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CHILDE HAROLD'S ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN. 411 ROL

them and their confederates, and that he and his posterity shall be infamous! And the sentence imported something more; for, in the laws relating to capital cases, it is enacted, that "when the legal punishment of a man's crime cannot be inflicted, he may be put to death." And it was accounted meritorious to kill

him!

"Let not the infamous man," says the law, "be permitted to live;" implying that the citizen is free from guilt who executes this sentence! Such was the detestation in which bribery was held by our fathers! And hence was it that the Greeks were a terror to the barbarians-not the barbarians to the Greeks! Hence was it that wars were fair and open; that battles were fought, not with gold, but steel; and won, if won at all, not by treachery, but by force of arms !

CHILDE HAROLD'S ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.

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BYRON.

HERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

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There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

412 CHILDE HAROLD'S ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.

His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields
Are not a spoil for him-thou dost arise,

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction, thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And sendest him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies

His petty hope, in some near port or bay,

Then dashest him again to earth;-there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,-
The oak-leviathans whose huge ribs make
Their clay-creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, chang'd in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts;—not so thou.
Unchangeable, save to thy wild wave's play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convuls'd-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime;
The image of eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; e'en from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT

GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT.-BROWNING.

SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;

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Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace,
Neck by neck, stride for stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lockeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Duffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;

And from Mechlin church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aërschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood, black, every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland, at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away

The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray.

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence, ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance !
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lip shook upward in galloping on.

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and, cried Joris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her;

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We'll remember at Aix "-for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest; saw the stretched neck and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So we were left galloping, Joris and I,

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

"Neath our feet broke the brittle, bright stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,

And "Gallop," gasped Joris, " for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!" and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits, full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,

Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer;

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is, friends flocking round,

As I sate with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,

As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,

Which, the burgesses voted, by common consent,

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

O

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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,

THE PRICE OF ELOQUENCE.

When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailèd 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 with struggling.

Power at thee has launched

His bolts, and with his lightning smitten thee:

They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven.
Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep,

And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires,

Have forged thy chain; yet while he deems thee bound.
Thy links are shivered, and the prison walls
Fall outward terribly thou springest forth,
As springs the flame above a burning pile,
And shoutest to the nations, who return
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.

415

THE PRICE OF ELOQUENCE.-CHAUNCEY COLTON.

MORE

ORE than twenty centuries ago, the orphan son of an Athenian sword-cutler, neglected by his guardians, and regarded as a youth of feeble promise, became, at the age of sixteen, enamored of eloquence. He resolved, with a strength of will and an ardor of enthusiasm to which nothing is insuperable, to be himself eloquent. This youth becomes successively the docile pupil of Callistratus, Isæus, Isocrates, and Plato. But his studies, though embracing a liberal and wide range of letters, philosophy, and science, are not confined to the academy or the public grovę. We see him daily ascending the Acropolis, and panting for breath as he gains the summit. Again he is seen laboriously climbing. Olympus, the Hymettus, and every eminence where genius or the muses have breathed their inspiration.

His object, which he pursues with an ardor that never flags, and a diligence that never tires, is twofold, viz.: to drink in the free and fresh inspirations of nature and art, and, by unremitting daily exercise, to give expansion to his chest, and strength and freedom of play to his lungs.

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