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"But ere the Sun, in all his state,

Illumed the Eastern skies,

He passed through glory's morning gate,
And walked in Paradise."

CXVIII.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VAL

LEY OF CHAMOUNI, SWITZERLAND.

COLERIDGE.

[SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, England, October 21, 1772, and died July 25, 1834. He was one of the most remarkable men of his time; and few writers have exerted a wider and deeper intellectual influence. His influence, too, is most felt by minds of the highest class. He was an original and imaginative poet, a profound and suggestive philosophical writer, and a critic of unrivalled excellence. His works are somewhat fragmentary in their character, for he wanted patience in intellectual construction; but they are the fragments of a noble edifice. In conversational eloquence he is said to have excelled all his contemporaries. Coleridge's life was not in all respects what the admirers of his genius could have wished. His great defect was a want of will. He could see the right, but not always go to it; he could see the wrong, but not always go from it.]

1

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning-star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause

On thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee, and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black.
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge. But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.

2 O dread and silent Mount!

I gazed upon

thee

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

3 Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet we know not we are listening to it,—

Thou, the mean while, wast blending with my thought,

Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven.

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs! all join my hymn.

5 Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
O, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink,
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

6 And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

-

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam ?

And who commanded, and the silence came,

"Here let the billows stiffen and have rest"?

7 Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain -

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God sing, ye meadow streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

8 Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost !
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest?
Te eagies, playmates or the mountain storm!
Te igntnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Te signs and wonders of the elements.
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise:

CXIX. - OLD IRONSIDES.

HOLMES.

[The following spirited lines were called forth by a rumor that the frigate Constitution was about to be broken up as unfit for service.]

1 Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,

And burst the cannon's roar;

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more.

2 Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood
And waves were white below,

No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea.

3 0, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave:
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave.
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail

And give her to the god of storms-
The lightning and the gale!

CXX.

- CHARACTER OF LAFAYETTE.

ADAMS.

[JOHN QUINCY ADAMS was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, July 11, 1767, and died at Washington, February 23, 1848. He was for half a century in the service of his country, as foreign minister, United States senator, secretary of state, president of the United States, and from 1831 to the time of his death member of the house of representatives. He was a man of indomitable energy, dauntless courage, indefatigable industry, and ardent patriotism. His political opinions made him many enemies, especially in his declining years, but no one ever doubted his honesty and integrity, or failed to respect the spotless purity of his private life. His systematic industry enabled him to accomplish an immense deal of work. He was a man of extensive learning, and familiar with ancient and modern literature. His writings, consisting of speeches, addresses, lectures, and reports, are numerous enough to fill several volumes. He was for a short time professor of rhetoric and oratory in Harvard College, and the lectures he delivered in that capacity were published in 1810, in two octavo volumes. The following extract is from "An Oration on the Life and Character of Lafayette," delivered before the two houses of congress, at Washing ton, December 31, 1834.]

LAFAYETTE discovered no new principle of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, under the 5 most absolute monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities at the moment of attaining manhood, the principles of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by inspiration from 10 above.

He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty. He went to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective cham15 pions of our independence; but that once achieved, he returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us.

In the events of our revolution, and in the form of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and 20 perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it. He would gladly have abstracted nothing from it. Instead of an imaginary Utopia, he took a practical existing model, in actual operation here, and never attempted 25 or wished more than to apply it faithfully to his own country.

It was not given to Moses to enter the promised land; but he saw it from the mount of Pisgah. It was not given to Lafayette to witness the consummation of his wishes in 30 the establishment of a republic, and the extinction of all hereditary rule in France. His principles were in advance of the age and hemisphere in which he lived. The life of the patriarch was not long enough for the development of his whole political system.

35

This is not the time or the place for a disquisition upon the comparative merits, as a system of government, of a

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