But half of our heavy task was done,

When the clock struck the hour for retiring :

And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was suddenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory: We carv'd not a line, and we rais'd not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory.

WOLFE.

Taste.

WHAT, then, is taste, but these internal powers
Active and strong, and feelingly alive
To each fine impulse? a discerning sense
Of decent and sublime, with a quick disgust
From things deform'd, or disarrang'd, or gross
In species? This nor gems, nor store of gold,
Nor purple state, nor culture, can bestow;
But God alone, when first his active hand
Imprints the secret bias of the soul :
He, mighty Parent, wise and just in all,
Free as the vital breeze, or light of heav'n,
Reveals the charms of nature. Ask the swain
Who journeys homeward from a summer-day's
Long labour, why, forgetful of his toils

And due repose, he loiters to behold

The sunshine gleaming, as through amber-clouds,

12

O'er all the western sky: full soon, I ween,
His rude expression and untutor'd air,
Beyond the pow'r of language, will unfold
The form of beauty smiling at his heart,

How lovely! how commanding! But though Heav'n

In ev'ry breast hath sown these early seeds
Of love and admiration, yet in vain,
Without fair culture's kind parental aid,
Without enlivening suns and genial show'rs,
And shelter from the blast, in vain we hope
The tender plant should rear its blooming head,
Or yield the harvest promis'd in the spring.
Nor yet will ev'ry soil with equal stores
Repay the tiller's labour; or attend
His will obsequious, whether to produce
The olive or the laurel. Diff'rent minds
Incline to diff'rent objects: one pursues
The vast alone, the wonderful, the wild;
Another sighs for harmony and grace,
And gentlest beauty. Hence, when lightning fires
The arch of heav'n, and thunders rock the ground;
When furious whirlwinds rend the howling air,
And ocean, groaning from its lowest bed,
Heaves its tempestuous billows to the sky,-
Amid the mighty uproar, while below
The nations tremble, Shakspeare looks abroad
From some high cliff, superior, and enjoys
Th' elemental war. But Waller longs
All on the margin of some flow'ry stream
To spread his careless limbs, amid the cool

COMMUNION OF SAINTS IN THE CHURCH.

Of plantain shades; and to the list'ning deer
The tale of slighted vows and love's disdain
Resound soft warbling all the live-long day.

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AKENSIDE.

The Communion of Saints in the Church.

For all thy saints, O Lord,

Who strove in thee to live,

Who follow'd thee, obey'd, ador'd,
Our grateful hymn receive:

For all thy saints, O Lord,

Accept our thankful cry,

Who counted thee their great reward,
And strove in thee to die.

They all, in life and death,

With thee, their Lord, in view,
Learn'd from thy Holy Spirit's breath
To suffer and to do.

Thy mystic members, fit
To join thy saints above,
In one unmix'd communion knit,
And fellowship of love.

For this thy name we bless;
And humbly try that we

92

A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.

May follow them in holiness,
And live and die in thee.

With them, the Father, Son,
And Holy Ghost to praise,
As in the ancient days was done,
And shall through endless days.

MANT.

A guilty Conscience.—Clarence's Dream.

Он, I have pass'd a miserable night,
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights!
Methought that I had broken from the Tow'r,
And was embark'd to cross to Burgundy;
And in my company my brother Glo'ster,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches: thence we look'd tow'rd England,
And cited up a thousand heavy times

During the wars of York and Lancaster
That had befallen us. As we pac'd along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Glo'ster stumbl'd, and, in falling,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
O Lord! methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,
A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems,
That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd.-
And then my dream was lengthen'd after life,
And then began the tempest to my soul!
I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman that poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger-soul
Was my great father-in-law, renown'd Warwick,
Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?"-
And so he vanish'd. Then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shriek'd out aloud,
"Clarence is come!-false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence,
That stabb'd me in the field by Tewksbury :
Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments!"
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous noises, that with the very noise
I trembling wak'd, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell;
Such terrible impression made my dream.

SHAKSPEARE.