[From The Course of Time.]

LORD BYRON.

HE touched his harp, and nations heard, entranced.

As some vast river of unfailing

source,

Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed,

And oped new fountains in the human heart.

Where Fancy halted, weary in her flight,

In other men, his, fresh as morning,

rose

And soared untrodden heights, and seemed at home,

Where angels bashful looked. Others, though great

Beneath their argument struggling whiles;

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;

seemed

All

He

He from above descending stooped to

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

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;

Yet

But

would not tremble, would not weep himself;

back into his soul retired, alone,

Dark, sullen, proud, gazing contemptuously

On hearts and passions prostrate at his feet.

So Ocean from the plains his waves had late

To desolation swept, retired in pride,

Exulting in the glory of his might, And seemed to mock the ruin he had wrought.

FROM "ELOISA TO ABELARD."

IN these deep solitudes and awful cells,

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,

That well-known name awakens all my woes.

tion dwells,

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

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;

He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all.

Cease then, nor order imperfec

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;

All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's
spite,

One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

[From An Essay on Man.] CHARITY, GRADUALLY PERVASIVE.

GOD loves from whole to parts; but human soul

Must rise from individual to the whole.

Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,

"What differ more (you cry) than crown and cowl!"

I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.

You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,

Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;

The rest is all but leather or prunello.

[From An Essay on Man.] VIRTUE, THE SOLE UNFAILING HAPPINESS.

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:

The broadest mirth, unfeeling Folly tears:

wears,

Less pleasing far than Virtue's very Good, from each object, from each

place acquired,

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

Pressed while another's

Never dejected,

blessed;

And where no wants, no wishes can 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:

brocade;

Yet

gowned,

poor with fortune, and with learning blind,

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

[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.