A Head and hand where'er thou foot it, We are gay, whate’er betide : Goethe: Carlyle's Translation. QUA CURSUM VENTUS. S ships, becalmed at eve, that lay, Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried: Of those whom, year by year unchanged, Astounded, soul from soul estranged! At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered; Ah, neither blame, for neither willed Or wist what first with dawn appeared. To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, Brave barks! In light, in darkness too! Through winds and tides one compass guides,— To that and your own selves be true. THE BURied life. But O blithe breeze! and O great seas! One port, methought, alike they sought,- At last, at last, unite them there! NEW VOICES. 195 A. H. Clough. EW voices come to me where'er I roam; ΝΕ My heart, too, widens with its widening home: The former songs seem little; yet no more Can soul, hand, voice, with interchanging lore, The secret is too great. George Eliot. Ο THE BURIED LIFE. NLY-but this is rare When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, Is by the tones of a lov'd voice caress'd, A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again : The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know, A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur, and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth forever chase That flying and elusive shadow, Rest. And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. The Hills where his life rose, And the Sea where it goes. Matthew Arnold. THE GOLDEN SUNSET. 'HE golden sea its mirror spreads TH Beneath the golden skies, And but a narrow strip between Of land and shadow lies. The cloud-like rocks, the rock-like clouds, Dissolved in glory, float; And midway of the radiant flood Hangs silently the boat. The sea is but another sky, The sky a sea as well; And which is earth, and which the heavens, The eye can scarcely tell. FROM "ULYSSES.” So when for us life's evening hour, Flooded with peace the spirit float, With silent rapture glow, Till where earth ends, and heaven begins, The soul shall scarcely know! 197 Samuel Longfellow. D FROM "ULYSSES." EATH closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ; are, One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will Tennyson. NEARING THE SNOW-LINE. LOW toiling upward from the misty vale, SLOW I leave the bright enamelled zones below ; No more for me their beauteous bloom shall glow, Their lingering sweetness load the morning gale; Few are the slender flowerets, scentless, pale, That on their ice-clad stems all trembling blow Along the margin of unmelting snow. Yet with unsaddened voice thy verge I hail, White realm of peace above the flowering line; Welcome thy frozen domes, thy rocky spires! O'er thee undimmed the moon-girt planets shine, On thy majestic altars fade the fires That filled the air with smoke of vain desires, O. W. Holmes. FROM "TERMINUS." S the bird trims her to the gale, AS I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime : Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near, Emerson. |