If accident, if outward accident, Could bend the man to unrestrained woe, We then should have an endless argument Of all that to our life's delight is foe; Then toil upon the surging seas would prove, And peril in sequestered ways, an ill Which man from off his ground of hope would move, And, quenching reason, all endurance kill; Then poverty and sickness would conspire Against th' abated wisdom of the soul; The loss of friends would poison our desire, And change of place our better sense con trol. But so we mix our fancy with our woe, That abstract and pure grief we lose to know. LORD THURLOW. For if they could with patience But if the mind Be inclined He that is melancholy, Detesting all delight, His wits by sottish folly Are ruinated quite. Sad discontent and murmurs Sparks of joy Fly away; A good that never satisfies the mind, bined, blind, A vain delight our equals to command, A style of greatness in effect a dream, A swelling thought of holding sea and land, A servile lot, decked with a pompous name: Are the strange ends we toil for here below Till wisest death makes us our errors know. WILLIAN DeruMOND. But those that are contented Cheerfulness Doth express A SWEET PASTORAL. A settled pious mind, ANN COLLINS. Good Muse, rock me asleep With some sweet harmony! The weary eye is not to keep Thy wary company. SONNETS. Sweet love, begone awhile! Thou know'st my heaviness; Beauty is born but to beguile My heart of happiness. See how my little flock, TRIUMPHING chariots, statues, crowns of bays, Sky-threatening arches, the rewards of worth; Books heavenly-wise in sweet harmonious lays, Which men divine unto the world set forth; States which ambitious minds, in blood, do raise From frozen Tanais unto sun-burnt Gange; Gigantic frames held wonders rarely strange, Like spiders' webs, are made the sport of days. Nothing is constant but in constant change, What's done still is undone, and when undone Into some other fashion doth it range; Thus goes the floating world beneath the moon: Wherefore, my mind, above time, motion, place, Rise up, and steps unknown to nature trace. The flowers have had a frost; Each herb hath lost her savor; And Phillida, the fair, hath lost The comfort of her favor. HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 655 Now all these careful sights Why fear, and dream, and death, and birth Such gloom; why man has such a scope And, therefore, my sweet Muse, And in a dream bewray NICHOLAS BEETOX. No yoice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given; heaven, avail to sever Doubt, chance, and mutability. driven, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. The awful shadow of some unseen power Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds deFloats, though unseen, among us-visiting part This various world with as inconstant wing And come, for some uncertain moments As summer winds that creep from flower to lent. flower; Man were immortal and omnipotent Like moonbeams, that behind some piny Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, mountain shower, Keep with thy glorious train firin state withIt visits with inconstant glance in his heart. Each human heart and countenance, Thou messenger of sympathies Like hues and harmonies of evening, That wax and wane in lover's eyes ! Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Thou that to human thought art nourishment, Like memory of music fled, Like darkness to a dying flame! Like aught that for its grace may be Depart not as thy shadow came! Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. Depart not, lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality. Spirit of beauty, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped upon Through many a listening chamber, cave Of human thought or form, where art thou and ruin, gone ? And starlight wood, with fearful steps purWhy dost thou pass away and leave our state, suing This dim, vast vale of tears, vacant and deso- Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. late? I called on poisonous names with which our Ask why the sunlight not for ever youth is fed; Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain I was not heard; I saw them not. river; When musing deeply on the lot Why aught should fail and fade that once is of life, at that sweet time when winds are shown; wooing 'T is loving and serving The highest and best ! 'Tis onwards! unswervingAnd that is true rest. JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGJIT. The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past; there is a harmony In Autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard nor seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Its calm-to one who worships thee, Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind Percy BYSSIIE SIELLEY, STANZAS. Thought is deeper than all speech, Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach What unto themselves was taught. We are spirits clad in veils; Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails To remove the shadowy screen. SWEET IS THE PLEASURE. Sweet is the pleasure Itself cannot spoil! Is not true leisure One with true toil? Heart to heart was never known; Thou that wouldst taste it, Still do thy best; Use it, not waste it Else 't is no rest. Like the stars that gem the sky, Far apart though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie; All is thus but starlight here. |