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Our life is like a cloudy sky 'mid mountains,
When in the blast the watery vapors float.
Now gleams of light pass o'er the lovely hills,
And make the purple heath and russet bracken
Seem lovelier, and the grass of brighter green;
And now a giant shadow hides them all.
And thus it is that, in all earthly distance
On which the sight can fix, still fear and hope,
Gloom and alternate sunshine, each succeeds.
So of another and an unknown land
We see the radiance of the clouds reflected,
Which is the future life beyond the grave!

THOUGHT.

Be this our trust, that ages (filled with light
More glorious far than those faint beams which shine
In this our feeble twilight) yet to come
Shall see distinctly what we now but hope:

The world immutable in which alone
Wisdom is found, the light and life of things,—
The breath divine, creating power divine,-
The One of which the human intellect
Is but a type, as feeble as that image
Of the bright sun seen on the bursting wave—
Bright, but without distinctness, yet in passing
Showing its glorious and eternal source!

Francis Scott Key.

AMERICAN.

Key (1779-1843) owes his fame to a single patriotic song. The excellent music to which its somewhat harsh and intractable verses are set has undoubtedly done much to perpetuate its popularity. Key was born in Frederick County, Maryland, and educated at St. John's College, Annapolis. He practised law first in Fredericktown, and afterward in Washington, where he became District Attorney. A volume of his poems was published in Baltimore after his death. There is little in the collection that is memorable except "The Starspangled Banner." This was composed in 1814, on the occasion of the bombardment of Fort McHenry, when Key, a young midshipman, was a prisoner in the hands of the attacking British.

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

Oh say! can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly

streaming?

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof, through the night, that our flag was still there.

Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence

reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering

steep,

As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses ? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner-oh, long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

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Praise the Power that hath made and preserved And like me they shall sing, as to heaven they spring, it a nation! "Death is not the end of life!"

Thus conquer we must, when our cause it is just; And this be our motto-"In God is our trust!" And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

THE WORM'S DEATH-SONG.

Oh! let me alone,-I've a work to be done That can brook not a moment's delay; While yet I breathe I must spin and weave, And may rest not night or day.

Food and sleep I never may know,
Till my blessed work be done;

Then my rest shall be sweet in the winding-sheet
That around me I have spun.

I have been a base and grovelling thing, And the dust of the earth my home; But now I know that the end of my woe And the day of my bliss is come.

In the shroud I make, this creeping frame
Shall peacefully die away;

But its death shall be new life to me,
In the midst of its perished clay.

I shall wake, I shall wake-a glorious form
Of brightness and beauty to wear;

I shall burst from the gloom of my opening tomb,
And breathe in the balmy air.

I shall spread my new wings to the morning sun; On the summer's breath I shall live;

John Herman Merivale.

Merivale (1779-1844) was a native of Exeter, England. Educated at Cambridge, he studied law, was a successful barrister, and in 1826 was appointed a Commissioner in Bankruptcy. The first edition of his "Orlando in Roncesvalles," a poem in five cantos, appeared in 1814. His "Poems, Original and Translated," were published by Pickering in three volumes, 1838. Some of his versions from the Greek, Latin, Italian, and German are faithful and spirited; and his short original poems, though quite unequal in merit, show no ordinary degree of literary attainment. For some of these, he frankly tells us, he is little entitled to assume the merit of entire originality; he is "fully sensible of this deficiency, or of what may be called a propensity to follow in the track of such preceding authors as were from time to time objects of his admiration." He was the father of the Rev. Charles Merivale (born 1808), author of a "History of the Romans under the Empire" (1862).

"EVIL, BE THOU MY GOOD.” "Evil, be thou my good"-in rage Of disappointed pride,

And hurling vengeance at his God, The apostate angel cried.

"Evil, be thou my good "--repeats,
But in a different sense,
The Christian, taught by faith to trace
The scheme of Providence.

So deems the hermit, who abjures The world for Jesus' sake;

The patriot 'mid his dungeon bars,

The martyr at his stake.

For He who happiness ordained
Our being's only end-

The God who made us, and who knows
Whither our wishes tend,-

The glorious prize hath stationed high
On Virtue's hallowed mound,
Guarded by toil, beset by care,
With dauger circled round.

Virtue were but a name, if Vice

Had no dominion here,

And pleasure none could taste, if pain And sorrow were not near.

The fatal cup we all must drain
Of mingled bliss and woe;
Unmixed the cup would tasteless be,
Or quite forget to flow.

Then cease to question Heaven's decree,
Since Evil, understood,

Is but the tribute Nature pays
For Universal Good.'

REASON AND UNDERSTANDING.

FROM "RETROSPECTION," AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

In a note to this part of his poem the author says: "The English public is not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding-between a principle and a maxim-an eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized from a great number of facts. A man, having seen a million moss-roses, all red, concludes, from his own experience and that of others, that all moss-roses are red. That is a maxim with him-the greatest amount of his knowledge on the subject. But it is only true until some gardener has produced a white moss-rose-after which the maxim is good for nothing. *** Now compare this with the assurance which you have that the two sides of any triangle are together greater than the third," etc. See Coleridge's "Table-Talk."

The reasoning faculty, and that we name
The understanding, are no more the same
Than are a maxim and a principle-
A truth eternal, indestructible,

1 The author, in a note, refers to the following stanza by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), which he quotes, “although serving to convict him of unconscious plagiarism:"

"Through nature's ever varying scene
By different ways pursued,
The one eternal end of Heaven

Is Universal Good."

And a bare inference from facts, how great
Soe'er their number, magnitude, and weight.
-At best, how fallible!-who sees a rose,
Sees that 'tis red; and what he sees he knows.
Day after day, at each successive hour,
Where'er he treads, the same love-vermeiled flower
Blooms in his path. What wonder if he draw,
From facts so proved, a universal law,
And deem all roses of the self-same hue?
And this is knowledge! Yet 'tis only true
Until a white rose gleams upon his view.
Where is his reason then?-his science, bought
With long experience? All must come to naught!
So, when creation's earliest day had run,

And Adam first beheld the new-born sun
Sink in the shrouded west, the deepening gloom
He watched, all hopeless of a morn to come.
Another evening's shades advancing near
He marked with livelier hopes, yet dashed by fear.
Another-and another-hopes prevail;
Thousands of years repeat the wondrous tale:
Yet where is man's assurance that the light
Of day will break upon the coming night?
Without all sense of God, eternity,
Absolute truth, volition, liberty,
Good, fair, just, infinite-think, if you can,
Of such a being in the form of man!
What but the animal remains ?--endowed
(May be) with memory's instinctive crowd
Of images-but man is wanting there,
His very essence, unimpressive air;
And, in his stead, a creature subtler far
Than all the beasts that in the forest are,
Or the green field,-but also cursed above
Them all-condemned that bitterest curse to prove:
"Upon thy belly creep, and, for thy fee,
Eat dust, so long as thou hast leave to be."

FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY.

In wanton sport my Doris from her fair
And glossy tresses tore a straggling hair,
And bound my hands, as if of conquest vain,
And I some royal captive in her chain.

At first I laughed: "This fetter, charming maid,
Is lightly worn, and soon dissolved," I said:

I said-but ah! I had not learned to prove
How strong the fetters that are forged by Love.
That little thread of gold I strove to sever,
Was bound, like steel, around my heart forever;
And, from that hapless hour, my tyrant fair
Has led and turned me by a single hair.

Thomas Moore.

THOMAS MOORE.

Moore (1779-1852) was the son of the keeper of a small wine-store in Dublin. He was a quick child, and rhymed and recited early. A careful mother secured him the best education she could get. By 1800 he had graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, and acquired much social repute as a singer to his own accompaniment at the piano. He translated "Anacreon," and wrote amorous poems, which he would have liked to annihilate in after-years. In 1803 he went to Bermuda, where he had got an official situation, the duties of which might be performed by proxy; but his deputy proved unfaithful, and Moore incurred annoyance and pecuniary loss therefrom. Having made a short tour in the United States, and visited Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, he returned to England, became a diner-out much in request at Holland House, wrote lively Whig satires, and, after marrying a Miss Dyke, with whom he lived happily, began writing his "Irish Melodies," for which he was to receive £500 a year for seven years. He wrote "Lalla Rookh," an Oriental tale in verse, for which he got £3000. Among his prose works are a "Life of Sheridan," "Life of Byron," and "The Epicurean." In 1831 a pension of £300 a year was settled upon Moore.

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The latter years of the poet's life were embittered by domestic bereavements. Two of his children died. He sank into mental imbecility, and died at Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes, in his seventy-third year. Moore was kind-hearted and emotional; he loved his mother, his wife, and Ireland, and had many attached friends; but dining-out did not deepen his character." Byron said of him, "he dearly loved a lord." Moore was at his best in his "Irish Melodies." "They seem to be inseparable from the music to which he skilfully wedded them, and many have the elements of an enduring reputation. But it would be better for Moore's chance of future fame if two-thirds of what he wrote could be expunged.

While in Philadelphia, Moore made the acquaintance of Joseph Dennie (1768-1812), an elegant scholar and genial companion, and editor of the first good American magazine, The Portfolio. Dennie was a native of Boston, Mass., and a graduate of Harvard, but passed the latter years of his life in Philadelphia. Here Moore was one of his guests, wrote songs for The Portfolio, and joined in the nightly gayeties. In one of his poems are these lines, referring to the friends he met at Dennie's:

"Yet, yet forgive me, O ye sacred few!

Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew;
Whom, known and loved through many a social eve,
"Twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to leave.
Not with more joy the lonely exile scanned
The writing traced upon the desert's sand,
Where his lone heart but little hoped to flud
One trace of life, one stamp of humankind,
Than did I hail the pure, the enlightened zeal,
The strength to reason and the warmth to feel.
The manly polish and the illumined taste,
Which-'mid the melancholy, heartless waste
My foot has traversed-O you sacred few!

I found by Delaware's green banks with you."
Joseph Dennie died in 1812, at the early age of forty-
four years.
The Portfolio did not long survive him.

345

THE MEETING OF THE WATERS.' There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;2

Oh! the last ray of feeling aud life must depart, Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.

Yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the sceue
Her purest of crystal and brightest of green;
'Twas not the soft magic of streamlet or hill-
Oh no!-it was something more exquisite still.

'Twas that friends the beloved of my bosom were near,

Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear,

And who felt how the best charms of nature improve, When we see them reflected from looks that we love.

Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade with the friends I love best,
Where the storms that we feel in this cold world
should cease,

And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.

BELIEVE ME, IF ALL THOSE ENDEARING YOUNG CHARMS.

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms Which I gaze on so fondly to-day

Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms, Like fairy-gifts fading away,

Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,

Let thy loveliness fade as it will;

And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,
That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known
To which time will but make thee more dear:
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,

As the sunflower turns on his god when he sets

The same look which she turned when he rose.

1 "The Meeting of the Waters" forms a part of that beautiful scenery which lies between Rathdrum and Arklow, in the county of Wicklow, and these lines were suggested by a visit to this romantic spot, in the summer of 1807.

2 The rivers of Avou and Avoca,

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