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"A CHILD is a man in a small letter, and yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted the sinful apple. He is Nature's fresh picture, newly drawn, which time and much handling dims and defaces; his soul is yet a white page unscribbled with the observations of the world, whereof at length it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely good, because he knows not evil, and hath not made means by sin. to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures ills to come by foreseeing them. Nature and his parents alike dandle him and train him with sugar first to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet like a young apprentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy. We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest, and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horse but the emblems and mockings of man's businesses. The older he grows he is a stair lower from God. He is the Christian's pattern, and the old man's fate-the one imitates his pureness and the other his simplicity."--Bishop Earle's Microcosmography.

OUR birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily further from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man sees it die away,

And fade into the light of common day,

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,

The homely muse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,

And the imperial palace whence it came.

WORDSWORTH.

XVIII. ON SENSIBILITY.

"AFTER all the complaints that have been made of the peculiar dis tresses which are incident to cultivated minds, who would exchange the sensibilities of his intellectual and moral being for the apathy of those whose only avenues of pleasure and pain are to be found in their animal nature; who move thoughtlessly,' as Goethe says, 'in the narrow circle of their existence, and to whom the falling leaves present no idea but that of approaching winter?" "-Dugald Stewart.

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SENSIBILITY how charming,

Thou, my friend, canst truly tell :
But distress, with horrors arming,
Thou hast also known too well;
Fairest flower,' behold the lily,
Blooming in the summer ray;
Let the blast sweep o'er the valley,
See it prostrate on the clay.
Hear the wood-lark charm the forest,
Telling o'er his little joys:
Hapless bird! a prey the surest,
To each pirate of the skies."
Dearly bought the hidden treasure,
Finer feelings can bestow :*
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure,
Thrill the deepest notes of woe.

1. Flower, in what case?

2. What part of the verb is charm?

BURNS.

3. Mention some of the pirates of the sky. 4. Ellipsis?

XIX. TO DAFFODILS.

"THOU turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth. For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.”—Psalm xc. 3–7. FAIR daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon :

Stay, stay

Until the hast'ning day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And having prayed together, we

Will go with you along!

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"ALL true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true handlabour, there is something of divineness. Labour, 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-up to the Agony of bloody sweat,' which all men have called divine! 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 body-guard 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 immeasured 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 honour to thy far distant home, in honour 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."-Carlyle.

THE night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,

All silently, the little moon

Drops down behind the sky.

There is no light in earth or heaven,
But the cold light of stars;

And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.

Is it the tender star of love?

The star of love and dreams?
O no! from that blue tent above,
A hero's armour gleams.

And earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,

Suspended in the evening skies,
The shield of that red star.

O star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my pain;

Thou beckonest with thy mailéd hand,
And I am strong again.

Within my breast there is no light,
But the cold light of stars;
I give the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars.

The star of the unconquered will,
He rises in my breast,
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.
And thou too, whosoe'er thou art
That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.

O, fear not, in a world like this,

And thou shalt know ere long,
Know how sublime a thing it is,
To suffer and be strong.

LONGFELLOW.

XXI. VENUS.

(A REPLY TO LONGFELLOW ON "MARS.")

"I READ in the Scriptures the praises of meekness. But when I see a man meek or patient of injury through tameness, or insensibility, or want of self-respect, passively gentle, meek through constitution or fear, I look on him with feelings very different from veneration. It is the meekness of principle; it is mildness replete with energy; it is the forbearance of a man who feels a wrong, but who curbs anger, who though injured resolves to be just, who voluntarily remembers that his foe is a man and a brother, who dreads to surrender himself to his passions, who in the moment of provocation subjects himself to reason and religion, and who holds fast the great truth, that the noblest victory over a foe is to disarm and subdue him by equity and kindness, it is this meekness which I venerate, and which seems to me one of the divinest virtues. It is moral power, the strength of virtuous purpose, pervading meekness, which gives it all its title to respect." Channing.

VENUS.

THOU lover of the blaze of Mars,
Come out with me to night,
For I have found among the stars
A name of nobler light.

Thy boast is of the unconquered mind,
The strong, the stern, the still;
Mine of the happier heart, resigned
To wisdom's holy will.

They call my star by beauty's name.
The gentle Queen of Love;

And look! how fair its tender flame
Is flickering above.

U star of peace, O torch of hope,
I hail thy precious ray

A diamond on the ebon cope
To shine the dark away.

Within my heart there is no light
But cometh from above,

I give the first watch of the night
To the sweet planet Love :

The star of charity and truth,
Of cheerful thoughts and sage,
The lamp to guide my steps in youth
And gladden mine old age!

O brother, yield: thy fiery Mars
For all his mailed might,

Is not so strong among the stars
As mine, the Queen of night:

A Queen to shine all nights away
And make the morn more clear
Contentment gilding every day,-
There is no twilight here!

Yes; in a trial world like this

Where all that comes-is sent, Learn how divine a thing it is

To smile and be content!

289

TUPPER'S Ballads and Poems.

S.

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