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LAUGH AND BE MERRY1

John Masefield (1875–

JOHN MASEFIELD

), born in Shropshire, England, is a realistic poet who often paints life in dull, gray tones. Some of his short lyrics, like Laugh and be Merry, are tonic with hope and cheerfulness. See also: Halleck's New English Literature, pp. 601, 602, 623.

John Masefield, Seaman-Author, by Milton Bronner in Bookman, 33: 584-591 (August, 1911).

A Visit to John Masefield, by John Cournos in The Independent, Vol. LXXIII, pp. 533-538.

LAUGH and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,
Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.
Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.
Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of

man.

Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time,

God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rime, Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of His mirth,

The splendid joy of the stars: the joy of the earth.

So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky,

Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping by,
Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured
In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the Lord.

1 From The Story of a Round House and Other Poems, copyright, 1912, by The Macmillan Company. Used by special arrangement with the publishers.

Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin,
Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn,

Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music ends. Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my friends.

I

STUDY HINTS

"Better," in lines 1 and 2, means "make better." Line 2, of stanza 2, means that God made Heaven and Earth belong together as two words that rime.

Memorize at least one stanza and recite it in a spirited way, so that those who hear you will feel the splendid vigor of the poetry.

SUGGESTIONS FOR ADDITIONAL READINGS

Sea-Fever. John Masefield.

Roadways. John Masefield.

I Saw A Ship A-Sailing. John Masefield.

Typhoon. Joseph Conrad.

THE LONDON VISITS OF A COUNTRY LORD

IN THE TIME OF CHARLES II1

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was born in Leicestershire, England. As a small boy, he was a great reader and picked up thereby an unusual and large vocabulary. His memory was also remarkable. He studied law and was elected a member of Parliament. While he was valuable to his country in this capacity, he is best known on account of his writings. His Essays retain their popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. His style is clearness itself, and frequently so brilliant that his History of England, for example, is thought by many to be as interesting as a novel. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. See also:

Halleck's New English Literature, pp. 466-472, 581.

Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Macaulay.

Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature.
Morrison's Macaulay.

ONLY very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens in easy circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and woods during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a rural village, was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal of Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he stared at the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters, and stood under the waterspouts, marked him out as an 1 From History of England, Vol. I, Chapter III.

excellent subject for the operations of swindlers and banterers. Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney-coachmen splashed him from head to foot. Thieves explored with perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the splendor of the lord mayor's show. Money droppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him

the most honest, friendly gentlemen that
he had ever seen. If he asked his way
to St. James's, his informants sent him
to Mile End. If he went into a shop,
he was instantly discerned to be a fit
purchaser of everything that nobody
else would buy, of second-hand em-
broidery, copper rings, and watches that
would not go.
If he rambled into any
fashionable coffeehouse, he became a
mark for the insolent derision of fops
and the grave waggery of templars.
Enraged and mortified, he soon returned
to his mansion, and there, in the homage
of his tenants and the conversation of
his boon companions, found consolation
for the vexations and humiliations which
he had undergone. There he once more

felt himself a great man; and he saw nothing above him except when at the assizes he took his seat on the bench near the judge, or when at the muster of the militia he saluted the lord lieutenant.

The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done

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most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical purpose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh, and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna.

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Did the treatment of a man from the country by city rogues differ very greatly from that of to-day? How was the lord recognized as from the country? What inventions of our day "abridge distance"? The second and third sentences of the last paragraph are very thoughtful. See if you can understand them.

SUGGESTIONS FOR ORAL AND WRITTEN ENGLISH
THEME SUBJECTS

Using the same method as in Wouter Van Twiller, describe a city gentleman in the country, or a country gentleman in the city. Or, using the method of Patrick Henry's speech, write down your points in the following:

Resolved: That the City Boy is as Country Boy is in the City.

How We Knew He Was Country-bred.

Green" in the Country, as the

How We Knew She Was Citybred.

What the Interurban Has Done for What the Interurban Has Done

City People.

for the Farmer.

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