His friends not false, his wife no shrew, He passed his hours in peace. Brought on his eightieth year. As all alone he sate, Half killed with anger and surprise, 'Tis six-and-thirty years at least, And you are now fourscore." "So much the worse," the clown rejoined; "To spare the aged would be kind : However, see your search be legal ; And your authority, is 't regal? Else you are come on a fool's errand, With but a secretary's warrant. Beside, you promised me three warnings, Which I have looked for nights and mornings; But for that loss of time and ease "Hold," says the farmer, "not so fast! I have been lame these four years past." "And no great wonder," Death replies : "However, you still keep your eyes; And sure, to see one's loves and friends For legs and arms would make amends." "Perhaps," says Dodson, "so it might, But latterly I've lost my sight." "This is a shocking tale, 't is true; The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose ; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, To me alone there came a thought of grief; "There's none," cries he; "and if there were, The cataracts blow their trumpets from the I'm grown so deaf, I could not hear." "Nay, then," the spectre stern rejoined, "These are unjustifiable yearnings: If you are lame and deaf and blind, steep, No more shall grief of mine the season wrong. I hear the echoes through the mountains throng; The winds come to me from the fields of sleep. And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity; And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday; Thou child of joy, Forget the glories he hath known, Behold the child among his new-born blisses,-- Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, happy shepherd boy! A single field which I have looked upon, Doth the same tale repeat. 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 farther from the east Is on his way attended : At length the Man perceives it die away, Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man, With light upon him from his father's eyes! A mourning or a funeral ; And this hath now his heart, To dialogues of business, love, or strife; Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little actor cons another part, - Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Mighty prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find, O joy that in our embers The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blest, — With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his To live beneath your more habitual sway. Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Hence, in a season of calm weather, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither, Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now forever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. SOLILOQUY: ON IMMORTALITY. FROM "CATO," ACT V. SC. 1. SCENE. - CATO, sitting in a thoughtful posture, with Plato's book on the Immortality of the Soul in his hand, and a drawn sword on the table by him. IT must be so Plato, thou reasonest well!— Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 'T is the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis Heaven itself, that points out a hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity!-thou pleasing, dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes, must we pass! The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me; But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us (And that there is, all Nature cries aloud Through all her works), he must delight in virtue ; And that which he delights in must be happy. But when? or where? This world was made for Cæsar. Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; I'm weary of conjectures, this must end 'em. We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; Which, having been, must ever be ; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, (Laying his hand on his sword.) · Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me : This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars snail fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds! JOSEPH ADDISON. O, MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE! | Lost in a gay and festal throng, O, MAY I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn Of miserable aims that end with self, I tremble at some tender song, Set to an air whose golden bars I must have heard in other stars. In sacred aisles I pause to share The blessings of a priestly prayer, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like When the whole scene which greets mine eyes stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's minds To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, For which we struggled, failed, and agonized This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us, who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls MARIAN EVANS LEWES CROSS (George Eliot). PRE-EXISTENCE. WHILE sauntering through the crowded street, Some half-remembered face I meet, Albeit upon no mortal shore That face, methinks, has smiled before. In some strange mode I recognize As one whose every mystic part I feel prefigured in my heart. At sunset, as I calmly stand, A stranger on an alien strand, Familiar as my childhood's home One sails toward me o'er the bay, I can foretell. A prescient lore Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain, Of countless æons; memories far, Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace SLUMBER, Sleep, they were two brothers, servants to the gods above; Kind Prometheus lured them downwards, ever filled with earthly love; [The MS. of this poem, which appeared during the first quarter of the present century, was said to have been found in the Museum But what gods could bear so lightly, pressed too of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect human skeleton, and to have been sent by the curator to the Morning Chronicle for publication. It excited so much attention that every effort was made to discover the author, and a responsible party went so far as to offer a reward of fifty guineas for information that would discover its origin. The author preserved his incognito, and, we believe, has never been discovered.] BEHOLD this ruin! "T was a skull This narrow cell was Life's retreat; This space was Thought's mysterious seat. Beneath this mouldering canopy But through the dews of kindness beamed, Within this hollow cavern hung And when it could not praise was chained; |