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The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of fancy skyward flying.

I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweet-brier and the clover-
With Ayr and Doon my native rills,

Their wood hymns chanting over.

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the man uprising-

No longer common or unclean,

The child of God's baptizing.

With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly;
The bible at his cotter's hearth
Had made my own more holy.

And if at times an evil strain,

To lawless love appealing,
Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling,

It died upon the eye and ear,
No inward answer gaining;
No heart had I to see or hear

The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget

Ilis worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet soul of song!-I own my debt

Uncancelled by his failings!

Lament who will the ribald line

Which tells his lapse from duty-
How kissed the maddening lips of wine,
Or wanton ones of beauty-

But think, while falls that shade between
The erring one and heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven.

Not his the song whose thunderous chime
Eternal echoes render-

The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,

And Milton's starry splendor;

But who his human heart has laid

To nature's bosom nearer?

Who sweetened toil like him, or paid

To love a tribute dearer? Through all his tuneful art how strong The human feeling gushes! The very moonlight of his song

Is warm with smiles and blushes.

Give lettered pomp to teeth of time,
So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
Blot out the epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his Highland Mary!

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S

HOMER.

MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his de
mesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and
bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

UHLAND.

JOHN KEATS

Ir is the poet Uhland, from whose wreathings

Of rarest harmony I here have drawn, To lower tones and less melodious breathings, Some simple strains, of youth and passion born.

His is the poetry of sweet expressionOf clear, unfaltering tune, serene and strong

Where gentlest thoughts and words, in sof procession,

Move to the even measures of his song.

Delighting ever in his own calm fancies,

UHLAND.

He sees much beauty where most men see naught

Looking at nature with familiar glances, And weaving garlands in the groves of thought.

He sings of youth, and hope, and high endeavor;

He sings of love-oh crown of poesy!Of fate, and sorrow, and the grave-forever The end of strife, the goal of destiny.

He sings of fatherland, the minstrel's gloryHigh theme of memory and hope divineTwining its fame with gems of antique story, In Suabian songs and legends of the Rhine;

In ballads breathing many a dim tradition,

Nourished in long belief or minstrel rhymes, Fruit of the old romance, whose gentle mission

Passed from the earth before our wiser times.

655

As who beholds, across the tracts of ocean, The golden sunrise bursting into light.

Wide is its magic world-divided neither
By continent, nor sea, nor narrow zone:
Who would not wish sometimes to travel
thither,

In fancied fortunes to forget his own?
WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER

THE GRAVE OF A POETESS.
LET her be laid within a silent dell,
Where hanging trees throw round a twilight
gleam-

Just within hearing of some village-bell,
And by the margin of a low-voiced stream;
For these were sights and sounds she once
loved well.

Then o'er her grave the star-paved sky will beam;

While all around the fragrant wild-flowers blow,

Well do they know his name among the And sweet birds sing her requiem to the wa

mountains,

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CHARADE.

COME from my first, ay, come!

The battle dawn is nigh;

And the screaming trump and the thundering drum.

Are calling thee to die!

Fight as thy father fought;

Fall as thy father fell;

Thy task is taught; thy shroud is wrought: So forward and farewell!

Toll ye my second! toll!

Fling high the flambeau's light: And sing the hymn for a parted soul Beneath the silent night!

The wreath upon his head,

The cross upon his breast,

Let the prayer be said, and the tear be shed, So, take him to his rest!

Call ye my whole, ay, call

The lord of lute and lay; And let him greet the sable pall With a noble song to-day;

Go, call him by his name!

No fitter hand may crave

To light the flame of a soldier's fame
On the turf of a soldier's grave.

WINTHROP MACKWORTH Praed.

TO MACAULAY.

THE dreamy rhymer's measured snore
Falls heavy on our ears no more;
And by long strides are left behind
The dear delights of womankind,
Who wage their battles like their loves,
In satin waistcoats and kid gloves,
And have achieved the crowning work
When they have trussed and skewered a Turk.
Another comes with stouter tread,
And stalks among the statelier dead:
He rushes on, and hails by turns

High-crested Scott, broad-breasted Burns;

And shows the British youth, who ne'er Will lag behind, what Romans were, When all the Tuscans and their Lars Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

ODE.

BARDS of passion and of mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wondrous
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns
Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine, melodious truth-
Philosophic numbers smooth-
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then
On the earth ye live again;
And the souls ye left behind you
Teach us here the way to find you,
Where your other souls are joying,
Never slumbered, never cloying.
Here your earth-born souls still speak
To mortals, of their little week;
Of their sorrows and delights;
Of their passions and their spites;
Of their glory and their shame;
What doth strengthen and what main
Thus ye teach us, every day,
Wisdom, though fled far away.

Bards of passion and of mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Ye have souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new!

JOHN KRAT

THE MINSTREL.

A POET'S THOUGHT.

SONNET.

657

'WHAT Voice, what harp, are those we hear WHо best can paint th' enamelled robe of

Beyond the gate in chorus?

Go, page!-the lay delights our ear;
We'll have it sung before us!”

So speaks the king: the stripling flies—
He soon returns; his master cries-
"Bring in the hoary minstrel!”

"Hail, princes mine! Hail, noble knights! All hail, enchanting dames!

spring,

With flow'rets and fair blossoms well be

dight;

Who best can her melodious accents sing,

With which she greets the soft return of light;

Who best can bid the quaking tempest rage, And make th' imperial arch of heav'n to groan

What starry heaven! What blinding lights! Breed warfare with the winds, and finely Whose tongue may tell their names?

In this bright hall, amid this blaze,
Close, close, mine eyes! Ye may not gaze
On such stupendous glories!"

The minnesinger closed his eyes;

He struck his mighty lyre:

Then beauteous bosoms heaved with sighs,
And warriors felt on fire;
The king, enraptured by the strain,
Commanded that a golden chain

Be given the bard in guerdon.

"Not so! Reserve thy chain, thy gold,

For those brave knights whose glances, Fierce flashing through the battle bold,

Might shiver sharpest lances! Bestow it on thy treasurer thereThe golden burden let him bear With other glittering burdens.

"I sing as in the greenwood bush

The cageless wild-bird carols-
The tones that from the full heart gush

Themselves are gold and laurels!
Yet might I ask, then thus I ask-
Let one bright cup of wine, in flask
Of glowing gold, be brought me!"

They set it down; he quaffs it all"Oh! draught of richest flavor! Oh! thrice divinely happy hall

Where that is scarce a favor!

If heaven shall bless ye, think on me;
And thank your God as I thank ye
For this delicious wine-cup!"

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (German). Translation of JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN.

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RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE.

I.

Even such a happy child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care.
But there may come another day to me—

THERE was a roaring in the wind all night-Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty. The rain came heavily and fell in floods;

But now the sun is rising calm and bright-
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove
broods;

VI.

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,

As if life's business were a summer mood

The jay makes answer as the magpie chat- As if all needful things would come unsought To genial faith, still rich in genial good;

ters; And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of But how can he expect that others should

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I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough, along the mountsir
side.

By our own spirits we are deified;

We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof come in the end despondency
and madness.

VIII.

I was a traveller then upon the moor;
I saw the hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods and distant waters roar-
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy.
The pleasant season did my heart employ;
My old remembrances went from me wholly-Yet it befell that, in this lonely place,
And all the ways of men, so vain and melan-
choly.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,
A leading from above, a something given,

IV.

When I with these untoward thoughts had
striven,

Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
I saw a man before me unawares-

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the The oldest man he seemed that ever wore

might

Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight

In our dejection do we sink as low—
To me that morning did it happen so;

gray hairs.

IX.

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence,

And fears and fancies thick upon me came--Wonder to all who do the same espy

Dim sadness, and blind thoughts, I knew not, By what means it could hither come, and

ner could name.

V.

I heard the skylark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:

whence;

So that it seems a thing endued with sense-
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shel
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun it

self

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