"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: And cometh from afar : But trailing clouds of glory do we come But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, The Youth, who daily further from the east 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, The homely muse doth all she can 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. 6 SENSIBILITY how charming, Thou, my friend, canst truly tell : 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! 6 "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; All silently, the little moon Drops down behind the sky. There is no light in earth or heaven, And the first watch of night is given Is it the tender star of love? The star of love and dreams? And earnest thoughts within me rise, Suspended in the evening skies, O star of strength! I see thee stand Thou beckonest with thy mailéd hand, Within my breast there is no light, The star of the unconquered will, O, fear not, in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long, 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, Thy boast is of the unconquered mind, They call my star by beauty's name. And look! how fair its tender flame U star of peace, O torch of hope, A diamond on the ebon cope Within my heart there is no light I give the first watch of the night The star of charity and truth, O brother, yield: thy fiery Mars Is not so strong among the stars A Queen to shine all nights away 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. |