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Keen are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not.

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower;

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view.

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass :
Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine;

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divino.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chaunt,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,—

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be :

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee;

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught:

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

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I know not how thy joy we ever could come near.

Better than all measures

Of delight and sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground.

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

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1. What is meant by trochaic measure? What is the length of each of the lines of the first stanza?

2. Are the following rhymes correct: cloud, overflowed; grass, was; pain, strain; not, fraught; found, ground; flow, now? Give verses for your answers.

3. Express in you own words the following: Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

THE MISERIES OF CAPTIVITY.

LAURENCE STERNE.*

so-lil-o-quy [L. solus, alone; loquor, to speak], a talking to one's self, or a discourse addressed to one's self when alone, or even in the presence of others. prop-o-si-tion [L. pro, before; positus, from pono, to place], something proposed or offered for consideration.

"As for the Bastile, the terror is in the word. Make the most of it you can,' ," said I to myself, “the Bastile is but

* LAURENCE STERNE was born at Clonmel, November 24, 1713, and died in Bond Street, London, March 18, 1768. He was a clergyman, and held two livings in Yorkshire, besides being a prebend of York. His principal works are "Tristram Shandy" and "A Sentimental Journey," from which the above extract is taken. He possessed peculiar power as a humorist, and his works contain many beautiful touches of sentiment and pathos, which, it is to be regretted, are merely clever and life-like word-paintings by a facile pen, and in no way prompted by genuine feeling for the misfortunes of others.

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another word for a tower, and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year; but with nine livres a day, and pen, and ink, and paper, and patience, albeit a man can't get out, he may do very well within, at least for a month or six weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in."

I had some occasion--I forget what-to_step into the courtyard, as I settled this account; and I remember I walked down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. "Beshrew the sombre pencil!" said I, vauntingly, "for I envy not its powers which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. 'Tis true," said I, correcting the proposition, "the Bastile is not an evil to be despised; but strip it of its towers, fill up the fosse, unbarricade the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose 'tis some tyrant of a distemper, and not of a man, which holds you in it, the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint."

I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained "it could not get out." I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out, without further attention. In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and, looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage; "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling. I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the

(1) An old French coin worth twenty sous, or halfpence, and equivalent to a franc in value. The old "livre" was, indeed, replaced by the modern "franc," but in speaking of large sums of money the former term is used quite as often as the latter. Nine livres is equal to 7s. 6d. in British money. (2) The Bastile was originally a royal castle, commenced by Charles V. of France in 1369, for the defence of Paris against the English. It was completed in 1383. Subsequently it was converted into a state prison. It was pulled down by the Parisians in 1789, its destruction forming the first scene in the bloody drama of the great French revolution.

passage, it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity: "I can't get out," said the starling. "God help thee," said I, "but I'll let thee out, cost what it will;" so I turned about the cage to get the door. It was twisted and doubletwisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it. The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pushed his breast against it, as if impatient. "I fear, poor creature," said I, "I cannot set thee at liberty." No," said the starling. "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling.

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I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; or do I remember an incident in my life where the dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked upstairs unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

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Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery," said I, "still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 'Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess," addressing myself to Liberty, "whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till nature herself shall change; no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy sceptre into iron; with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven," cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, "grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seem good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them."

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close to my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confine

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