Beyond the flight of time-
Beyond the reign of death-
There surely is some blessed clime
Where life is not a breath;
Nor life's affections transient fire,
Whose sparks fly upward and expire!

There is a world above

Where parting is unknown-
A long eternity of love,

Formed for the good alone;
And faith beholds the dying here
Translated to that glorious sphere.

Thus star' by star declines,
Till all are past away;

As morning high and higher shines
To pure and perfect day:

Nor sink those stars in empty night,

But hide themselves in Heaven's own light.

Montgomery.

TO ENGLAND.

O NE'ER enchained, nor wholly vile,
O Albion! O my Mother Isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny

showers!

Thy grassy upland's gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks;

Those grassy hills, those glittering dells,
Proudly ramparted with rocks:
And OCEAN, mid his uproar wild,
Speaks safety to his ISLAND-CHILD!
Hence, through many a fearless age,
Has social Freedom loved the Land,
Nor alien Despot's jealous rage,

Or warped thy growth, or stamped the servile brand.

Coleridge.

(1) Thus star, &c.-The close of this beautiful stanza has been already characterized.

(See note 1, p. 34.)

THE MAN OF ROSS.1

RISE, honest muse! and sing the Man of Ross:
Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds,
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.
Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow?
From the dry rock who bade the waters flow?
Not to the skies in useless columns tost,
Or in proud falls magnificently lost,

But clear and artless,3 pouring through the plain
Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.
Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?
Whose seats the weary traveller repose?
Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?
The Man of Ross!" each lisping babe replies.
Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread!
The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread:
He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,
Where age and want sit smiling at the gate;
Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blest,
The young who labour, and the old who rest.
Is any
sick? the Man of Ross relieves,
Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes, and gives.
Is there a variance? enter but his door,

Baulked are the courts, and contest is no more.
Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now a useless race.

Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue
What all so wish, but want the power to do!
Oh say, what sums that generous hand supply?
What mines, to swell that boundless charity?

Of debts, and taxes, wife and children clear,
This man possessed-five hundred pounds a year!

(1) Ross is a town on the banks of the Wye, in Herefordshire; and the Man of Ross was a philanthropic individual, of the name of John Kyrle, who, after a life of benevolence, died in the year 1724, at the age of 90.

(2) Vaga-wandering-the Latin name of the Wye.

(3) Artless-i. e. not forced by art into fountains or cascades. This word is generally applied to persons, not to things, as here.

(4) Of debts, &c.-This line is ambiguous; it may mean either that he had no wife and children, or that after their expenses were paid, he had £500 a year. The former is the more probable interpretation.

Blush, grandeur, blush! proud courts withdraw
Ye little stars! hide your diminished rays.

And what! no monument, inscription, stone?
His race, his form, his name almost unknown?

your blaze!

Who builds a church to God, and not to Fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name:
Go, search it there, where' to be born and die,
Of rich and poor makes all the history;
Enough, that virtue filled the space between;
Proved, by the ends of being, to have been.

Pope.

THE TRAVELLER'S HYMN OF GRATITUDE.2

How are thy servants blest, O Lord!
How sure is their defence!
Eternal wisdom is their guide,

Their help, Omnipotence.

In foreign realms, and lands remote,
Supported by thy care,

Through burning climes I passed unhurt,
And breathed in tainted air.

Thy mercy sweetened every soil,
Made every region please;
The hoary Alpine hills it warmed,
And smoothed the Tyrrhene seas.
Think, O my soul, devoutly think,
How, with affrighted eyes,

Thou saw'st the wide-extended deep
In all its horrors rise:

(1) There, where, &c.-i. e. in the parish registry.

3

(2) "The earliest composition," says Burns, speaking of his eleventh or twelfth year, "that I recollect taking pleasure in, was the 'Vision of Mirza,' and a hymn of Addison's beginning

'How are thy servants blest, O Lord!'

I particularly remember one half-stanza, which was music to my ear

For though in dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave.""

(3) Tyrrhene Sea-this sea, called also the Tuscan Sea, was accounted very dangerous by the Romans. It means here, of course, any dangerous sea.

Confusion dwelt in every face,
And fear in every heart;

When waves on waves, and gulfs on gulfs,
'O'ercame the pilot's art.

Yet then from all my griefs, O Lord,
Thy mercy set me free;
Whilst in the confidence of prayer
My soul took hold on thee.

For though in dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave,

I knew thou wert not slow to hear,
Nor impotent to save.

The storm was laid, the winds retired,
Obedient to thy will:

The sea that roared at thy command,
At thy command was still.

In midst of dangers, fears, and death,
Thy goodness I'll adore;

And praise thee for thy mercies past,
And humbly hope for more.

My life, if thou preservest my life,

Thy sacrifice shall be;

And death, when death shall be my doom,

Shall join my soul to thee.

Addison.

SAMSON'S LAMENT OVER HIS BLINDNESS.1

O LOSS of sight, of thee I most complain!

Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepid age!
Light, the prime2 work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight

Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased;

(1) Some of Milton's most pathetic passages are due to his own loss of sight. He was blind for the last twenty-two years of his life, during which period "Paradise Lost." "Paradise Regained," and "Samson Agonistes " (from which the above passage is extracted), were published.

(2) Prime-first; in allusion to the creation of light, which was the work of the first day, and there is perhaps a reference to its importance also.

Inferior to the vilest now become

Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me-
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark,' amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!

O first created beam, and thou great Word,
"Let there be light, and light was over all,"
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?
The sun to me is dark

And silent as the moon,2

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her3 vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,

She all in every part, why was the sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quenched?
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exiled from light,
As in the land of darkness, yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried but O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave,
Buried, yet not exempt

By privilege of death and burial

From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,

But made hereby obnoxious more

To all the miseries of life,

Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

Milton.

(1) Oh dark, dark, &c.-"Few passages in poetry," says Sir E. Brydges, "are so affecting as this; and the tone of expression is peculiarly Miltonic."

(2) Silent as the moon-a singular expression, taken from the Latin “silens luna,” the silent moon, i. e. the moon when she does not shine.

(3) Hid in her, &c.-Hidden idly ("vacant") in the cave to which she (poetically) retires between one lunation and another.