Then turned, and with the grasshopper, who sung

His evening song beneath his feet, conversed.

Suns, moons, and stars, and clouds, his sisters were;

Rocks, mountains, meteors, seas, and winds, and storms,

His brothers, younger brothers, whom he scarce

As equals deemed. All passions of all men,

The wild and tame, the gentle and severe;

All thoughts, all maxims, sacred and profane;

All creeds, all seasons, Time, Eternity;

All that was hated, all too, that was dear;

All

that was hoped, all that was feared, by man;

He tossed about, as tempest-withered leaves,

Then, smiling, looked upon the wreck he made.

With terror now he froze the cowering blood,

And now dissolved the heart in tenderness;

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,

That well-known name awakens all my woes.

Oh,

name, for ever sad! for ever dear!

Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear.

I tremble, too, whene'er my own I find;

Some dire misfortune follows close behind.

Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,

Led through a sad variety of woe: Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom,

Lost in a convent's solitary gloom! There stern religion quenched the unwilling flame,

There died the best of passions, love and fame.

Yet write, oh! write me all, that I may join

Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.

Nor foes nor fortune take this power

away;

And is my Abelard less kind than they?

Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare,

Love but demands what else were shed in prayer;

No happier task these faded eyes pursue;

To read and weep is all they now can do.

Then share thy pain, allow that

sad relief;

Ah, more than share it! give me all thy grief.

Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,

Some banished lover, or some captive maid;

They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,

Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,

What if the head, the eye, or ear re pined

To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?

Just as absurd for any part to claim To be another, in this general frame: Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,

The great directing Mind of All ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body nature is, and God the soul;

That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,

Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame, [breeze, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,

As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns;

To Him no high, no low, no great,

no small;

DOM.

WHAT if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,

Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head?

power,

Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

Another still, and still another spreads;

Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace;

His country next, and next all human race;

Wide, and more wide, the o'erflowings of the mind

Take every creature in, of every kind;

Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest,

HAPPINESS.

UNFAILING

KNOW then this truth (enough for man to know),

Virtue alone is happiness below." The only point where human bliss stands still,

And tastes the good without the fall to ill; [ceives, Where only merit constant pay reIs blest in what it takes, and what it gives;

The joy unequalled, if its end it gain, And if it lose, attended with no pain: Without satiety, though e'er so blest, And but more relished as the more distressed:

wears,

[From An Essay on Man.]

TRUE NOBILITY.

place acquired,

For ever exercised, yet never tired; Never elated, while one man's op

blessed;

remain,

Since but to wish more virtue, is to gain.

See the sole bliss, Heaven could on all bestow!

Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know:

poor with fortune, and with learning blind,

brocade;

Yet

gowned,

The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.

The

bad must miss; the good, un taught, will find;

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,

But looks through nature up to nature's God;

Pursues that chain which links the immense design,

Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine;

Sees that no being any bliss can know,

But touches some above, and some below;

Learns from this union of the rising whole,

The first, last purpose of the human soul:

And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,

All end, in love of God and love of

man.

[From An Essay on Criticism.]
WIT.

TRUE wit is nature to advantage dressed;

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed:

Something, whose truth, convinced at sight we find,

That gives us back the image of our mind.

As shades more sweetly recommend the light,

So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.

For works may have more wit than does them good,

As bodies perish through excess of blood.