BOOK Alfred. V. The great and mild habitation. Boetius. This is the only port That will last for ever; After the waves Of our troubles, Of every storm, This is the place of peace, After this world's troubles. This is the pleasant station To possess. But such things strongly When they to it Are made brighter. That in this present Life so please, Are slender, And to be fled from. But wonderful is that Not all that Tagus may give in its golden sands, or Hermus from its glittering bank, or Indus near the warm circle mingling green gems with white, can enlighten the sight; but they make the mind more blind from their darkening effects. Whatever of these pleases and excites the mind, earth nourishes in its lowest caverns. The radiance by which Heaven is governed and flourishes, shuns the obscured ruins of the soul. To the winter days, Times hast thou appointed. Thou, to the trees By the more hostile wind. Oh! how on earth Boetius. As now the moon, with her full horn of light imbibing all her brother's flames, hideth the lesser stars now pale with ob. scure horn, nearer to Phobus loses her lustre. As Hesperus in the first hours of night emerges with chilling beams; and again as the morn ing star, when Phœbus rises, changes his accustomed rule. Thou, with the cold of the leaf-flowing frost, confinest the light to a shorter stay: thou, when the fervid summer shall come, dividest the active hours of the night. Thy power tempers the various year, so that the leaves which the breath of Boreas takes away, the mild zephyr re-clothes; and the seeds which Arcturus beheld, Sirius burns in their tall harvest. Nothing, forsaking its ancient law, quits the work of its own station. Governing all things with a certain end, Thou, deservedly our ruler ! The bright arts. The unrighteous always Have in contempt Those that are, than them Wiser in right; Worthier of power. A long while Covered by frauds. But perverse manners sit on the lofty throne, and the guilty tread on the righteous necks by an unjust change. Virtue hidden in obscurity lives unseen, bright in its darkness. The just endure the crime of the wicked. С НА Р. IV. THE preceding facts of Alfred's studies, translations, additions, and compositions, enable us to perceive the great improvements which they dif fused upon the intellect of the Anglo-Saxon nation. By his Orosius and Bede, he made the general history and geography of the world, and the particular history of England, a part of the mind of his countrymen; and, by his Bede, he made historical fame an object of ambition to his royal successors; for that exhibited to their own eye-sight how their predecessors had been recorded and applauded. By transmitting to posterity the detail of Ohthere and Wulfstan's Voyages, he made such expeditions interesting to the nation, fixed them in their memory, and ensured their future imitation. |