Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Alas! that in our earliest blush
Our danger first we feel,
And tremble when the rising flush
Betrays some angel's seal!
Alas! for care and pallid woe
Sit watchers in their turn,
Where heaven's too faint and transient glow
So soon forgets to burn!
ALL THINGS PERISH.
All to nothing swiftly tend,
All waste, all vanish, all have end;
All sink, all wither: rose soon fadeth,
Palfrey stumbleth, cloth abradeth,
Man dies, sword rusteth; every thing
Doth time and change to ruin bring.
Then listen well to what I say,
Listen soothly, clerk and lay;
For when death hath driven ye
Whither wendeth your renown?
If the bard no record give,
Scantly shall your praises live.
From the French of Wace.
BEAUTY ETERNAL.
Though loveliness will pass away
From individual beings, and is oft
More mortal than the human heirs of death,
Yet abstract beauty since at first the will
Of heaven-designed Creation, through the lapse
Of past eternity, has ever been
A living essence, an immortal thing.
Each generation views it fresh and fair,
As that which went before; and though the hand
Of death will grasp the sweetest flowers on earth,
Others become their likeness; and when sounds
The trumpet through the systems, all shall rise
With deathless being and regenerate form;
And through the future shall undying love
Perfect the soul of beauteousness, and shake
Decay from those she dwells with, to adorn
Through endless years the palaces of heaven.
DILNOT SLADDEN.
From the low prayer of want and plaint of woe,
O never, never turn away thine ear!
Forlorn in this bleak wilderness below,
Ah! what were man should heaven refuse to hear!
To others do (the law is not severe)
What to thyself thou wishest to be done;
Forgive thy foes, and love thy parents dear; And friends and native land: nor these alone;
All human weal and woe learn thou to make thine own.
RELIANCE ON GOD.
Though tempests frown
Though Nature shakes, how soft to lean on Heaven,— To lean on Him on whom Archangels lean.
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for one 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.
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
HEAVENLY HARMONIES.
A passage from MILTON's Paradise Lost.
No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all
The multitude of angels, with a shout,
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy, heaven rung
With jubilee, and loud hosannas fill'd
The eternal regions; lowly reverent
Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground
With solemn adoration, down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold;
Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the tree of life
Began to bloom: but soon for man's offence
To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,
And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life,
And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;
With these, that never fade, the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks, inwreath'd with beams;
Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone,
Impurpled with celestial roses, smiled.
Then, crown'd again, their golden harps they took,
Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side
Like quivers hung, and with preamble sweet
Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred song, and waken raptures high:
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join
Melodious part, such concord is in heaven.
MENS DIVINIOR.
By BARRY CORNWALL.
LOVE is born in joy,
And is bred in sorrow,
Cloudy-dark to-day,
Sunshiny to-morrow;
Changing through each season,
Without any reason.
Reason!-let it bend
To an instinct finer;
True as are its rules,
There is "mind diviner"
Shining o'er its summing,
Like an angel's coming;
Thoughts that pass the stars,
Love more sweet than flowers,
Faith that stedfast shines
Through the endless hours;
Brightening every season,
True, yet passing reason.
Measure, if thou wilt,
Light, and air, and ocean;
Leave us, undefaced,
Our divine emotion,—
Poet's prophet's story,
And the world of Glory.
You, whose poor-house balance
Weighs out want and crime;
You, whose sordid ledgers
Crush the poet's rhyme,
Leave us tears and laughter,
And the hope of hopes,-Eternal bright Hereafter!
A breath thou art,
(Servile to all the skiey influences,)
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art Death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet runn'st toward him still: Thou art not noble ;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provokest.
Thou art not thyself;
For thou existest on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust: Happy thou art not:
For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get;
And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And Death unloads thee; Friends hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner; Thou hast nor youth nor age;
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear.
THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. LUCY.
From a volume entitled Hierologus, by the Rev. J. M. NEALE.
WE watch'd as she linger'd all the day,
Beneath the torturer's skill,
And we pray'd that the spirit might pass away,
And the weary frame be still.
'Twas a long sharp struggle from darkness to light,
And the pain was fierce and sore,
But she, we knew, in her latest fight
Would be more than conqueror.
Oh, what a change had the prison wrought,
Since we gazed upon her last,
And mournful the lessons her thin frame taught
Of the sufferings she had past;
Of pain and sickness, but not of fear,
There was courage in her eye,
And she enter'd the Amphitheatre,
As to triumph and not to die!
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