THE SKYLARK 395 GRADE 8 B LIBERTY AND UNION WHEN my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken, dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in all their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and Union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind of the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, · Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! -DANIEL WEBSTER (Reply to Hayne). THE SKYLARK HAIL to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest 396 THE SKYLARK Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH YARD Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, 397 I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness as I am listening now. - PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day, Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain 398 ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, No children run to lisp their sire's return, Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, Await alike the inevitable hour:— The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault A FOREST HYMN Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of Death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre: But knowledge to their eyes her ample page Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. * * * - THOMAS GRAY. 399 A FOREST HYMN THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above him, ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down |