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She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide

Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the waved back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train ;
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note;
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird;
Her little soul is ravished, and so poured
Into loose ecstasies, that she is placed
Above herself, music's enthusiast.

RICHARD CRASHAW.

Sharp violins proclaim

Their jealous pangs, and desperation,
Fury, frantic indignation,

Depth of pains, and height of passion
For the fair, disdainful dame.
But O, what art can teach,
What human voice can reach,
The sacred organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race; And trees uprooted left their place, Sequacious of the lyre;

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher;

A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY, 1687. When to her organ vocal breath was given,

FROM harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began;

When Nature underneath a heap

Of jarring atoms lay,

And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise, ye more than dead!

Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony,

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,
And, wondering, on their faces fell,
To worship that celestial sound.
Less than a God they thought there could not dwell
Within the hollow of that shell,
That spoke so sweetly and so well.
What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

The trumpet's loud clangor

Excites us to arms, With shrill notes of anger,

And mortal alarms.

The double double double beat Of the thundering drum Cries, Hark! the foes come; Charge, charge, 't is too late to retreat !

The soft complaining flute
In dying notes discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,

Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.

An angel heard, and straight appeared Mistaking earth for heaven.

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FROM "NIGHT THOUGHTS," NIGHT I.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes,
From different natures marvellously mixed,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguished link in being's endless chain !
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied, and absorpt!
Though sullied and dishonored, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute !
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
A worm a god! - I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wondering at her own. How reason reels!
O, what a miracle to man is man!

Where'er the red gold glows, the spice-trees wave, Where the rich diamond ripens, mid the flame Of vertic suns that ope the stranger's grave, He with bronzed cheek and daring step doth

rove;

He, with short pang and slight,
Doth turn him from the checkered light
Of the fair moon through his own forests
dancing,

Where music, joy, and love

Were his young hours entrancing ;
And where ambition's thunder-claim
Points out his lot,

Or fitful wealth allures to roam,

There doth he make his home,
Repining not.

It is not thus with Woman. The far halls,
Though ruinous and lone,

Where first her pleased ear drank a nursingmother's tone;

The home with humble walls,

Where breathed a parent's prayer around her bed;

The valley where, with playmates true, She culled the strawberry, bright with dew; The bower where Love her timid footsteps led; The hearthstone where her children grew;

The damp soil where she cast

The flower-seeds of her hope, and saw them bide the blast,

Affection with unfading tint recalls,
Lingering round the ivied walls,

Where every rose hath in its cup a bee,

Making fresh honey of remembered things, Each rose without a thorn, each bee bereft of stings.

LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY.

WOMAN.

THERE in the fane a beauteous creature stands,
The first best work of the Creator's hands,
Whose slender limbs inadequately bear
A full-orbed bosom and a weight of care;

Triumphantly distressed! What joy! what dread! Whose teeth like pearls, whose lips like cherries,

Alternately transported and alarmed!

What can preserve my life? or what destroy? An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.

show,

And fawn-like eyes still tremble as they glow.

From the Sanskrit of CALIDASA.
Translation of WILSON.

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Cease, cease, Ellen, my little one,
Warbling so fairily close to my ear;

Why should you choose, of all songs that are
haunting me,

This that I made for your mother to hear?

Hush, hush, Ellen, my little one,
Wailing so wearily under the stars;

Why should I think of her tears, that might
light to me

Love that had made life, and sorrow that mars?

Sleep, sleep, Ellen, my little one!

Is she not like her whenever she stirs ?

Has she not eyes that will soon be as bright to me,
Lips that will some day be honeyed like hers?

Yes, yes, Ellen, my little one,

Though her white bosom is stilled in the grave, Something more white than her bosom is spared to me,

Something to cling to and something to crave.

Love, love, Ellen, my little one!
Love indestructible, love undefiled,

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Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands; Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;

Love through all deeps of her spirit lies bared For man is man and master of his fate.

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A RIDDLE.*

THE LETTER "H."

'T WAS in heaven pronounced, and 't was muttered in hell,

And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell;
On the confines of earth 't was permitted to rest,
And the depths of the ocean its presence con-
fessed;

'T will be found in the sphere when 't is riven asunder,

Be seen in the lightning and heard in the thunder.
'T was allotted to man with his earliest breath,
Attends him at birth, and awaits him in death,
Presides o'er his happiness, honor, and health,
Is the prop of his house, and the end of his wealth.
In the heaps of the miser 't is hoarded with care,
But is sure to be lost on his prodigal heir.
It begins every hope, every wish it must bound,
With the husbandman toils, and with monarchs

is crowned.

Without it the soldier, the seaman may roam, But woe to the wretch who expels it from home! In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found,

Nor e'en in the whirlwind of passion be drowned. 'T will not soften the heart; but though deaf be the ear,

It will make it acutely and instantly hear.
Yet in shade let it rest, like a delicate flower,
Ah, breathe on it softly, it dies in an hour.

CATHARINE FANSHAWF.

THE GIFTS OF GOD.

WHEN God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, Let us (said he) pour on him all we can: Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure: When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone, of all his treasure, Rest in the bottom lay.

For if I should (said he)

Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness: Let him be rich and weary, that, at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast.

GEORGE HERBERT.

FATHER LAND AND MOTHER TONGUE

OUR Father Land! and wouldst thou know
Why we should call it Father Land?

It is that Adam here below

Was made of earth by Nature's hand;
And he, our father made of earth,
Hath peopled earth on every hand;
And we, in memory of his birth,

Do call our country Father Land.

At first, in Eden's bowers, they say,
No sound of speech had Adam caught,
But whistled like a bird all day,

And maybe 't was for want of thought:
But Nature, with resistless laws,

Made Adam soon surpass the birds;
She gave him lovely Eve because
If he'd a wife they must have words.

And so the native land, I hold,

By male descent is proudly mine; The language, as the tale hath told, Was given in the female line.

• Sometimes attributed to Byron.

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A TRAVELLER through a dusty road strewed In this the lust, in that the avarice, acorns on the lea;

And one took root and sprouted up, and grew into a tree.

Were means, not ends; ambition was the vice.

In this one passion man can strength enjoy, Love sought its shade, at evening time, to breathe As fits give vigor just when they destroy. its early vows; Time, that on all things lays his lenient hand, And age was pleased, in heats of noon, to bask| Yet tames not this; it sticks to our last sand. beneath its boughs; Consistent in our follies and our sins,

The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, the birds Here honest Nature ends as she begins.

sweet music bore;

It stood a glory in its place, a blessing evermore.

A little spring had lost its way amid the grass and fern,

A passing stranger scooped a well, where weary men might turn;

He walled it in, and hung with care a ladle at the brink;

He thought not of the deed he did, but judged that toil might drink.

He passed again, and lo! the well, by summers never dried,

Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues, and saved a life beside.

A dreamer dropped a random thought; 't was old, and yet 't was new;

A simple fancy of the brain, but strong in being true.

It shone upon a genial mind, and lo! its light

became

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It sheds its radiance far adown, and cheers the valley still!

A nameless man, amid a crowd that thronged the daily mart,

Let fall a word of Hope and Love, unstudied, from the heart;

A whisper on the tumult thrown, a transitory breath,

It raised a brother from the dust; it saved a soul from death.

Old politicians chew on wisdom past,
And totter on in business to the last;
As weak, as earnest; and as gravely out,
As sober Lanesborough dancing in the gout.

Behold a reverend sire, whom want of grace
Has made the father of a nameless race,
Shoved from the wall perhaps, or rudely pressed
By his own son, that passes by unblessed :
Still to his wench he crawls on knocking knees,
And envies every sparrow that he sees.

66

A salmon's belly, Helluo, was thy fate. The doctor, called, declares all help too late. 'Mercy!" cries Helluo, "mercy on my soul ! Is there no hope? - Alas!- then bring the jowl." The frugal crone, whom praying priests attend, Still tries to save the hallowed taper's end, Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires, For one puff more, and in that puff expires. "Odious! in woollen! 't would a saint provoke,"

Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke ;

66

'No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace One would not, sure, be frightful when one's Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face:

dead,

And-Betty - give this cheek a little red."
The courtier smooth, who forty years had
shined

An humble servant to all human-kind,
Just brought out this, when scarce his tongue
could stir,

"If

where I'm going-I could serve you, sir?" "I give and I devise" (old Euclio said, And sighed) "my lands and tenements to Ned." Your money, sir? "My money, sir! what, all?

O germ! O fount ! O word of love! O thought Why-if I must " (then wept)—"I give it

, at random cast!

Ye were but little at the first, but mighty at the

last.

CHARLES MACKAY.

Paul."

The manor, sir? "The manor, hold!" he cried, "Not that, I cannot part with that," and

died.

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