The world o'erlooks him in her busy search
Of objects, more illustrious in her view;
And, occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain.
He cannot skim the ground like summer birds
Pursuing gilded flies; and such he deems
Her honors, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore in contemplation is his bliss,
Whose poweris suchthat whom she lifts from earth
She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,
And shows him glories yet to be revealed.
Not slothful he, though seeming unemployed,
And censured oft as useless. Stillest streams
Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird
That flutters least is longest on the wing.
FROM THE "ESSAY ON ΜΑΝ."
O HAPPINESS! our being's end and aim ! Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name: That something still which prompts the eternal sigh
For which we bear to live or dare to die,
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise.
Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair opening to some court's propitious shrine,
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reaped in iron harvests of the field?
Where grows? - where grows it not? If vain
our toil,
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil :
Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere,
'T is nowhere to be found, or everywhere :
'T is never to be bought, but always free,
And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with
thee.
Ask of the learned the way? The learned are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these;
Some, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain;
Some, swelled to gods, confess even virtue vain!
Or, indolent, to each extreme they fall,
To trust in everything, or doubt of all.
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?
Take nature's path, and mad opinion's leave;
All states can reach it, and all heads conceive;
Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell; There needs but thinking right and meaning well; And mourn our various portions as we please, Equal is common sense and common ease.
How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill !
Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Not tied unto the world with care
Of public fame or private breath;
Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;
Who hath his life from rumors freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make accusers great;
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend,
This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And, having nothing, yet hath all.
Ar the close of the day, when the hamlet is still,
And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove,
When naught but the torrent is heard on the hill,
And naught but the nightingale's song in the grove,
'T was thus, by the cave of the mountain afar,
While his harp rung symphonious, a hermit began;
No more with himself or with nature at war,
He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man :
"Ah! why, all abandoned to darkness and woe,
Why, lone Philomela, that languishing fall?
For spring shall return, and a lover bestow,
And sorrow no longer thy bosom inthrall.
But, if pity inspire thee, renew the sad lay,
Mourn, sweetest complainer, man calls thee to
mourn !
O, soothe him whose pleasures like thine pass away!
Full quickly they pass, but they never return.
"Now, gliding remote on the verge of the sky, The moon, half extinguished, her crescent displays;
But lately I marked when majestic on high
She shone, and the planets were lost in her blaze.
Roll on, thou fair orb, and with gladness pursue
The path that conducts thee to splendor again!
But man's faded glory what change shall renew?
Ah, fool! to exult in a glory so vain !
"'T is night, and the landscape is lovely no more. I mourn, -but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you; For morn is approaching your charms to restore, Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with dew.
Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn, -
Kind nature the embryo blossom will save;
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn ?
O, when shall day dawn on the night of the grave?
"'T was thus, by the glare of false science betrayed, That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind, My thoughts wont to roam from shade onward to shade,
Destruction before me, and sorrow behind. 'O pity, great Father of light,' then I cried, 'Thy creature, who fain would not wander from thee!
Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride; From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free.'
"And darkness and doubt are now flying away;
No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn.
So breaks on the traveller, faint and astray,
The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn.
See truth, love, and mercy in triumph descending,
And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom!
On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are
And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb." JAMES BEATTIE.
THE CROWDED STREET.
LET me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face, Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace.
They pass - to toil, to strife, to rest;
To halls in which the feast is spread;
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.
And some to happy homes repair,
Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.
And some, who walk in calinness here, Shall shudder as they reach the door Where one who made their dwelling dear, Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, And dreams of greatness in thine eye! Go'st thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?
Keen son of trade, with eager brow!
Who is now fluttering in thy snare?
Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires in air?
Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
The dance till daylight gleam again!
Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
Some, famine-struck, shall think how long
The cold, dark hours, how slow the light;
And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.
Each where his tasks or pleasures call,
They pass, and heed each other not.
There is who heeds, who holds them all
In His large love and boundless thought.
These struggling tides of life, that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
FAREWELL, thou busy world, and may
We never meet again;
Here I can eat and sleep and pray,
And do more good in one short day
Then he who his whole age outwears
Upon the most conspicuous theatres,
Where naught but vanity and vice appears.
Good God! how sweet are all things here!
How beautiful the fields appear!
How cleanly do we feed and lie! Lord! what good hours do we keep! How quietly we sleep!
What peace, what unanimity! How innocent from the lewd fashion Is all our business, all our recreation.
O, how happy here 's our leisure!
O, how innocent our pleasure !
O ye valleys! O ye mountains!
O ye groves and crystal fountains!
How I love, at liberty,
By turns to come and visit ye!
Dear solitude, the soul's best friend,
That man acquainted with himself dost make,
And all his Maker's wonders to intend,
With thee I here converse at will,
And would be glad to do so still,
For is it thou alone that keep'st the soul awake.
How calm and quiet a delight
To read and meditate and write,
By none offended, and offending none!
To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own case;
And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease.
O my beloved nymph, fair Dove,
Princess of rivers, how I love
Upon thy flowery banks to lie,
And view thy silver stream,
When gilded by a summer's beam!
And in it all thy wanton fry
Playing at liberty,
And with my angle upon them
The all of treachery
I ever learned industriously to try!
Such streams Rome's yellow Tiber cannot show,
The Iberian Tagus, or Ligurian Po;
The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine,
Are puddle-water, all, compared with thine;
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are
With thine, much purer, to compare;
The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine
Are both too mean,
Beloved Dove, with thee
To vie priority;
Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoined, submit,
And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.
O my belovéd rocks, that rise
To awe the earth and brave the skies!
From some aspiring mountain's crown
How dearly do I love,
Giddy with pleasure, to look down,
And from the vales to view the noble heights
O my beloved caves! from dog-star's heat, And all anxieties, my safe retreat;
What safety, privacy, what true delight,
In the artificial night
Your gloomy entrails make,
Have I taken, do I take !
How oft, when grief has made me fly,
To hide me from society
I am out of humanity's reach;
I must finish my journey alone, Never hear the sweet music of speech,
I start at the sound of my own.
The beasts that roam over the plain
My form with indifference see ;
They are so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me.
Society, friendship, and love,
Divinely bestowed upon man!
O, had I the wings of a dove,
How soon would I taste you again!
My sorrows I then might assuage
In the ways of religion and truth, Might learn from the wisdom of age, And be cheered by the sallies of youth.
Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word! More precious than silver and gold, Or all that this earth can afford;
But the sound of the church-going bell These valleys and rocks never heard, Never sighed at the sound of a knell, Or smiled when a sabbath appeared.
Ye winds that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial, endearing report
Of a land I shall visit no more!
My friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O, tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.
When I think of my own native land,
In a moment I seem to be there;
But, alas! recollection at hand
Soon hurries me back to despair.
But the sea-fowl is gone to her nest,
The beast is laid down in his lair;
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There's mercy in every place,
And mercy - encouraging thought! -
Gives even affliction a grace,
And reconciles man to his lot.
How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits
Honor and wealth, with all his worth and pains!
It seems a story from the world of spirits
When any man obtains that which he merits,
Or any merits that which he obtains.
For shame, my friend! renounce this idle strain ! What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain?
Wealth, title, dignity, a golden chain,
Or heap of corses which his sword hath slain?
Goodness and greatness are not means, but ends.
FROM "MERCHANT OF VENICE."
THE quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed,
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
"T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings:
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthronéd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice.
Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laugh- | Who steals my purse, steals trash; 't is some
GOOD name in man and woman, dear my lord, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls :
The indifferent judge between the high and low,
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