49. AS THROUGH THE LAND AT EVE WE WENT

As through the land at eve we went,

And plucked the ripened ears,

We fell out, my wife and I,

O we fell out I know not why,
And kissed again with tears.
And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,

When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears!

For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,

There above the little grave,
O there above the little grave,
We kissed again with tears.

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

50. HABIT

Habit is the deepest law of human nature. It is our supreme strength, if also in certain circumstances our miserablest weakness. Let me go once, scanning my way with any earnestness of outlook, and successfully arriving, my footsteps are an invitation to me a second time to go by the same way;-it is easier than any other way. Habit is our primal fundamental law,-habit and imitation, there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all working and all apprenticeship, of all practice and all learning in the world.

51. THE GRAVE OF LOVE

THOMAS CARLYLE

I DUG, beneath the cypress shade,
What well might seem an elfin's grave;
And every pledge in earth I laid,
That erst thy false affection gave.

I pressed them down the sod beneath;
I placed one mossy stone above;
And twined the rose's fading wreath
Around the sepulchre of love.

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything; makes everything vulgar and every truth false. To crush what is spiritual, moral,

human, to form mere wheels of the great social machine, instead of perfect individuals, to make society and not conscience the centre of life, to enslave the soul of things, to depersonalize man-this is the dominant drift of our epoch. What is threatened today is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the soul, the very nobility of man. The test of every religious, political or educational system is the man it forms. If a system injures the intelligence, it is bad. If it injures the character, it is vicious. If it injures the conscience, it is criminal.

There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed -and scarcely one woman-love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of the persecution of truth-the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately identical, is given only to those who love both sincerely and without any foreign ends.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE-Table Talk

57. SONG

WHEN I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

58. OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT

Of other days around me.
When I remember all

The friends, so linked together,
I've seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one,

Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain hath
bound me,

Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
THOMAS MOORE

59. HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD

HOME they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:

All her maidens, watching, said,
"She must weep or she will die."

Then they praised him, soft and low,
Called him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;

Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,

Lightly to the warrior stepped,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,

Set his child upon her knee

Like summer tempest came her tears-
'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

60. GEORGE MOORE, REALIST

Rebecca Gins walked down the lane putting her feet forward alternately. There were hedges on both sides; one on the left, one on the right. The young leaves were a pale green. Overhead ran the telegraph wires. The poles were about thirty-five yards apart. A thrush sat on a spray of blackthorn, which moved under its weight, now down, now up. Rain had fallen and the ground was wet, especially in the ruts. The second-hand feather

in Rebecca's hat drooped a little over her left ear; and the third button of her off boot was wanting. Smoke went up from the chimneys, taking the direction of the wind. All these essential details (including the feather, which was out of sight) escaped Rebecca's notice. She was not gifted with that grasp of actuality which is the sign of the artistic nature.

OWEN SEAMAN-Borrowed Plumes *