What desolations he hath made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
He burneth the chariots in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.
THE LORD OF HOSTS IS WITH US;
THE GOD OF JACOB IS OUR REFUGE.
Psalm XLVI.
A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good
things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil
things. But I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak,
they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.
St. Matthew, XII.
INDIAN SUMMER
By the purple haze that lies
On the distant rocky height,
By the deep blue of the skies,
By the smoky amber light
Through the forest arches streaming,
Where Nature on her throne sits dreaming,
And the sun is scarcely gleaming
Through the cloudless snowy white,--
Winter's lovely herald greets us,
Ere the ice-crowned giant meets us.
A mellow softness fills the air,--
No breeze on wanton wings steals by
To break the holy quiet there,
Or make the waters fret and sigh,
Or the yellow alders shiver,
That bend to kiss the placid river,
Flowing on and on forever;
But the little waves are sleeping,
O'er the pebbles slowly creeping,
That last night were flashing, leaping,
Driven by the restless breeze,
In lines of foam beneath yon trees.
Dressed in robes of gorgeous hue,
Brown and gold with crimson blent.
The forest to the waters blue
Its own enchanting tints has lent;--
In their dark depths, lifelike glowing,
We see a second forest growing,
Each pictured leaf and branch bestowing
A fairy grace to that twin wood,
Mirrored within the crystal flood.
'Tis pleasant now in forest shades;
The Indian hunter strings his bow,
To track through dark entangling glades
The antlered deer and bounding doe,
Or launch at night the birch canoe,
To spear the finny tribes that dwell
On sandy bank, in weedy cell,
Or pool, the fisher knows right well--
Seen by the red and vivid glow
Of pine torch at his vessel's bow.
This dreamy Indian summer-day,
Attunes the soul to tender sadness;
We love--but joy not in the ray--
It is not summer's fervid gladness,
But a melancholy glory,
Hovering softly round decay,
Like swan that sings her own sad story,
Ere she floats in death away.
The day declines; what splendid dyes,
In fleckered waves of crimson driven,
Float o'er the saffron sea that lies
Glowing within the western heaven!
Oh, it is a peerless even!
See, the broad red sun has set,
But his rays are quivering yet
Through Nature's vale of violet
Streaming bright o'er lake and hill,
But earth and forest lie so still,
It sendeth to the heart a chill;
We start to check the rising tear--
'Tis beauty sleeping on her bier.
Susanna Moodie
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Bryant
THE SKYLARK
Bird of the wilderness,
Blithesome and cumberless,
Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place--
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
Wild is thy lay and loud,
Far in the downy cloud;
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
Where, on thy dewy wing,
Where art thou journeying?
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
O'er fell and fountain sheen,
O'er moor and mountain green,
O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,
Over the rainbow's rim,
Musical cherub, soar, singing away!
Then, when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms,
Sweet will thy welcome, and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place--
Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!
James Hogg
WHAT IS WAR
What is war? I believe that half the people that talk about war have not
the slightest idea what it is. In a short sentence it may be summed up
to be the combination and concentration of all the horrors, atrocities,
crimes, and sufferings of which human nature on this globe is capable.
If you go into war now, you will have more banners to decorate your
cathedrals and churches. Englishmen will fight now as well as they ever
did; and there is ample power to back them, if the country can be but
sufficiently excited and deluded. You may raise up great generals. You
may have another Wellington, and another Nelson, too; for this country
can grow men capable of every enterprise. Then there may be titles, and
pensions, and marble monuments to eternize the men who have thus become
great;--but what becomes of you, and your country, and your children?
You profess to be a Christian nation. You make it your boast
even--though boasting is somewhat out of place in such questions--you
make it your boast that you are a Christian people, and that you draw
your rule of doctrine and practice, as from a well pure and undefiled,
from the lively oracles of God, and from the direct revelation of the
Omnipotent. You have even conceived the magnificent project of
illuminating the whole earth, even to its remotest and darkest recesses,
by the dissemination of the volume of the New Testament, in whose every
page are written for ever the words of peace. Within the limits of this
island alone, every Sabbath-day, twenty thousand, yes, far more than
twenty thousand temples are thrown open, in which devout men and women
assemble to worship Him who is the "Prince of Peace."
Is this a reality? or is your Christianity a romance, and your
profession a dream? No; I am sure that your Christianity is not a
romance, and I am equally sure that your profession is not a dream. It
is because I believe this that I appeal to you with confidence, and that
I have hope and faith in the future. I believe that we shall see, and at
no very distant time, sound economic principles spreading much more
widely amongst the people; a sense of justice growing up in a soil which
hitherto has been deemed unfruitful; and--which will be better than
all--the churches of the United Kingdom, the churches of Britain,
awaking as it were from their slumbers, and girding up their loins to
more glorious work, when they shall not only accept and believe in the
prophecy, but labour earnestly for its fulfilment, that there shall come
a time--a blessed time--a time which shall last for ever--when "nation
shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more."
John Bright
THE HOMES OF ENGLAND
The stately homes of England!
How beautiful they stand,
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O'er all the pleasant land!
The deer across their greensward bound,
Through shade and sunny gleam:
And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.
The merry homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,
What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light!
There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood's tale is told,
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.
The blessed homes of England!
How softly on their bowers
Is laid the holy quietness
That breathes from Sabbath hours!
Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime
Floats through their woods at morn;
All other sounds, in that still time,
Of breeze and leaf are born.
The cottage homes of England!
By thousands on her plains,
They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
And round the hamlet fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves;
And fearless there the lowly sleep,
As the bird beneath the eaves.
The free, fair homes of England!
Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be reared
To guard each hallowed wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child's glad spirit loves
Its country and its God!
Felicia Hemans
TO A WATER-FOWL
Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--
The desert and illimitable air,--
Lone wandering, but not lost.
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;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.
Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
Bryant
THE FASCINATION OF LIGHT
The strange fascination of light takes hold of all animated creatures,
and commands a subtle devotion that cannot be set forth in a confession
of faith. The delight of a boy in a bonfire is a breath of the heaven
that is about us in our infancy. Though it be but a heap of rubbish,
revealed by the removal of the mantle of snow, lighting up with
flickering, changing glow a rectangular door yard, the children stand
and gaze into the dancing flame, their vast, distorted, ghostlike
shadows lost in the night, their faces reflecting every evanescent
glare, and their spirits charmed by the same spell that took form in the
fire-worship of their ancestors. How they delight in stirring up the
embers and sending up a fountain spray of sparks! What joy in seeing the
big sticks break into glowing coals, darting out new tongues of flame to
lick up the escaping embers!
Fire is one of nature's universal fascinations. The wildest and most
wary animals approach and gaze at it in the night, and though it
sometimes warns them off, it always holds them by a spell. The night
migrating birds perish in scores against the plate-glass of coast
lighthouses, swerving from the control of the all-powerful migratory
instinct toward the fascinating glare that is their destruction. It is
not sportsmanlike to hang a lantern in the marsh and shoot the duck that
gather under it. But the night, the silent marsh, and the lantern have
charms that the sportsman, with his legal and mechanical paraphernalia,
can never understand. Fish are devoted fire-worshippers, and that boy
who has never speared by a jack-light is an object of compassion.
The earth and the waters under the earth have no more fascinating sight
than the gray, silent form of a pike, moving and motionless in the
shallow water, a shadow more tangible than himself thrown by a
jack-light on the mottled yellow rocks and sands of the bottom. A
passing breath of wind, even the slightest motion of the punt, breaks
every shadow and indentation into myriad fleeting ripples and waves of
light, transforming the slender, silent fish into a sheaf of wriggling
glimmers. With the stilling of the surface, the waiting pike and all the
shadows and lights of the bottom grow once more still and distinct.
There floats the greatest cannibal of the fishes, paying his devotion
to the flame, and above him stands the greatest cannibal of all created
beings, pointing his deadly spear.
There is no moon. The stars cannot penetrate the thickening clouds. The
bay is still and its shores invisible, the distant light of a farmhouse
only serving to intensify the lonely silence. The savage joy of that
moment repays the boy for all his laborious preparations. He brought two
boards down the river from the mill, and toiled at them with all the
tools in the woodshed till the ends and edges were made smooth. He
collected lumber from all available sources for the ends and bottom,
fastening them on with a miscellaneous collection of nails and springs.
Then he patiently picked an old piece of tarred rope into oakum, and
caulked it into the seams with a sharpened gate-hinge. He notched a pine
tree, gathered the gum and boiled it into pitch to make the joints
tight. That extraordinary pair of oars he sawed, chopped, and whittled
from an old plank. The spear is a family relic which he dug up and
fitted with a white-ash pole, and the anchor is a long stone, tied by
the slack of a clothes-line. The jack is a basket made of old
pail-hoops, and fastened to an upright stick to hold the burning pine
knot. Yet we wonder why it is always the country boy who succeeds in the
city!
Will he too, be lured by the seductive glimmer? Will he turn away from
the conquest of nature and embark in the conquest of his fellow-mortals?
Will he go to a resort for his fishing and a preserve for his shooting?
Will that bunch of hair protruding from under his hat be worn thin and
gray in scrambling after the delights of the vain and the covetous? Will
he devote his superb strength of body and mind to outstripping and
circumventing his fellows in the pursuit of that transient glimmer, that
all-alluring _ignis fatuus_ which the Babylon world calls success?
S. T. Wood
DAFFODILS
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Wordsworth
If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty
give him water to drink; for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his
head, and the Lord shall reward thee.
Proverbs, XXV.
TO THE DANDELION
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round
May match in wealth--thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms that be.
Lowell
TRUE GREATNESS
On the evening of the twenty-second of May, 1509, two figures were
seated at the wide doorway of a handsome house in Florence. Lillo, a boy
of fifteen, sat on the ground, with his back against the angle of the
door-post, and his long legs stretched out, while he held a large book
open on his knee, and occasionally made a dash with his hand at an
inquisitive fly, with an air of interest stronger than that excited by
the finely-printed copy of Petrarch which he kept open at one place, as
if he were learning something by heart.
Romola sat nearly opposite Lillo, but she was not observing him. Her
hands were crossed on her lap, and her eyes were fixed absently on the
distant mountains: she was evidently unconscious of anything around her.
An eager life had left its marks upon her: the finely-moulded cheek had
sunk a little, the golden crown was less massive; but there was a
placidity on Romola's face which had never belonged to it in youth. It
is but once that we can know our worst sorrows, and Romola had known
them while life was new.
Absorbed in this way, she was not at first aware that Lillo had ceased
to look at his book, and was watching her with a slightly impatient air,
which meant that he wanted to talk to her, but was not quite sure
whether she would like that entertainment just now. But persevering
looks make themselves felt at last. Romola did presently turn away her
eyes from the distance and met Lillo's impatient dark gaze with a
brighter and brighter smile. He shuffled along the floor, still keeping
the book on his lap, till he got close to her and lodged his chin on
her knee.
"What is it, Lillo?" said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow.
Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more
massive and less regular than his father's. The blood of the Tuscan
peasant was in his veins.
"Mamma Romola, what am I to be?" he said, well contented that there was
a prospect of talking till it would be too late to con Petrarch any
longer.
"What should you like to be, Lillo? You might be a scholar. My father
was a scholar, you know, and taught me a great deal. That is the reason
why I can teach you."
"Yes," said Lillo, rather hesitatingly. "But he is old and blind in the
picture. Did he get a great deal of glory?"
"Not much, Lillo. The world was not always very kind to him, and he saw
meaner men than himself put into higher places because they could
flatter and say what was false. And then his dear son thought it right
to leave him and become a monk; and after that, my father, being blind
and lonely, felt unable to do the things that would have made his
learning of greater use to men, so that he might still have lived in
his works after he was in his grave."
"I should not like that sort of life," said Lillo, "I should like to be
something that would make me a great man, and very happy
besides--something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of
pleasure."
"That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that
could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We
can have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great
man, only by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the
world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so
much pain with it, that we can tell it from pain only by its being what
we would choose before everything, because our souls see it is good.
There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man
can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless he
gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to
endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that
belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than
falsehood. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know
the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix
your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it.
And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the
rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is
disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be
calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that
has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It would have been
better for me if I had never been born.' I will tell you something,
Lillo."
Romola paused for a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheeks between her
hands, and his young eyes were meeting hers.
"There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great
deal of his life, who made almost everyone fond of him, for he was
young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and
kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of doing
anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from
everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as
his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds--such
as make men infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he
betrayed every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself
safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him."
George Eliot: "Romola."
THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS
Last night among his fellows rough
He jested, quaffed, and swore:
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.
To-day, beneath the foeman's frown,
He stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador from Britain's crown,
And type of all her race.
Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
Bewildered and alone,
A heart, with English instinct fraught,
He yet can call his own.
Ay! tear his body limb from limb;
Bring cord, or axe, or flame!--
He only knows that not through him
Shall England come to shame.
Far Kentish hopfields round him seemed
Like dreams to come and go;
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleamed
One sheet of living snow:
The smoke above his father's door
In gray, soft eddyings hung:--
Must he then watch it rise no more,
Doomed by himself, so young?
Yes, Honour calls!--with strength like steel
He put the vision by:
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel;
An English lad must die!
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink,
With knee to man unbent,
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink
To his red grave he went.
Vain, mightiest fleets of iron framed;
Vain, those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untamed,
The strong heart of her sons!
So, let his name through Europe ring--
A man of mean estate
Who died, as firm as Sparta's king,
Because his soul was great.
F. H. Doyle
HONOURABLE TOIL
Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman, that,
with earth-made Implement, laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her
man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein,
notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the
Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all
weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face
of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and
even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated
Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and
fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and
fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee, too, lay a god-created
Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the
thick adhesions and defacements of Labour: and thy body, like thy soul,
was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty,
be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for
daily bread.
A second man I honour, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling
for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of
Life. Is not he, too, in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony;
revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours,
be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward
endeavour are one; when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman
only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers
Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not
the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have
Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?--These two, in all their degrees, I
honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it
listeth.
Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united;
and he, that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also
toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing
than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one
will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of
Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light
shining in great darkness.
Carlyle: "Sartor Resartus."
ON HIS BLINDNESS
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work, or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state
Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
Milton
So shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviour from the great,
Grow great by your example and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution.
Shakespeare
MYSTERIOUS NIGHT