pleasing, dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!

The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me; But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us (And that there is, all Nature cries aloud Through all her works), he must delight in virtue;

bright

Be now forever taken from my sight,

But when? or where? This world was made for Cæsar.

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which, having been, must ever be ;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI.

And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves.

[Laying his hand on his sword.

Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me. This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!

JOSEPH ADDISON.

QUATRAINS AND FRAGMENTS.

FROM R. W. EMERSON. NORTHMAN.

THE gale that wrecked you on the sand,
It helped my rowers to row;
The storm is my best galley-hand,
And drives me where I go.

POET.

To clothe the fiery thought

In simple words succeeds,

For still the craft of genius is To mask a king in weeds.

JUSTICE.

WHOEVER fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before,-

And he who battles on her side,

God, though he were ten times slain,

Crowns him victor glorified,

Victor over death and pain,
Forever.

HEROISM.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

THE SEA.

BEHOLD the Sea,

The opaline, the plentiful and strong,
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July:
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds,
Purger of earth, and medicine of men ;
Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not.
Rich are the sea-gods: --who gives gifts but they?
They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:
They pluck Force thence, and give it to the wise.
For every wave is wealth to Dædalus,
Wealth to the cunning artist who can work
This matchless strength. Where shall he find,

O waves!

A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift?
I with my hammer pounding evermore
The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust,
Strewing my bed, and, in another age,
Rebuild a continent of better men.
Then I unbar the doors: my paths lead out
The exodus of nations: I disperse

Men to all shores that front the hoary main.

BORROWING.

FROM THE FRENCH.

SOME of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived!

HERI, CRAS, HODIE.

SHINES the last age, the next with hope is seen, To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between ; Future or Past no richer secret folds,

O friendless Present! than thy bosom holds.

LINES AND COUPLETS.

FROM POPE.

WHAT, and how great the virtue and the art, To live on little with a cheerful heart.

Between excess and famine lies a mean,
Plain, but not sordid, though not splendid, clean.

Its proper power to hurt each creature feels: Bulls aim their horns, and asses kick their heels.

Here Wisdom calls, "Seek virtue first, be bold; As gold to silver, virtue is to gold."

Let lands and houses have what lords they will, Let us be fixed and our own masters still.

'Tis the first virtue vices to abhor, And the first wisdom to be fool no more.

Long as to him who works for debt, the day.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance,
And men must walk, at least, before they dance.

True, conscious honor is to feel no sin; He's armed without that's innocent within.

For virtue's self may too much zeal be had, The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

If wealth alone can make and keep us blest, Still, still be getting; never, never rest.

That God of nature who within us still Inclines our actions, not constrains our will.

It is not poetry, but prose run mad.

Pretty in amber to observe the forms

Of hair, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms : The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the mischief they got there!

He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew;
Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,
The creature's at his dirty work again,
Throned in the centre of his thin designs,
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines.

He who, still wanting, though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left.

What future bliss He gives thee not to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.

All nature is but art, unknown to thee,
All chance, direction which thou canst not see.

"T is education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.
Manners with fortunes, humors turn with climes,
Tenets with books, and principles with times.
Who shall decide when doctors disagree?

And then mistook reverse of wrong for right.
That secret rare between the extremes to move,
Of mad good-nature and of mean self-love.
Ye little stars, hide your diminished rays.
Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name.

'Tis strange the music should his cares employ To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy.

--

Something there is more needful than expense,
And something previous e'en to taste, 't is sense.
In all let Nature never be forgot,
But treat the goddess like a modest fair,
Not over-dress nor leave her wholly bare;
Let not each beauty everywhere be spied,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.

Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.

'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense,
And splendor borrows all her rays from sense.

To rest the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions hell to ears polite.

And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,
All end, in love of God and love of man.

But health consists with temperance alone,
And peace, O Virtue! peace is all thine own.

Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,
And these be happy called, unhappy those;
But Heaven's just balance equal will appear,
When those are placed in hope, and these in fear.
"But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed";
"What then, is the reward of virtue, - bread?
That vice may merit, 't is the price of toil,
The knave deserves it when he tills the soil."