Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 5. I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist earth was laughing belōw. 6. I am the daughter of earth and water, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shōres; I change, but I can not die. For after the rain, when, with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,' And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and upbuild it again. SHELLEY. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, a poet of admirable genius, the son and heir of a wealthy baronet in Sussex, England, was born in that county in 1792. He was educated first at Eton, and afterward at Oxford, where he studied hard, but irregularly; incessantly speculated, thought, and read; became entangled in metaphysical difficulties, and, at the age of seventeen, published, with a direct appeal to the heads of the colleges, a pamphlet entitled "The Necessity of Atheism." He was immediately expelled; and his friends being disgusted with him, he was cast on the world a prey to the undisciplined ardor of youth and passion. At the age of eighteen he printed his poem of "Queen Mab," in which singular poetic beauties are interspersed with many speculative absur 1 Cění o tǎph, an empty tomb erected in honor of some deceased person; a monument erected to one who is buried elsewhere. dities. Shortly after this he married a young woman of humble station in life, which completed his alicnation from his family. After a tour on the continent, during which he visited some of the most magnificent scenes of Switzerland, he settled near Windsor Forest, where he composed his poem, "Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude," which contains descriptive passages excelled by none of his subsequent works. His domestic unhappiness soon after induced him to separate from his wife, and the unhappy woman destroyed herself. This event subjected him to much misrepresentation, and by a decree of chancery he was deprived of the guardianship of his two children, on the ground of immorality and atheism. Not long after his wife's death he married the daughter of Godwin, authoress of "Frankenstein," and other novels. They resided for a few months in Buckinghamshire, where they made themselves beloved by their charity for the poor. Here he composed the "Revolt of Islam," a poem still more energetic than "Alastor." In the spring of 1818 he and his family removed to Italy, where they at length settled themselves at Pisa. In that country, with health already failing, Shelley produced some of his principal works, in a period of four years. In July, 1822, he was drowned in a storm which he encountered in his yacht on the Gulf of Spezzia. In accordance with his own desire, his body was burned, under the direction of Lord Byron and other friends, and the ashes were carried to Rome and deposited in the Protestant burial-ground, near those of a child he had lost in that city. A complete edition of "Shelley's Poetical Works," with notes by his widow, has been published. III. 18. THE NATURAL AND MORAL WORLDS. MA Norond through its labyrinths of grandeur and beauty AN, the noblèst work of God in this lower world, walks amid countless manifestations of creative power and providential wisdom. He acknowledges, in all that he beholds, the might that called them into being; the skill which perfected the harmony of the parts, and the benevolence which consecrated all to the glory of God and the welfare of his fellow-creatures. 3 2. He stands entranced on the peak of Etna,' or Teneriffe, or Montserrat, and looks down upon the far distant ocean, silent to his ear and tranquil to his eye, amid the rushing of tempestuous winds, and the fierce conflict of stormy billows. He sits enraptured on the mountain summit, and beholds, as far as the eye can reach, a forèst robe, flowing in all the varieties of graceful undulations, over declivity after declivity, as though the fabulous river of the skies were põuring its ăzure waves over all the landscape. 3. He hangs over the precipice, and gazes with awful delight 1 Et' na, a celebrated volcano in the N. E. of Sicily. 2 Teneriffe (ten`er if'), the largest of the seven principal Canary Isr lands. Its highest peak is 12,182 feet above sea-level. 3 Mont ser rǎt', a mountain of Spain, 3,300 feet in height. on the savage glen, rent open as it were by the earthquake, and black with lightning-shattered rocks; its only music the echoing thunder, the scream of the lonely eagle, and the tumultuous waters of the mountain torrent. He reclines, in pensive mood, on the hill-top, and sees around and beneath him all the luxuriant beauties of field and meadow, of olive yard and vineyard, of wandering stream and grove-encircled lake. 4. He descends to the plain, and, amid waving harvèsts, verdant avenues, and luxuriant orchards, sees, between garden and grass-plat, the farm-house embosomed in copse-wood or "tall ancestral trees." He walks through the valley, fenced in by barrier cliffs, to contemplate, with mild enthusiasm, its scenes of pastoral beauty; the cottage and its blossomed arbor, the shepherd and his flock, the clumps of oaks or the solitary willow. He enters the caverns buried far beneath the surface, and is struck with amazement at the grandeur and magnificence of a subterranean palace hewn out, as it were, by the power of the Genii,' and decorated by the taste of Armida2 or of the Queen of the Fairies. 5. Such is the natural world; and such, for the most part, has it ever been, since man began to subdue the wildernèss, to scatter the ornaments of civilization amid the rural scenery of nature, and to plant the lily on the margin of the deep, the village on the hillside, and martial battlemènts in the defiles of the mountains. Such has been the natural world, whether beheld by the eye of savage or barbarian, of the civilized or the refined. 4 6. Such has it been, for the most part, whether contem'plated by the harpers of Greece, the bards of Northern Europe, or the voluptuous minstrels of the Troubadour age. Such it was, when its beauties, like scattered stars, beamed on the page of classic. lōre; and such, when its "sunshine of picture" poured a flood 1 Gē' ni i, good or evil spirits, supposed by the ancients to preside over a man's destinies in life; guardian spirits charged with the care of men, places, or things. 2 Armida (ar me' då), one of the most prominent female characters in Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." 3 Queen of the Fairies, Titania or Queen Mab. 4 Troubadour age (tro' ba dår), the age of the school of poets who flourished from the eleventh to the latter part of the thirteenth century, chiefly in the N. of France, and also in the N. of Italy. of meridian splendor on modern literature. Such is the natural world to the ancient and the modern, the pagan and the Christian. 7. Adʼmirable as the natural world is for its sublimity and beauty, who would compare it, even for an instant, with the sublimity and beauty of the moral world? Is not the soul, with its glorious destiny and its capacities for eternal happiness, mōre awful and majestic than the boundlèss Pacific or the interʼminable1 Andes? 8. Is not the mind, with its thoughts that wander through eternity, and its wealth of intellectual power, an object of mōre intense interèst than forèst, or cataract, or precipice? And the heart-so eloquent in the depth, purity, and pathos of its affections can the richest scenery of hill and dale, can the melody of breeze, and brook, and bird, rival it in loveliness? 9. The same God is the author of the invisible and visible world. The moral grandeur and beauty of the world of man are equally the productions of His wisdom and goodness, with the fair, the sublime, the wonderful in the physical creätion. What, indeed, are these, but the outward manifestations of His might, skill, and benevolence? What are they but a glorious volume, for ever speaking to the eye and ear of man, in the language of sight and sound, the praises of its Author? 10. And what are those but images, faint and imperfect as they are, of His own incomprehensible attributes? What are they, the soul, the mind, the heart of an immortal being, but the temple of the Holy Spirit, the dwelling-place of Him whom the heaven of heavens can not contain, who inhăbitèth eternity? How then can we compare, even for a moment, the world of nature with the world of man? GRIMKÈ. THOMAS SMITH GRIMKE, an American lawyer and scholar, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, September 26, 1783. He was graduated at Yale College in 1807. Studied law in his native city, and rose to eminence at the bar and in the politics of his State. He made several able speeches in the State Senate, though he became more widely known by his addresses in behalf of peace, religion, and literature. A volume of his addresses was published at New Haven in 1831. He died Oct. 12, 1834. 1 Interminable (in têr' mi na ble), without termination or end; boundless. M IV. 19. SONG OF NATURE. 1. "INE are the night and morning, the pits of air, the gulf of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, the innumerable days. I hide in the solar glōry, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, in slumber I am strong. 2. No numbers have counted my tallies, no tribes my house can fill, 3. And many a thousand summers my apples ripened well, 4. And thefts from satellites and rings and broken stars I drew, What time the gods kept carnival, tricked out in star and flower, 1 5. Time and thought were my surveyors, they laid their courses well, They boiled the sea, and baked the layers of grănite, marl, and shell. But he, the man-child glōrious—where tarries he the while? The rainbow shines his harbinger,2 the sunset gleams his smile. 6. My bōreäl3 lights leap upward, förthright my planets rõll, Must time and tide forever run? will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun and satellites have rest? 7. Too much of donning and doffing, too slow the rainbow fades, I 1 Saurian, pertaining to, or of the nature of a saurian-an animal of the order of reptiles having scales and four legs, as the lizard. 2 Har' bin ġer, one who provides lodging; a forerunner. 3 Bō' re al, pertaining to the north; northern. |