"DIFFERENT MINDS INCLINE TO DIFFERENT OBJECTS; ONE PURSUES THE VAST ALONE,-(MARK AKENSIDE)

"IN FAITH AND HOPE THE WORLD WILL DISagree,

SONNETS.

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever;
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

[JOHN KEATS. See p. 219.]

347

XIV. TO AILSA ROCK.

JEARKEN, thou craggy ocean pyramid !*

Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowl's screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When from the sun was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is 't since the mighty power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams—
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams,
Or when gray clouds are thy cold coverlid?
Thou answer'st not, for thou art dead asleep!
Thy life is but two dead eternities—
The last in air, the former in the deep;

First with the whales, last with the eagle skies—
Drowned wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep;
Another cannot wake thy giant size.
[JOHN KEATS. See p. 219.]

THE WONDERFUL, THE WILD; ANOTHER SIGHS FOR HARMONY AND GRACE, AND GENTLEST BEAUTY."-AKENSIDE.

XV. THE EVENING CLOUD.

CLOUD lay cradled near the setting sun,
A gleam of crimson tinged its braided snow:
Long had I watched the glory moving on

O'er the still radiance of the lake below.

* Ailsa Crag is an isolated rock, of pyramidal outline, situated off the mouth of the river Clyde, and about twenty miles from the Ayrshire coast.

BUT ALL MANKIND'S CONCERN IS CHARITY."-POPE.

"AH, LITTLE THINK THE GAY, LICENTIOUS, PROUD, WHOM PLEASURE, POWER, AND AFFLUENCE SURROUND!

348

66 FROM NATURE'S CHAIN, WHATEVER LINK YOU STRIKE,

SONNETS.

Tranquil its spirit seemed, and floated slow!
Even in its very motion there was rest:

While every breath of eve that chanced to blow

Wafted the traveller to the beauteous West.

Emblem, methought, of the departed soul !
To whose white robe the gleam of bliss is given;
And by the breath of mercy made to roll

Right onwards to the golden gates of heaven,

Where, to the eye of faith, it peaceful lies,

And tells to man his glorious destinies.

[JOHN WILSON, born 1785, died 1844. His principal poems, which contain many graceful descriptive passages, and are instinct with a very tender and subdued pathos, are "The City of the Plague" and "The Isle of Palms;" but he is more generally known by the remarkable papers which, under the nom de plume of "Christopher North," he for many years contributed to Blackwood's Magazine. He was also Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.]

XVI. FALSE POETS AND TRUE.

OOK how the lark soars upward and is gone,
Turning a spirit as he nears the sky!

His voice is heard, but body there is none
To fix the vague excursions of the eye.
So, poets' songs are with us, though they die
Obscured, and hid by death's oblivious shroud,
And earth inherits the rich melody,

Like raining music from the morning cloud.
Yet few there be who pipe so sweet and loud,
Their voices reach us through the lapse of space;
The noisy day is deafened by a crowd

Of undistinguished birds, a twittering race;
But only lark and nightingale forlorn
Fill up the silences of night and morn.

[THOMAS HOOD. See p. 222.]

TENTH OR TEN THOUSANDTH, BREAKS THE CHAIN ALIKE."-POPE.

HOW MANY FEEL, THIS VERY MOMENT, DEATH, AND ALI. THE SAD VARIETY OF PAIN."-JAMES THOMSON.

"THE MAKER JUSTLY CLAIMS THAT WORLD HE MADE, IN THIS THE RIGHT OF PROVIDENCE IS LAID

GAIN the violet of our early days

Drinks beauteous azure from the golden sun,

And kindles into fragrance at his blaze:
The streams, rejoiced that winter's work is done,
Talk of to-morrow's cowslips as they run.
Wild apple! thou art bursting into bloom;
Thy leaves are coming, snowy-blossomed thorn!
Wake, buried lily! spirit, quit thy tomb;
And thou, shade-loving hyacinth, be born.

Then haste, sweet rose! sweet woodbine, hymn the morn,
Whose dew-drops shall illume with pearly light
Each grassy blade that thick embattled stands
From sea to sea, while daisies infinite
Uplift in praise their little glowing hands *
O'er every hill that under heaven expands.

[EBENEZER ELLIOTT, popularly known as the "Corn-Law Rhymer," in
allusion to his vigorous poetical denunciations of the old Corn Law
monopoly, was born in 1781, died in 1841. Though political passions
sometimes exacerbated his strains, he was a very sweet true poet, and his
love of nature was enthusiastic.]

ITS SACRED MAJESTY THROUGH ALL DEPENDS ON USING SECOND MEANS TO WORK HIS ENDS."PARNELL.

XVIII.-NOT DEATH, BUT LOVE.

THOUGHT once how Theocritus † had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one, in a gracious hand, appears

To bear a gift for mortals, old and young;

* So Shelley tells us, that

"The very worm that creeps beneath the sod
In love and worship lifts itself to God."

†Theocritus, the Greek pastoral poet, flourished about 360-310 B.C.

STILL SO IT FLOWS; YET NEVER IS THE SAME."-HOLYDAY.

THE LIGHT THAT NEVER WAS,-ON SEA OR LAND,

Aud as I nursed it in his antique tongue
I saw a gradual vision through my tears—

The sweet sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backwards by the hair,
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove—

"Guess now who holds thee?"-"Death," I said; but
there

The silver answer rang-" Not Death, but Love."

[ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. See p. 235.]

"HEARD MELODIES ARE SWEET, BUT THOSE UNHEARD ARE SWEETER; THEREFORE, YE SOFT PIPES, PLAY ON;

NOT TO THE SENSUAL EAR, BUT, MORE endeared, PIPE TO THE SPIRIT DITTIES OF NO TONE."-KEATS.

XIX.-WORLDLY PLACE.

VEN in a palace, life may be led well!"
So spake the inspired sage, purest of men,

Marcus Aurelius.* But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell mell,
Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken,
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen-
Matched with a palace, is not this a hell?
"Even in a palace!" On his truth sincere
Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;
And when my ill-schooled spirit is aflame
Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,

I'll stop, and say--" There were no succour here!
The aids to noble life are all within."

[MATTHEW ARNOLD. See p. 326.]

* Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, one of the wisest and noblest of the Roman emperors, was born in A.D. 121, died in A.D. 180.

THE CONSECRATION, AND THE POET'S DREAM."-WORDSWORTH.

"FOR I HAVE LEARNED TO LOOK ON NATURE, NOT AS IN THE HOUR OF THOUGHTLESS YOUTH;

"E'EN FROM THE TOMB THE VOICE OF NATURE CRIES,

WINTER, wilt thou never, never go?
O Summer, but I weary for thy coming;
Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow,*
And frugal bees, laboriously humming.
Now the east wind diseases the infirm,

And I must crouch in corners from rough weather;
Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm-
When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together,

And the large sun dips red behind the hills.
I, from my window, can behold this pleasure;
And the eternal moon, what time she fills
Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure,
With queenly motions of a bridal mood,
Through the white spaces of infinitude.

[DAVID GRAY, born 1838, died 1861. This young poet, who may claim
to be one of Shelley's "inheritors of unfulfilled renown," was the son of a
Scotch weaver, and born near Kirkintilloch, in Stirlingshire. He received
his education at the parish school; early displayed a strong passion for
poetry; and, smitten with an unquenchable longing for fame, boldly
launched himself on the great sea of London life, with few friends and no
resources but his genius, at the age of twenty. What he might have be-
come we can only surmise from the abundant promise of his youth-for
consumption marked him as its own, and, returning to his father's cottage,
he lingered through a few months of pain, and died with all his hopes un-
realized. His remains have been edited, with a graceful memoir, by Mr.
James Hedderwick, under the title of "The Luggie, and Other Poems."]
* A stream near the poet's house at Kirkintilloch, in Stirlingshire.

E'EN IN OUR ASHES LIVE THEIR WONTED FIRES."-GRAY.

BUT HEARING OFTENTIMES THE STILL SAD MUSIC OF HUMANITY."-WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.