Than when the thief says, 'Guard your purse!' His angel now, and now his rod.
POET who sleepest by this wandering wave!
When thou wast born, what birth-gift hadst thou then? To thee what wealth was that the Immortals gave,
The wealth thou gavest in thy turn to men?
Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine;
Not Shakespeare's cloudless, boundless human view; Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine;
Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew.
What hadst thou that could make so large amends
For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed,
Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends?—
Thou hadst for weary feet the gift of rest.
From Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze,
From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth,
Men turned to thee and found-not blast and blaze,
Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth.
Nor peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower,
There in white languors to decline and cease;
But peace whose names are also rapture, power,
Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of peace.
I chose this humbleness divine,
Borne out of fault, should not be thine,
Preferring prayers elate with pride
To sin with penitence allied."
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.
FROM "THE TEMPEST," ACT IV. SC. 1.
OUR revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
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