CXX. - SELECT PASSAGES IN VERSE

1. TRUST IN GOD.. Young.

O THOU great Arbiter of life and death!
Nature's immortal, immaterial sun!
Whose all-prolific beam late called me forth
From darkness, teeming darkness, where I lay
The worm's inferior, and in rank beneath
The dust I tread on ;181- high to bear my brow,
To drink the spirit of the golden day,
And triumph in existence, and couldst know
No motive but my bliss, and hast ordained,
A rise in blessing,129 with the patriarch's joy
Thy call I follow to the land unknown :132
I trust in Thee, and know in whom I trust:
Or life or death is equal; neither weighs;
All weight in this,-O, let me live to Thee!

2. HE LIVES LONG WHO LIVES WELL. - Randolph.

Wouldst thou live long? The only means are these, 'Bove Galen's diet, or Hippocrates':

Strive to live well; tread in the upright ways,
And rather count thy actions than thy days;
Then thou hast lived enough amongst us here;
For every day well spent I count a year.
Live well, and then, how soon soc'er thou die,
Thou art of age to claim eternity.

But he that outlives Nestor, and

appears

To have passed the date of gray Methuselah's years, If he his life to sloth and sin doth give,

I

say he only was he did not LIVE.

3. RETIREMENT. - Goldsmith.

O, blest retirement,162 friend to life's decline!
Retreats from care, that never must be mine!
How blest is he who crowns in shades like these
A youth of labor with an age of ease;

Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 't is hard to combat,87 learns to fly!
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep;
No surly porter stands in guilty state,
To spurn imploring famine from the gate;
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue's friend ·

Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past!

4. THE OLD MAN BY THE BROOK. Wordsworth.

Down to the vale this water steers, how merrily it goes!
'T will murmur on a thousand years, and flow as now it flows.
And here, on this delightful day, I cannot choose but think
How oft, a vigorous man, I lay beside this fountain's brink.
My eyes are filled with childish tears, my heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears that in those days I heard

O Freedom! thou art not, as poets dream,

A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap

With which the Roman master crowned his slave,
When he took off the gyves.50 A bearded man,
Armed to the teeth, art thou: one mailed hand
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred

With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs

Are strong and struggling. Power at thee has launched
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;
They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven!

6. THE FOLLY OF PROCRASTINATION.

To-morrow's action! can that hōary wisdom,
Bōrne down with years, still dote upon to-morrow
That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy,

The coward, and the fool, condemned to lose
An useless life in waiting for to-morrow,

To

117

gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow,
Till interposing death destroys the prospect!
Strange! that this general fraud from day to day
Should fill the world with wretches undetected.
The soldier, laboring through a winter's march,
Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph;
Still to the lover's long-expecting arms
To-morrow brings the visionary bride.
But thou, too old to bear another cheat,
Learn that the present hour alone is man's.

7. PRACTICAL CHARITY. - Crabbe.

-

An ardent spirit dwells with Christian love, –
The eagle's vigor in the pitying dove:

"T is not enough that we with sorrow sigh,
That we the wants of pleadingizi man supply;
That we in sympathy with sufferers feel,
Nor hear a grief without a wish124 to heal:
Not these suffice; to sickness, pain, and woe,
The Christian, spirit loves with aid to go;118
Will not be sought, waits not for Want to plead,
But seeks the duty,
nay, prevents the need, -
Her utmost aid to every ill applies,
And plants relief for coming miseries.

The mind that broods o'er guilty woes
Is like the scorpion girt by fire :
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close;
Till, inly searched by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,
One, and a sole relief she knows :
The sting she nourished for her foes
Whose venom never yet was vain,

Gives but one pang, and cures all pain-
She darts into her desperate brain.
So do the dark in soul expire,

Or live like scorpion girt by fire;

So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven:
Darkness above, despair beneath.

Around it flame, within it death!

9. PRAYER. - Alfred Tennyson.

More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,
Both for themselves and those who call them friend
the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

For so,

10. CORONACH.EI-Scott.

He is gone on the mountain, he is lost to the forest,

Like a summer-dried fountain, when our need was the sorest;
The fount, reappearing, from the rain-drops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering, to Duncan no morrow!
The hand of the reaper takes the ears that are hōary,
But the voice of the weeper wails manhood in glory;

The autumn winds rushing waft the leaves that are serest,
But our flower was in flushing when blighting was nearest.
Fleet foot on the correi, sage counsel in cumber,EI
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!

1. WHAT is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, who rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration of deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The poor maiden drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. No! for her voice was then silent. No! for her feet were dust.

2. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of her who gave up all for her country, thy ear will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life: to do, -never for thyself, always for others; to suffer, never in the persons of generous champions, always in thy own, that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; let me use that life, so transitory, for glorious ends.

3. This pure creature- pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious-never once relaxed in her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aërial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames; but the voice that called her to death, that she heard forever. 4. Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it; but well Joän knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for her; but, on the contrary, that she was for them. Not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had they the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joan knew early at Domre'my she had read that bitter truth - that the lilies of France

would decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for her.

5. Joan of Arc was born in 1412, in the little village of Domre'my, on the borders of Lorraine, in France. Her parents were poor, and maintained themselves by their own labor upon a little land, with a few cattle. Joan worked in the field in summer, and in winter she sewed" and spun. Small was her stock of learning, for she could neither read nor write; but she would often go apart by herself in the pasture, as if to talk with God. She was a devout attendant at church, and gave to the poor to the utmost extent of her means; a girl of natural piety, that saw God in forests, and hills, and fountains, but did not the less seek him in places consecrated by religion.

6. Her native land was at this period in a distracted state. Paris was occupied by English troops; and the King of England was declared by a strong party the rightful heir of the throne of France. The people of the north of France, seeing in his success the end of strife, favored his cause; but in the south, the country people, and a part of the nobility, stood by the lineal heir, Charles the Seventh, and by the old nationality. Meanwhile the English were extending their power; and the city of Orleans was so closely besieged by them that its fall seemed inevitable. It was a dark day for France.

7. For some time, Joan had entertained the belief that she was in communion with the spirits of departed saints; that she saw angelic visions and heard angelic voices. These voices now whispered to her the duty imposed upon herself of delivering France and restoring its nationality. She found the means of making her way to the presence of the true heir of the throne, Charles the Seventh; and although, as he stood among his courtiers, he at first, in order to test her prophetic gift, maintained that he was not the king, she fell down and embraced his knees, declaring that he was the man. She offered to raise the siege of Orleans, and to conduct Charles to Rheims to be crowned.

8. At this time she was eighteen years old, slender and delicate in shape, with a pleasant countenance, a somewhat pale complexion, eyes rather melancholy than eager, and rich chestnut-brown hair. As the king's affairs were hopeless, he did not refuse what seemed the preternatural aid proffered by Joan. She demanded for herself a particular sword in the church of St. Catharine, which was given to her. She put on a male dress, and unfurled her banner at the head of the French army, whom she had inspired with her own strong convictions of help from on high through her means.

9 She now appeared frequently in battle, and was several