Such hand as Marmion's had not spared And first I tell thee, haughty peer, On the earl's cheek the flush of rage Fierce he broke forth,—“ Anu darest thou thển The Douglas in his hall? And hopest thou hence unscathed to go? No, by Saint Bride of Bothwell, no! Lord Marmion turned,-well was his need,- To pass there was such scanty room, And shook his gauntlet at the towers. "Horse! horse!" the Douglas cried, "and chase!" But soon he reined his fury's pace: 66 "A royal messenger he came, Though most unworthy of the name.- From "Marmion." Abridged. I would rather be a poor man in a garret, with plenty of books, than a king who did not love reading. Thomas Babington Macaulay. WORK BY THOMAS CARLYLE No other modern writer is like Carlyle. To find a comparison for him we must go back to the Old Testament prophets who were called by God to warn men to flee from sin and low living. Hints of Carlyle's boyhood are found in his Sartor Resartus, or, The Tailor Paiched, a famous book of essays. Carlyle remembered particularly the cattlefairs to which his father took him, and his delight each day when the mail-coach passed through the little Scotch village of his home, carrying his fancy out with it into the panorama of the great world. At Edinburgh University, where he studied as a young man, he says that he "succeeded in fishing up more books in the library than were known to the very keepers thereof." He was a life-long student and admirer of Goethe, the great German philosopher. For some years Carlyle was a schoolmaster, but his fame as a writer growing, he was made rector of Edinburgh University. His history of the French Revolution is a classic. In his friendship with Emerson the world has shared through the publication of their letters. [Born in 1795-died in 1881 ] All true Work is sacred. In all true Work, were it but true hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, Martyrdoms. O brother, if this is not "worship," then I say, the more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy fellow-workmen there, in God's Eternity; surviving there, they alone surviving; sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Bodyguard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak Human Memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time! To thee, Heaven, though severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind, as a noble Mother; as that Spartan Mother, saying while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it!" Thou too shalt return home in honor; to thy far-distant Home, in honor; doubt it not,-if in the battle thou keep thy shield! Thou, in the Eternities and deepest Death-kingdoms, art not an alien; thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain. From "Past and Present." Abridged. We're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see. Robert Browning ON THE NATIVITY BY JOHN MILTON Nor war, or battle's sound, Was heard the world around— Unstained with hostile blood; The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by. But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began; Smoothly the waters kissed, Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. Abridged. |