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PARKER'S FOURTH READER.

The powerful of the earth,

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the wise, the good,

Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,

-All in one mighty sepulcher.

6. The hills,

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Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between,-

The venerable woods, rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks,

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man.

7. The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.

8. Take the wings

Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,

Save his own dashings, — yet—the dead are there!
And millions in those solitudes, since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep,

-

the dead reign there alone!
9. So shalt thou rest; and what if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee.

10. As the long train

Of ages glide away, the sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The bowed with age, the infant in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age cut off,
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

11. So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan that moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave, at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams!

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1. METHINKS, when on the languid eye
Life's autumn scenes grow dim,

When evening's shadows veil the sky,
And Pleasure's siren hymn

Grows fainter on the tuneless ear,
Like echoes from another sphere,
Or dream of seraphim,-

It were not sad to cast away

This dull and cumbrous load of clay.
2. It were not sad to feel the heart
Grow passionless and cold;

To feel those longings to depart
That cheered the good of old;

To clasp the faith which looks on high,
Which fires the Christian's dying eye,
And makes the curtain-fold,
That falls upon his wasting breast,
The door that leads to endless rest.
3. It were not lonely thus to lie
On that triumphant bed,

Till the pure spirit mounts on high,
By white-winged seraphs led:
Where glories earth may never know
O'er "many mansions" lingering glow,
In peerless luster shed;

It were not lonely thus to soar,

Where sin and grief can sting no more.

*A happy death.

4. And, though the way to such a goal
Lies through the clouded tomb,
If on the free, unfettered soul
There rest no stains of gloom,
How should its aspirations rise
Far through the blue, unpillared skies,
Up to its final home!

Beyond the journeyings of the sun,
Where streams of living waters run.

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1. HE is gone on the mountain, He is lost to the forest,

Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font, reäppearing,

From the rain-drops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!

2. The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory;
The autumn winds rushing
Waft the leaves that are searest,
But our flower was in flushing
When blighting was nearest.

3. Fleet foot on the correi,*

Sage counsel in cumber,t
Red hand in the foray,
How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,

Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and forever!

* Or corri, the hollow side of a hill, where game lies.

+ Chamber.

+ Battle.

LESSON LXXVI.

Parallel between Pope and Dryden. — JOHNSON.

1. POPE professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised, through his whole life, with unvaried liberality; and, perhaps, his character may receive some illustration, if he be compared with his master. Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers.

2. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he had. He wrote, and professed to write, merely for the people; and when he pleased others, he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which was already good, nor often to mend what he must have known to be faulty.

3. He wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when occasion or necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present moment happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind; for when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no further solicitude.

4. Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavored to do his best: he did not court the candor, but dared the judgment, of his reader; and, expecting no indulgence from others, he showed none to himself.

5. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven. For this reason, he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he considered and reconsidered them.

6. The only poems which can be supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as might hasten their publication were the two satires of "Thirty-eight," of which Dodsley told me that they were brought to him by the author that they might be fairly copied. Almost every line," he said, was then written twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent, some time afterwards, to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over a second time."

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7. His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their publication was not strictly true. His parental attention

never abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently corrected in those that followed.

8. He appears to have revised the "Iliad," and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the "Essay on Criticism" received many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be found that he altered without adding clearness, elegance, or vigor.

9. Pope had perhaps the judgment of Dryden, but Dryden certainly wanted the diligence of Pope. In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author, had been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations from a more extensive circumference of science.

10. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition.

11. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and leveled by the roller.

12. Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet, that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert, that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates, the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden.

13. It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigor Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems.

14. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or

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