Till all is ours that sages taught, Night is the time to weep; To wet with unseen tears Those graves of memory, where sleep Hopes that were angels in their birth, Night is the time to watch; The full moon's earliest glance, Night is the time for care; Like Brutus, midst his slumbering host, Night is the time to muse; Then from the eye the soul Takes flight, and, with expanding views, Beyond the starry pole, Descries, athwart the abyss of night, The dawn of uncreated light. Night is the time to pray; Our Saviour oft withdrew To desert mountains far away; So will his followers do; Steal from the throng to haunts untrod, Night is the time for death; When all around is peace, Calmly to yield the weary breath, ASPIRATIONS OF YOUTH. Higher, higher will we climb That our names may live through time Happy, when her welfare calls, He who conquers, he who falls. Deeper, deeper let us toil In the mines of knowledge; Nature's wealth and learning's spoil Onward, onward may we press Excellence true beauty. Closer, closer let us knit Hearts and hands together, Oh! they wander wide who roam, Nearer, nearer, bands of love THE COMMON LOT. Once, in the flight of ages past, That man resembled thee. Unknown the region of his birth, The land in which he died unknown: That joy, and grief, and hope, and fear, The bounding pulse, the languid limb, He suffer'd-but his pangs are o'er; He loved-but whom he loved the grave Friend after friend departs; Who hath not lost a friend? Beyond this flight of time- There is a world above, Where parting is unknown; A long eternity of love, Form'd for the good alone, And faith beholds the dying, here, Thus star by star declines, As morning high and higher shines Nor sink those stars in empty night, But hide themselves in heaven's own light. HUMILITY. The bird that soars on highest wing Builds on the ground her lowly nest; When Mary chose "the better part," Was made for God's own temple meet; Whose clothing is humility. The saint that wears heaven's brightest crown In deepest adoration bends; The weight of glory bows him down Then most when most his soul ascends; The footstool of humility. THE SUPERIORITY OF POETRY OVER SCULPTURE and PAINTING. Let us bring-not into gladiatorial conflict, but into honorable competition, where neither can suffer disparagement-one of the masterpieces of ancient sculpture, and two stanzas from Childe Harold, in which that very statue is turned into verse which seems almost to make it visible: THE DYING GLADIATOR. "I see before me the Gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand; his manly brow And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow Ere ceased the inhuman shout that hail'd the wretch who won." Now, all this, sculpture has embodied in perpetual marble, and every association touched upon in the description might spring up in a well-instructed mind while contemplating the insulated figure which personifies the expiring champion. Painting might take up the same subject, and represent the amphitheatre thronged to the height with ferocious faces, all bent upon the exulting conqueror and his prostrate antagonist,-a thousand for one of them sympathizing rather with the transport of the former than the agony of the latter. Here, then, sculpture and painting have reached their climax; neither of them can give the actual thoughts of the personages whom they exhibit so palpably to the outward sense, that the character of those thoughts cannot be mistaken. Poetry goes further than both; and when one of the sisters has laid down her chisel, the other her pencil, she continues her strain; wherein, having already sung what each has pictured, she thus reveals that secret of the sufferer's breaking heart, which neither of them could intimate by any visible sign. But we must return to the swoon of the dying man: "The arena swims around him, he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout that hail'd the wretch who wo "He heard it, but he heeded not,-his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; * * * Myriads of eyes had gazed upon that statue; through myriads of minds all the images and ideas connected with the combat and the fall, the spectators and the scene, had passed in the presence of that unconscious marble which has given immortality to the pangs of death; but not a soul among all the beholders through eighteen centuries-not one-had ever before thought of the "rude hut," the "Dacian mother," the "young barbarians." At length came the poet of passion, and, looking down upon "The Dying Gladiator" (less as what it was than what it represented), turned the marble into man, and endowed it with human affections; then, away over the Apennines and over the Alps, away, on the wings of irrepressible sympathy, flew his spirit to the banks of the Danube, where, "with his heart," were the "eyes" of the victim, under the nightfall of death; for "there were his young barbarians all at play, and there their Dacian mother." This is nature; this is truth. While the conflict continued, the combatant thought of himself only, he aimed at nothing but victory; when life and this were lost, his last thoughts, his sole thoughts, would turn to his wife and his little children. Lecture First. CHARACTERISTICS OF PROSE AND VERSE. There is reason as well as custom in that conventional simplicity which best becomes prose, and that conventional ornament which is allowed to verse; but splendid ornament is no more essential to verse than naked simplicity is to prose. The gravest critics place tragedy in the highest rank of poetical achievements : "Sometimes let gorgeous Tragedy, With sceptred pall, come sweeping by, Or the tale of Troy divine."-Il Penseroso. Yet the noblest, most impassioned scenes are frequently distinguished from prose only by the cadence of the verse, which, in this species of composition, is permitted to be so loose, that, where the diction is the most exquisite, the melody of the rhythm |