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Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:

He, with viny crown, advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addressed;

But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol, Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best. They would have thought, who heard the strain, They saw, in Tempé's vale, her native maids, Amid the festal-sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing;

While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings, Love framed with Mirth a gay, fantastic round— Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound; And he, amid his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

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My blessing with thee!

And these few precepts in thy memory:

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,

Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:

For the apparel oft proclaims the man;

And they in France, of the best rank and station,

Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,-to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

-Shakespeare.

ABOU BEN ADHEM.

ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight of his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And, to the presence in the room, he said,

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What writest thou?" The vision raised its head, And, with a look made of all sweet accord, Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord!" "And is mine one?" asked Abou.-"Nay, not so," Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerly still, and said, “I pray thee, then, Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." The angel wrote and vanished. The next night It came again, with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blest. And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

-Leigh Hunt.

CLVII. THe Battle.

HEAVY and solemn,

A cloudy column,

Through the green plain they marching came!
Measureless spread, like a table dread,
For the wild, grim dice of the iron game.
Looks are bent on the shaking ground,
Hearts beat low with a knelling sound;
Swift by the breast that bears the brunt,

Gallops the major along the front.-"Halt!"

And fettered they stand at the stark command,
And the warriors, silent, halt.

Proud in the blush of morning glowing, What on the hill-top shines in flowing? "See you the foeman's banners waving?' "We see the foeman's banners waving." "God be with you, children and wife!" Hark to the music, the drum and fife,

How they ring through the ranks which they rouse to

the strife!

Thrilling they sound, with their glorious tone,

Thrilling they go through the marrow and bone!

Brothers, God grant, when this life is o'er,

In the life to come that we meet once more!

See the smoke, how the lightning is cleaving asunder!

Hark! the guns, peal on peal, how they boom in their

thunder!

From host to host with kindling sound,

The shouted signal circles round;

Freer already breathes the breath!

The war is waging, slaughter raging,

And heavy through the reeking pall
The iron death-dice fall!

Nearer they close, foes upon foes:

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Ready!" From square to square it goes.

They kneel as one man from flank to flank,

And the fire comes sharp from the foremost rank.
Many a soldier to earth is sent,

Many a gap by the balls is rent;

O'er the corpse before springs the hinder man,
That the line may not fall to the fearless van.
To the right, to the left, and around and around,
Death whirls in its dance on the bloody ground.
God's sunlight is quenched in the fiery fight,
Over the hosts falls a brooding night!
Brothers, God grant that when this life is o'er,
In the life to come we may meet once more.

The dead men are bathed in the weltering blood, And the living are blent in the slippery flood; And the feet, as they reeling and sliding go, Stumble still on the corpse that sleeps below. "What? Francis! Give Charlotte my last farewell," As the dying man murmurs, the thunders swell. “I'll give—O God! are the guns so near?

Ho, comrades! yon volley! look sharp to the rear!—
I'll give to thy Charlotte thy last farewell!

Sleep soft! where death thickest descendest in rain,
The friend thou forsakest thy side may regain!"
Hitherward, thitherward reels the fight,
Dark and more darkly day glooms into night.
Brothers, God grant, when this life is o'er,
In the life to come that we meet once more!

Hark to the hoofs that galloping go!
The adjutant's flying;

The horsemen press hard on the panting foe,
Their thunder booms in dying,

Victory!

Tremor has seized on the dastards all,

And their leaders fall!

Victory!

Closed is the brunt of the glorious fight;

And the day, like a conqueror, bursts on the night! Trumpet and fife swelling choral along,

The triumph already sweeps marching in song,

Farewell, fallen brothers; though this life be o'er,

There's another, in which we shall meet you once more!

-Schiller.

CLVIII.

HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY.

To be or not to be that is the question!
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them-To die-to sleep-
No more!-and, by a sleep, to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to-'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd.

To die-to sleep

To sleep?-perchance to dream-aye, there's the rub!
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause! There's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes—
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?

Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death—
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No traveler returns-puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of!

Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all:
And thus, the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

-Shakespeare.

CLIX.-SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS AT CAPUA.

YE call me chief; and ye do well to call him chief who, for twelve long years, has met upon the arena every shape of man or beast the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and who never yet lowered his arm. If there be one among

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