And always in extreme.
Now with a noiseless gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed;
Anon it lifts aloft the head,
And bears down all before it with impetuous force,
And trunks of trees come rolling down,
Sheep and their folds together drown:
Both house and homestead into seas are
And rocks are from their old foundations torn, And woods, made thin with winds, their scattered honors mourn.
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call to-day his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived
to-day.
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power, But what has been, has been, and I have had
Fortune, that with malicious joy
Does man her slave oppress,
Proud of her office to destroy,
Is seldom pleased to bless :
Still various, and unconstant still,
But with an inclination to be ill,
Promotes, degrades, delights in strife,
And makes a lottery of life.
I can enjoy her while she's kind;
But when she dances in the wind
And shakes the wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away :
The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned:
Content with poverty, my soul I arm,
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me
Who never sail in her unfaithful sea,
If storms arise and clouds grow black,
If the mast split, and threaten wreck?
Then let the greedy merchant fear
For his ill-gotten gain,
And pray to gods that will not hear,
While the debating winds and billows bear
His wealth into the main.
For me, secure from Fortune's blows,
Secure of what I cannot lose,
In my small pinnace I can sail,
Contemning all the blustering roar,
And running with a merry gale,
With friendly stars my safety seek
Within some little winding creek,
And see the storm ashore.
UNDER MILTON'S PICTURE.
HREE Poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she joined the former two.
IM as the borrowed beams of moon and
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is Reason to the soul; and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemi-
sphere;
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves, in supernatural light.
CHARACTER OF SHAFTESBURY.
FROM ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL."
F these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst;
For close designs and crooked coun-
sels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pygmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleased with the danger when the waves went
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honor
blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son;
Got, while his soul did huddled no'ions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state:
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