Again his love must lose through too much love,
Must lose his life by living life too true
For what he sought below is passed above,
Already done is all that he would do;
Must tune all being with his single lyre,
Must melt all rocks free from their primal pain,
Must search all Nature with his one soul's fire,
Must bind anew all forms in heavenly chain.

If he already sees what he must do,

Well may he shade his eyes from the far-shining view.

MARGARET FULLER

V. "FULL MANY NOBLE FRIENDS

FULL many noble friends my soul hath known,
Women and men, who in my memory

Have sown such beauty as can never die;
And many times, when I seem all alone,

Within my heart, I call up one by one

The joys I shared with them, the unlaced hours
Of laughing thoughts, that came and went like flowers,
Or higher argument, Apollo's own;

Those listening eyes that gave nobility

To humblest verses writ and read for love,

Those burning words of high democracy,

Those doubts that through the vague abyss would rove
And lean o'er chasms that took away the breath -

When I forget them, may it be in death!

JAMES RUSSELL Lowell

VI. NIGHT

Am I not all alone? The world is still
In passionless slumber; not a tree but feels
The far-pervading hush, and softer steals
The misty river by. Yon broad bare hill

Looks coldly up to heaven, and all the stars
Seem eyes deep fixed in silence, as if bound
By some unearthly spell, no other sound
But the owl's unfrequent moan. Their airy cars
The winds have stationed on the mountain peaks.
Am I not all alone? A spirit speaks

From the abyss of night: "Not all alone:

Nature is round thee with her banded powers,

1

And ancient genius 1 haunts thee in these hours;
Mind and its kingdom now are all thine own.”
JAMES GATES PERCIVAL

VII. HOLY LAND

THIS is the earth He walked on; not alone
That Asian country keeps the sacred stain;
'Tis not alone the far Judæan plain,
Mountain and river! Lo, the sun that shone
On him shines now on us; when day is gone,
The moon of Galilee comes forth again
And lights our path as his; an endless chain

Of years and sorrows makes the round world one.
The air we breathe, he breathed,

the very air That took the mold and music of his high

And godlike speech. Since then shall mortal dare
With base thought front the ever-sacred sky,
Soil with foul deed the ground whereon he laid
In holy death his pale, immortal head?

RICHARD WATSON GILDER

VIII. AT LAST

IN youth, when blood was warm and fancy high,

I mocked at Death.

How many a quaint conceit

1 ancient genius, the primeval guardian spirit

I wove about his veiled head and feet,
Vaunting aloud, "Why need we dread to die?"
But now enthralled by deep solemnity,

Death's pale, phantasmal shade I darkly greet;
Ghostlike it haunts the hearth, it haunts the street,
Or drearier makes drear midnight's mystery.
Ah, soul-perplexing vision! oft I deem

That antique myth is true which pictured Death
A masked and hideous form all shrank to see,
But at the last slow ebb of mortal breath,
Death, his mask melting like a nightmare dream,
Smiled, heaven's high-priest of Immortality!

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

IX. TO A FRIEND1

(With Shakespeare's Sonnets)

WHAT can I give him, who so much hath given,
That princely heart, so over-kind to me,

Who, richly guerdoned 2 both of earth and heaven,
Holds for his friends his heritage in fee?

No costly trinket of the golden ore,
Nor precious jewel of the distant Ind.
Ay me! These are not hoarded in my store,
Who have no coffers but my grateful mind.

What gift then? Nothing? Stay, this Book of Song
May show my poverty and thy desert,

Steeped, as it is, in love and love's sweet wrong,

Red with the blood that ran through Shakespeare's heart. Read it once more, and, fancy soaring free,

Think, if thou canst, that I am singing thee.

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

1 Is the sonnet Elizabethan, or Contemporary?
2 rewarded, endowed, see etymology of reward

X. SCIENCE

SCIENCE! true daughter of old Time thou art,
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana1 from her car,
And driven the Hamadryad1 from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad1 from her flood,
The Elfin1 from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind-tree?
EDGAR ALLAN POE

XI. "THERE NEVER YET WAS FLOWER
THERE never yet was flower fair in vain,
Let classic poets rhyme it as they will;
The seasons toil that it may blow again,
And summer's heart doth feel its every ill;
Nor is a true soul ever born for naught ;
Wherever any such hath lived and died,
There hath been something for true freedom wrought,
Some bulwark leveled on the evil side:

Toil on, then, Greatness! thou art in the right,
However narrow souls may call thee wrong;
Be as thou wouldst be in thine own clear sight,
And so thou wilt in all the world's ere long;
For worldlings can not, struggle as they may,

From man's great soul one great thought hide away.

JAMES RUSSELL Lowell

1 The goddess of the chase, a wood nymph, a sea-nymph, and the elf of creatures of the fancy, as opposed to material realities

the glade,

NOTABLE CONTEMPORARY WRITERS

I. BRITISH AUTHORS

William Mitford, 1744-1827, historian; "A History of Greece." Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, political philosopher; "Principles of Morals and Legislation." Founder of the so-called Utilitarian school of philosophy.

Frances Burney, 1752-1840, novelist; best known by the tale "Evelina."

William Godwin, 1756-1836, po

litical philosopher and writer of

didactic fiction; famous for his

"Caleb Williams."

William Beckford, 1759-1844, orientalist and scholar; author of a remarkable Arabian tale, "The History of Vathek."

William Lisle Bowles, 1762-1850, English clergyman and poet; "Village Verse Book," and nu

merous sonnets.

William Cobbett, 1762-1835, political agitator; many reform pamphlets; familiar to the present generation by his "English Grammar."

Samb Roger

Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855, poet; "Pleasures of Memory." Ann Radcliffe, 1764-1823, romancist; her "Mysteries of Udolpho," a preposterously weird tale, had once great popularity.

Sir James Mackintosh, 1765-1832, philosopher and historian; "A History of the Revolution of 1688."

Isaac Disraeli, 1766-1848, miscellaneous writer, father of Benjamin Disraeli; "Curiosities of Literature," "Calamities of Authors." Maria Edgeworth, 1767-1849, novelist; Belinda," "Rosamond," "Moral Tales."

6:

James Hogg, 1770-1835 (The Ettrick Shepherd), Scottish poet; numerous poems of Nature.

Thomas Hope, 1771-1831, orientalist and author; famous for his Eastern tale "Anastatius."