Best.

SWEET is the pleasure
Itself cannot spoil!

Is not true leisure
One with true toil?

Thou that would'st taste it,
Still do thy best;

Use it, not waste it,
Else 'tis no rest.

Would'st behold beauty
Near thee all round?

Only hath duty

Such a sight found.

Rest is not quitting
The busy career;
Rest is the fitting
Of self to its sphere.

"Tis the brook's motion
Clear without strife,
Fleeing to ocean

After its life.

Deeper devotion

Nowhere hath knelt;
Fuller emotion
Heart never felt.

"Tis loving and serving
The Highest and Best:
"Tis onwards! unswerving,
And that is true rest.

Cternal Hope.

DWIGHT.

ETERNAL Hope! when yonder spheres sublime,
Peal'd their first notes to sound the march of Time,
Thy joyous youth began-but not to fade.-
When all the sister planets have decay'd;
When wrapt in fire the realms of ether glow,

And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below;
Thou, undismay'd, shalt o'er the ruins smile,

And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile. CAMPBELL.

Hopes.

HOPES are inspirations; first they grow

In crypt-like hearts, where secret splendours glow
Of Love and Wisdom. Hopes are Truths divine,
That stand above the sentried lights of time,
With faces fill'd with dawn-light and with forms
Invincible; and there above all storms
They chant their revelation, leading on
Humanity to destinies unknown.

HARRIS.

The Beacon.

THE scene was more beautiful far, to my eye,
Than if day in its pride had array'd it;
The land-breeze blew mild, and the azure-arch'd sky
Look'd pure as the Spirit that made it.

The murmur arose as I silently gazed

On the shadowy waves' playful motion; From the dim distant isle till the beacon-fire blazed, Like a star in the midst of the ocean.

No longer the joy of the sailor-boy's breast
Was heard in his wildly breathed numbers;
The sea-bird had flown to her wave-girded nest,
The fisherman sunk to his slumbers.

I sigh'd as I look'd from the hill's gentle slope;
All hush'd was the billows? commotion;

And I thought that the beacon look'd lovely as hope,
That star of life's tremulous ocean.

The time is long past, and the scene is afar,
Yet, when my head rests on its pillow,
Will Memory sometimes rekindle the star
That blazed on the breast of the billow.

In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies,
And death stills the soul's last emotion,

O then may the seraph of mercy arise

Like a star on eternity's ocean!

MISS PARDOE.

Wishes.

WOULD that I were a river,

To wander all alone

Through some sweet Eden of the wild,
In music of my own;

And bathed in bliss, and fed with dew,
Distill'd o'er mountains hoary,
Return unto my home in heaven,
On wings of joy and glory!

Or that I were a skylark,
To soar and sing above,

Filling all hearts with joyful sounds,
And my own soul with love!

Then o'er the mourner and the dead,
And o'er the good man dying;

My song should come like buds and flowers,
When music warbles flying.

O, that a wing of splendour,

Like yon wild cloud, were mine!

Yon bounteous cloud, that gets to give,
And borrows to resign!

On that bright wing, to climes of spring,
I'd bear all wintry bosoms,

And bid Hope smile on weeping thoughts,

Like April on her blossoms.

ELLIOTT.

Sorrows.

FLOWERS by heedless footsteps prest,

All their sweets surrender;

Gold must brook the fiery test,
Ere it show its splendour.

Stars come forth when Night her shroud

Draws, as daylight fainteth;

Only on the tearful cloud,

God his rainbow painteth.

ANON.

Times go by Turns.

THE lopped tree in time may grow again,
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorriest wight may find release of pain,

The driest soil suck in some moistening shower: Time goes by turns, and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow;

She draws her favours to the lowest ebb: Her tides have equal times to come and go;

Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web; No joy so great but runneth to an end, No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring,
Not endless night, yet not eternal day:
The saddest birds a season find to sing,

The roughest storm a calm may soon allay.
Thus, with succeeding turns, God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost; That net that holds no great, takes little fish; In some things all, in all things none are cross'd; Few all they need, but none have all they wish. Unmingled joys here to no man befall;

Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all. SOUTHWELL.

Temperance.

THOUGH I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
Nor did I with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.

SHAKESPEARE.

Moralising in the Forest.

Duke. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools— Being native burghers of this desert cityShould, in their own confines, with forked heads Have their round haunches gored.

Lord.

Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;

And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother, that hath banish'd you.
To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Coursed one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase: and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke.

But what said Jaques ?

Did he not moralise this spectacle?

Lord. Oh yes! into a thousand similes.

First, for his weeping in the needless stream: "Poor deer," quoth he, “thou makest a testament, As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which had too much." Then, being alone, Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends;

""Tis right," quoth he; "thus misery doth part The flux of company." Anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,

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And never stays to greet him. Ay," quoth Jaques, "Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;

"Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?"
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we