The charities, that soothe, and heal, and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of Man, like flowers.
* * * * *
HON. WILLIAM ROBERT SPENCER.
1770-1834.
_Lines to Lady A. Hamilton_.
Too late I stayed--forgive the crime;
Unheeded flew the hours.
How noiseless falls the foot of time,
That only treads on flowers!
* * * * *
DR. GEORGE SEWELL.
--1726.
When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.
* * * * *
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
1772-1834
_The Ancient Mariner_.
Part i.
And listens like a three years' child.
Part ii.
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
* * * * *
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Part iv.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea.
Part v.
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy mouth of June.
Part vii.
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
* * * * *
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things, both great and small.
* * * * *
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
* * * * *
_Christabel_. Part ii.
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth:
And constancy lives in realms above.
_The Devil's Thoughts_.
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin,
Is pride that apes humility.
* * * * *
_Love_.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feeds his sacred flame.
* * * * *
_Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement_.
Blest hour! it was a luxury--to be!
* * * * *
_Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni_.
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?
* * * * *
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.
* * * * *
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
* * * * *
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
* * * * *
_The Three Graves_.
A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.
_The Visit of the Gods_.
Never, believe me,
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone.
* * * * *
_The Knight's Tomb_.
The Knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;
His soul is with the saints, I trust.
* * * * *
_On Taking Leave of_--. 1817.
To know, to esteem, to love--and then to part,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!
* * * * *
_Cologne_.
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
* * * * *
_Wallenstein_.
Part i. Act ii. Sc. 4.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason.
* * * * *
_The Death of Wallenstein_.
Act. v. Sc. 1.
Clothing the palpable and familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn.
Act v. Sc. 1.
Often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events.
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
* * * * *
ROBERT SOUTHEY.
1774-1843.
_Curse of Kehama_. Canto x.
They sin who tell us love can die.
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
* * * * *
CHARLES LAMB.
1775-1834.
_Old Familiar Faces_.
I have had playmates, 1 have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
_Detached Thoughts on Books_.
Books which are no books.
* * * * *
THOMAS CAMPBELL.
1777-1844.
_Pleasures of Hope_.
Part i. Line 7.
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Line 359.
O Heaven! he cried, my bleeding country save.
Line 381.
Hope for a season bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell!
* * * * *
O'er Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,
His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below.
Part ii. Line 5.
Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of grace, the magic of a name?
Line 23.
Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Of what were man?--a world without a sun.
Line 37.
The world was sad!--the garden was a wild!
And man, the hermit, sighed--till woman smiled.
Line 45.
While Memory watches o'er the sad review
Of joys that faded like the morning dew.
Line 95.
There shall he love, when genial mom appears,
Like pensive Beauty smiling in her tears.
Line 194.
That gems the starry girdle of the year.
Line 263.
Melt, and dispel, ye spectre-doubts, that roll
Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul!
Line 325.
O star-eyed Science! hast thou wandered there,
To waft us home the message of despair?
Line 377.
What though my winged hours of bliss have been,
Like angel-visits, few and far between.
_O'Connor's Child_.
Another's sword has laid him low,
Another's and another's;
And every hand that dealt the blow,
Ah me! it was a brother's!
_Lochiel's Warning_.
'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
_Ye Mariners of England_.
Ye mariners of England!
That guard our native seas,
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze.
* * * * *
Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.
* * * * *
_The Soldier's Dream_.
In life's morning march, when my bosom was young.
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.
* * * * *
_Hohenlinden_.
The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory, or the grave!
_Gertrude of Wyoming_.
Part iii. St. 1.
O love! in such a wilderness as this.
* * * * *
WALTER SCOTT.
1771-1832.
THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.
Canto ii. St. 1.
If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight.
Canto ii. St. 12.
I was not always a man of woe.
Canto ii. St. 22.
I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I say the tale as 'twas said to me.
Canto iii. St. 2.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
Canto v. St. 1.
Call it not vain; they do not err,
Who say, that, when the poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshiper,
And celebrates his obsequies.
Canto v. St. 13.
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven.
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind.
Canto vi. St. 1.
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
Prom wandering on a foreign strand?
* * * * *
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
Canto vi. St. 2.
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood;
Land of the mountain and the flood.
* * * * *
_Marmion_.
Canto ii. St. 27.
'Tis an old tale, and often told.
Canto v. St. 12.
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
Canto vi. St. 14.
And dar'st thou then
To beard the lion in his den?
Canto vi. St. 30,
O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made,
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
Canto vi. St. 32.
Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion.
Canto vi. Last Lines.
To all, to each, a fair good night,
And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light,
* * * * *
_The Lady of the Lake_.
Canto i. St. 18.
And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace
A nymph, a naiad, or a grace,
Of finer form or lovelier face.
* * * * *
A foot more light, a step more true,
Ne'er from the heath-flower dashed the dew.
Canto i. St. 21.
On his bold visage middle age
Had slightly pressed its signet sage.
Canto ii. St. 22.
Some feelings are to mortals given
With less of earth in them than heaven.
Canto iv. St. 1.
The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
Canto iv. St. 30.
Art thou a friend to Roderick?
Canto v. St. 10.
Come one, come all! this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I.
* * * * *
And the stern joy which warriors feel
In foemen worthy of their steel.
* * * * *
_The Lord of the Isles_.
Canto v. Stanza 18.
O many a shaft, at random sent,
Finds mark, the archer little meant!
And many a word at random spoken
May soothe, or wound, a heart that's broken!
* * * * *
_Old Mortality_.
Vol. ii. Chapter xxi.
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
_Bob Roy_.
Vol. i. Chapter ii.
O for the voice of that wild horn
On Fontarabian echoes borne.
* * * * *
_The Monastery_.
Vol. i. Chapter ii.
Within that awful volume lies
The mystery of mysteries!
* * * * *
THOMAS MOORE.
1780-1852.
_Lalla Rookh_. _The Fire-Worshippers_.
O, ever thus from childhood's hour
I've seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never loved a tree or flower,
But 'twas the first to fade away.
* * * * *
_The Light of the Harem_.
Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity.
_All that's bright must fade_.
All that's bright must fade--
The brightest still the fleetest;
All that's sweet was made
But to be lost when sweetest.
* * * * *
_Farewell! But whenever you welcome the hour_.
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
* * * * *
REGINALD HEBER.
1783-1826.
_Christman Hymn_.
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning!
Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.
* * * * *
_Missionary Hymn_.
From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand,
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand.
* * * * *
_Palestine_.
No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!
JONATHAN M. SEWALL.
_Epilogue to Cato_.
_Written for the Bow Street Theatre, Portsmouth_, N. H., 1778.
No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
But the whole boundless continent is yours.
* * * * *
SAMUEL WOODWORTH.
1785-1842.
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket, which hung in the well.
* * * * *
LORD BYRON.
1788-1821.
_Childe Harold_.
Canto i. St. 9.
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
Canto ii. St. 2.
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
* * * * *
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
Stanza 6.
The dome of Thought, the palace of the soul.
Stanza 23.
Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?
Stanza 73.
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Stanza 76.
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
Stanza 88.
Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground.
* * * * *
Age shakes Athena's towers, but spares gray Marathon.
Canto iii. St. 1.
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart.
Stanza 21.
There was a sound of revelry by night.
And all went merry as a marriage-bell.
Stanza 28.
Battle's magnificently stern array!
Stanza 55.
The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine.
Stanza 92.
The sky is changed! and such a change! O night,
And storm, and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman.
Stanza 113.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me.
Canto iv. St. 1.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs.
Stanza 24.
The cold--the changed--perchance the dead anew,
The mourned--the loved--the lost--too many! yet how few!
Stanza 49.
Fills
The air around with beauty.
Stanza 69.
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss.
Stanza 79.
The Niobe of nations! there she stands.
Stanza 109.
Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.
Stanza 115.
The nympholepsy of some fond despair.
Stanza 145.
While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
And when Home falls, the world.[22]
[Note 22: The exclamation of the pilgrims in the eighth century is
recorded by the Venerable Bede]
Stanza 177.
O that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Stanza 178.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.
* * * * *
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
Stanza 179.
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined and unknown.
Stanza 185.
And what is writ, is writ.
Would it were worthier!
_Memoranda from his Life_.
I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
* * * * *
_The Giaour_. Line 72.
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.
Line 92.
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Line 106.
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Line 123.
For freedom's battle, once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won.
Line 418.
And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own;
And every won a tear can claim,
Except an erring sister's shame.
* * * * *
_Parasina_. St. 1.
It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word.
_The Bride of Abydos_.
Canto i. St. 1.
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle.
Stanza 6.
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole
And oh! that eye was in itself a soul!
Canto ii. St. 20.
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
* * * * *
He makes a solitude, and calls it--peace.[23]
[Note 23: "Solitudinem fociunt--pacem appellant."
--_Tacitus, Agricola_, cap. 30.]
_Darkness_.
I had a dream which was not all a dream.
* * * * *
_Lara_.
Canto i. St. 2.
Lord of himself--that heritage of woe!
_The Corsair_.
Canto i. St. 1.
O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea;
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home.
Stanza 3.
She walks the waters like a thing of life,
And seems to dare the elements to strife.
Stanza 8.
The power of Thought--the magic of the Mind.
* * * * *
The many still must labor for the one!
Stanza 9.
There was a laughing devil in his sneer.
Hope withering fled, and Mercy sighed Farewell!
Stanza 15.
Farewell!
For in that word--that fatal word--howe'er
We promise--hope--believe--there breathes despair.
Canto iii. St. 22.
No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe.
Stanza 24.
He left a corsair's name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.
* * * * *
_Beppo_.
Stanza 27.
For most men (till by losing rendered sager)
Will back their own opinions by a wager.
Stanza 45.
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.
Stanza 80.
O Mirth and Innocence! O Milk and Water!
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days!
* * * * *
_The Dream_.
And both were young, and one was beautiful.
* * * * *
And to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
* * * * *
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
so cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.
_The Waltz_.
Hands promiscuously applied,
Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side.
* * * * *
_English Bards_.
'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.
* * * * *
As soon
Seek roses in December--ice in June.
Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff.
* * * * *
Believe a woman, or an epitaph,
Or any other thing that's false, before
You trust in critics.
* * * * *
Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the
Psalms.
* * * * *
O Amos Cottle! Phoebus! what a name!
* * * * *
_Monody on the Death of Sheridan_.
When all of Genius which can perish dies.
* * * * *
Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.
* * * * *
Who track the steps of Glory to the grave.
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die in moulding Sheridan.
* * * * *
_Don Juan_.
Canto i. St. 22.
But, O ye lords of ladies intellectual!
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?
Canto i. St. 117.
Whispering I will ne'er consent, consented.
Canto xiii. St. 95.
Society is now one polished horde,
Formed of two mighty tribes, the _Bores_ and _Bored_.
Canto xv. St. 13.
The devil hath not, in all his quiver's choice,
An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.
* * * * *
_Hebrew Melodies_.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
CHARLES WOLFE.
1791-1823.
_The Burial of Sir John Moore_.
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
* * * * *
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory!
* * * * *
JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.
1795-1820.
_The American flag_.
When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
* * * * *
JOHN KEATS.
1796-1820.
_Endymion_. Line 1.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
* * * * *
_St. Agnes' Eve_. Stanza 27.
Music's golden tongue
Flattered to tears this aged man and poor.
* * * * *
_Hyperion_. Line 5.
That large utterance of the early gods.
* * * * *
ROBERT POLLOK.
1798-1827.
_The Course of Time_.
Book viii. Line 616.
He was a man
Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
To serve the devil in.
* * * * *
THOMAS HOOD.
1798-1845.
_The Death-Bed_.
We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
* * * * *
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied;
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
* * * * *
_The Bridge of Sighs_.
One more Unfortunate
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death.
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly
Young, and so fair!
* * * * *
SAMUEL ROGERS.
_Human Life_.
A guardian-angel o'er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.
* * * * *
The soul of music slumbers in the shell,
Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts--touch them but rightly--pour
A thousand melodies unheard before!
Then, never less alone than when alone,
Those that he loved so long and sees no more,
Loved and still loves--not dead, but gone before--
He gathers round him.
* * * * *
_A Wish_.
Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook, that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
_Tragedy of the Lac de Gaube_.
Stanza 2.
But on and up, where Nature's heart
Beats strong amid the hills.
* * * * *
_The Men of Old_.
Great thoughts, great feelings, came to them,
Like instincts, unawares.
* * * * *
A man's best things are nearest him,
Lie close about his feet.
* * * * *
BRYAN W. PROCTOR.
_The Sea_.
The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
* * * * *
I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more.
* * * * *
ALFRED TENNYSON.
_Locksley Hall_.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have
spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer
than his horse.
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear
my dusky race.
* * * * *
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of
Cathay.
* * * * *
_In Memoriam_. xxvii.
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
* * * * *
_Fatima_. St. 3.
O Love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul through
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
* * * * *
_The Princess_. Canto iv.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
Canto 7.
Sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
* * * * *
Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay.
* * * * *
_Lady Clara Vere de Vere_.
From yon blue heaven above us bent,
The grand old gardener and his wife
Smile at the claims of loner descent.
* * * * *
HENRY TAYLOR
_Philip Van Artevelde_.
Part i. Act i. Sc. 5.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.
* * * * *
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON.
_Richelieu_. Act ii. Sc. 2.
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.
_Festus_.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
* * * * *
THOMAS K. HERVEY.
_The Devil's Progress_.
The tomb of him who would have made
The world too glad and free.
* * * * *
He stood beside a cottage lone,
And listened to a lute,
One summer's eve, when the breeze was gone,
And the nightingale was mute!
* * * * *
Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore!
* * * * *
JAMES ALDRICH.
_A Death-Bed_.
Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away,
In statue-like repose!
But when the sun, in all his state,
Illumined the eastern skies,
She passed through Glory's morning gate,
And walked in Paradise.
* * * * *
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
_Thanatopsis_.
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
* * * * *
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings.
* * * * *
Sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch.
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
* * * * *
_March_.
The stormy March has come at last,
With wind and clouds and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast
That through the snowy valley flies.
* * * * *
_Autumn Woods_.
But 'neath yon crimson tree,
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
Her blush of maiden shame.
_Forest Hymn_.
The groves were God's first temples.
* * * * *
_The Death of the Flowers_.
The melancholy days are come,
The saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods,
And meadows brown and sear.
* * * * *
_The Battlefield_.
Truth crushed to earth shall rise again:
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.
* * * * *
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
_Marco Bozzaris_.
Strike--for your altars and your fires;
Strike--for the green graves of y our sires;
God, and your native land!
* * * * *
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.
* * * * *
_On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake_.
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days;
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
_Burns_.
Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined--
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.
* * * * *
CHARLES SPRAGUE.
_Curiosity_.
Lo, where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.
* * * * *
Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends,
An incarnation of fat dividends.
* * * * *
_Centennial Ode_.
Stanza 22.
Behold! in Liberty's unclouded blaze
We lift our heads, a race of other days.
* * * * *
_To my Cigar_.
Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctor's spite;
Thy clouds all other clouds dispel,
And lap me in delight.
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
_A Psalm of Life_.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
* * * * *
Art is long, and Time is fleeting.
* * * * *
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
* * * * *
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
* * * * *