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Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike th' inevitable hour:-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

10 Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,

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Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of Death?

12 Perhaps, in this neglected spot is laid

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Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

14 Full many a gem of purest ray serene

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The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest;
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

17 Their lot forbade; nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined.
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

18 The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hid To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride

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With incense kindled at the Muse's flame

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

20 Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

21 Their names, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply;

And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

22 For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,

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Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires ;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

24 For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate,
If 'chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fatc,-

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25 Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn,
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

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There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

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Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove,
Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

"One morn I missed him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree:
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he:

"The next, with dirges due, in sad array,

Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne

Approach, and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH.

30 Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown,
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

31 Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to misery, all he had, a tear

He gained from Heaven ('t was all he wished) a friend.

32 No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.

CXLII.- - THE CAUSE OF THE UNION.

R. C. WINTHROP.

[ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP was born in Boston May 12, 1809, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1828. He was admitted to the bar in 1831, but never engaged in the practice of the profession. In 1834 he was elected to the house of representatives of Massachusetts, and re-elected during five successive years, during the last three of which he served as speaker. In the autumn of 1840 he was chosen to the house of representatives in congress, and continued a member of that body during the next ten years, with the exception of a brief interval. From December, 1847, to March, 1849, he was speaker of the house. In 1856 he served a short time in the senate of the United States, by appointment of the governor of Massachusetts. During his public life Mr. Winthrop was a leading member of the Whig party. He spoke frequently upon the great questions of the day, and his speeches always commanded attention from their well-considered arguments and propriety of tone. A volume of his addresses and speeches was published in 1852, since which time he has published several lectures and public discourses. The following piece is made up of extracts from a speech delivered at Boston October 3, 1861, on the presentation of a flag to the twenty-second Massachusetts regiment, then under the command of Mr. Senator Wilson, by whom it had been raised.]

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our country, our "' these are

whole country, and nothing but our country; the mottoes, old, stale, hackneyed, and threadbare, as they may have seemed when employed as the watchwords of an 5 electioneering campaign, but clothed with a new power, a new significance, a new gloss, and a new glory, when uttered as the battle-cries of a nation struggling for existence; these are the only mottoes which can give a just and adequate expression to the cause in which you have en10 listed. Sir, I thank Heaven that the trumpet has given no uncertain sound while you have been preparing yourselves for the battle.

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This is the Cause which has been solemnly proclaimed by both branches of congress, in resolutions passed at the 15 instance of those true-hearted sons of Tennessee and Kentucky, Johnson and Crittenden, — and which, I rejoice to remember at this hour, received your own official sanction as a senator of the United States.

This is the Cause which has been recognized and avowed 20 by the President of the United States, with a frankness and a fearlessness which have won the respect and admiration of us all.

This is the Cause which has been so fervently commended to us from the dying lips of a Douglas, and by 25 the matchless living voices of a Holt and an Everett.

And this, finally, is the Cause which has obliterated as no other cause could have done, all divisions and distinctions of party, nationality, and creed; which has appealed alike to Republican, Democrat, and Union Whig, to native 30 citizen and adopted citizen; and in which not the sons of Massachusetts, of New England, or of the North alone, not the dwellers on the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna only, but so many of those also, on the Potomac and the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri, on 35 all the lakes, and in all the vast Mesopotamia of the mighty West, yes, and strangers from beyond the seas,

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