of the instrument of evil? Shall you see a peaceful old age? Shall a son of yours ever sit upon the throne? Shall not rather some monster of your blood efface the memory of your virtues, and make Rome, in bitterness of soul, curse the Flavian name? Ex. XCII-THE OCEAN. THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: BYRON. Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean,―roll! He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,— Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee:- The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:—not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Of the Invisible !-Even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made! Each zone Obeys thee! Thou go'st forth, dread! fathomless! alone! Ex. XCIII.-THE WORLD FOR SALE. REV. RALPH HOYT. THE world for sale! Hang out the sign; Who'll buy this brave estate of mine, It is a glorious sight to see,— But, ah! it has deceived me sore; For sale! it shall be mine no more. I would not have you purchase dear. Tis going! going! I must sell! Who bids? who 'll buy the splendid tear? Here 's Wealth, in glittering heaps of gold; A baser lot was never sold! Who 'll buy the heavy heaps of care? Hall, cottage, tree, field, hill, and plain ;- 'Tis going! Love and I must part! Who bids for Friendship-as it is? 'Tis going! going! hear the call; Once, twice and thrice, 'tis very low! 'T was once my hope, my stay, my all, But now the broken staff must go! Fame! hold the brilliant meteor high; How dazzling every gilded name! Ye millions! now's the time to buy. How much for Fame? how much for Fame? Hear how it thunders! Would you On high Olympus, far renowned, stand Now purchase, and a world command!- Who bids for man's last friend, and best? Ah, were not mine a bankrupt life, Ambition, fashion, show and pride, " Ex. XCIV.-THAT SILENT MOON. THAT silent moon, that silent moon, Have passed beneath her placid eye, How oft has guilt's unhallowed hand, Profaned her pure and holy light! But dear to her, in summer eve, By rippling wave, or tufted grove, When hand in hand is purely clasped, And heart meets heart in holy love, To smile, in quiet loneliness, To hear each whispered vow, and bless. G. W. DOANE. Dispersed along the world's wide way, How powerful, too, to hearts that mourn, The happy eves of days gone by; And oft she looks, that silent moon, In dungeon dark, or sacred cell, Or couch, whence pain has banished sleep, Oh! softly beams that gentle eye, On those who mourn, and those who die. But beam on whomsoe'er she will, The dewy morn let others love, Or bask them in the noontide ray; Ex. XCV.-THE POET'S THEMES. TALFOURD. THE universe, in its majesty, and man in the plain dignity of his nature, are the poet's favorite themes. And is there no might, no glory, no sanctity in these? Earth has her own venerableness-her awful forests, which have darkened her hills for ages with tremendous gloom; her mysterious springs pouring out everlasting waters from unsearchable recesses; her wrecks of elemental contests; her jagged rocks, monumental of an earlier world. The lowliest of her beauties has an antiquity beyond that of the pyramids. The evening breeze has the old sweetness which it shed over the fields of Canaan, when Isaac went out to meditate. The Nile swells with its rich waters toward the bulrushes of Egypt, as when the infant Moses nestled among them, watched by the sisterly love of Miriam. Zion's hill has not yet passed away with its temple, nor lost its sanctity amidst the tumultuous changes around it, nor even by the accomplishment of that awful religion of types and symbols which once was enthroned on its steeps. The sun to which the poet turns his eye is the same which shone over Thermopyla; and the wind to which he listens swept over Salamis, and scattered the armaments of Xerxes. Is a poet utterly deprived of fitting themes, to whom ocean, earth, and sky are open-who has an eye for the most evanescent of nature's hues, and the most ethereal of her graces--who can live in the rainbow and play in the plighted clouds," or send into our hearts the awful loveliness 66 |