47. The Passing of Time.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Pleasant were many scenes, but most to me
The solitude of vast extent, untouched
By hand of art, where Nature showed herself,
And reaped her crops, whose garments were the clouds; Whose minstrels, brooks; whose lamps, the moon and
Whose organ-choir, the voice of many waters;
Whose banquets, morning dews; whose heroes, storms;
Whose warriors, mighty winds; whose lovers, flowers;
Whose orators, the thunderbolts of God;
Whose palaces, the everlasting hills;
Whose ceiling, heaven's unfathomable blue;
And from whose rocky turrets, battled high,
Prospect immense spread out on all sides round.
Lost now between the welkin and the main,
Now walled with hills that slept above the storm.
Robert Pollok, England, 1799-1827.
49. Time's Importance.
On all important time, through every age,
Though much, and warm, the wise have urged; the
Is yet unborn who duly weighs an hour.
"I've lost a day,"—the prince who nobly cried,
Had been an emperor without his crown;
Of Rome? say rather lord of human race!
He spoke as if deputed by mankind.
So should all speak: so reason speaks in all:
From the soft whispers of that God in man,
Why fly to folly, why to frenzy fly
For rescue from the blessings we possess ?
Time, the supreme! Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all eternity can give;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders Time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adored.
Edw. Young, England, 1684-1765.
50. Lowly Worth.
Some love the glow of outward show,
The shine of wealth, and try to win it;
The house to me may lowly be,
If I but like the people in it.
What's all the gold that glitters cold
When linked to hard and haughty feeling? Whate'er we're told, the noblest gold
Is truth of heart and honest feeling.
A humble roof may give us proof
That simple flowers are often fairest;
And trees whose bark is hard and dark
May yield us bloom and fruit the rarest!
There's worth as sure among the poor
As e'er adorned the highest station;
And minds as just as theirs, we trust,
Whose claim is but of rank's creation!
Then let them seek, whose minds are weak,
Mere fashion's smile and try to win it;
The house to me may lowly be,
If I but like the people in it!
Chas. Swain, England, 1803-.
51. The Grasshopper and Cricket.
The poetry of earth is never dead;
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
That is the grasshopper's,-he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for, when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never.
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems, to one in drowsiness half lost,
The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
John Keats, England, 1796-1821.
52. The Rhodora.*
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook:
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black waters with their beauty gay;—
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,
Dear, tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew,
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there, brought
R. W. Emerson, Mass., 1803-.
Lo, the lilies of the field,
How their leaves instruction yield!
Hark to Nature's lesson, given
By the blessed birds of heaven!
Every bush and tufted tree
Warbles sweet philosophy:
Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow;
God provideth for the morrow!
*On being asked whence this flower.
Say, with richer crimson glows
The kingly mantle than the rose?
Say, have kings more wholesome fare
Than we, poor citizens of air?
Barns nor hoarded grain have we,
Yet we carol merrily.
Mortal, fly from doubt and sorrow:
God provideth for the morrow.
One there lives, whose guardian eye
Guides our humble destiny;
One there lives who, Lord of all,
Keeps our feathers lest they fall:
Pass we blithely, then, the time,
Fearless of the snare and lime,
Free from doubt and faithless sorrow:
God provideth for the morrow.
Bishop R. Heber, England, 1783-1826.
54. Trial and Hope.
As when a sudden storm of hail and rain
Beats to the ground the yet unbearded grain,
Think not the hopes of harvest are destroyed,
On the flat field, and on the naked void;
The light, unloaded stem, from tempests freed
Will raise the youthful honors of its head;
And soon, restored by native vigor, bear
The timely product of the bounteous year.
Nor yet conclude all fiery trials past;
For heaven will exercise us to the last;
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