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Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid;"

And as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,

Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen Genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowèd roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light:
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.

These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.

366

WHY THUS LONGING?

WHY THUS LONGING? — Miss Winslow.

WHY thus longing, thus for ever sighing,
For the far-off, unattained, and dim ;
While the beautiful, all round thee lying,
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?

Wouldst thou listen to its gentle teaching,
All thy restless yearnings it would still;
Leaf, and flower, and laden bee are preaching,
Thine own sphere, though humble, first to fill.

Poor indeed thou must be, if around thee

Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw; If no silken cord of love hath bound thee

To some little world through weal and woe;

If no dear eyes thy fond love can brighten,
No fond voices answer to thine own;
If no brother's sorrow thou canst lighten
By daily sympathy and gentle tone.

Not by deeds that win the crowd's applauses,
Not by works that give thee world-renown,
Not by martyrdom, or vaunted crosses,

Canst thou win and wear the immortal crown.

Daily struggling, though unloved and lonely,
Every day a rich reward will give;
Thou wilt find, by hearty striving only,
And truly loving, thou cast truly live.

Dost thou revel in the rosy morning,

When all nature hails the Lord of light,
And his smile, the mountain-tops adorning,
Robes yon fragrant fields in radiance bright?

Other hands may grasp the field and forest,
Proud proprietors in pomp may shine;
But with fervent love if thou adorest,

Thou art wealthier, all the world is thine!

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Yet if through earth's wide domains thou rovest,
Sighing that they are not thine alone,-
Not those fair fields, but thyself, thou lovest,
And their beauty and thy wealth is gone.

Nature wears the colors of the spirit,
Sweetly to her worshipper she sings,-
All the glow, the grace, she doth inherit,
Round her trusting child she fondly flings.

VANITY. - Herbert.

THE fleet astronomer can bore

And thread the spheres with his quick-piercing mind. He views their stations; walks from door to door;

Surveys, as if he had designed

To make a purchase there.

He sees their dances;

And knoweth, long before,

Both their full-eyed aspects and secret glances.

The nimble diver with his side

Cuts through the working waves, that he may fetch His dearly earnèd pearl, which God did hide

On purpose from the venturous wretch,

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That he might save his life, and also her's

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Who, with excessive pride,

Her own destruction and his danger wears.

The subtle chymic can divest

And strip the creature naked, till he find
The callow principles within their nest.
There he imparts to them his mind,
Admitted to their bed-chamber, before
They appear trim and dressed

To ordinary suitors at the door.

What hath not man sought out and found, But his dear God? who yet his glorious law Embosoms in us, mellowing the ground

With showers and frosts, with love and awe, So that we need not say, "Where's this command?"

Poor man! thou searchest round

To find out death, but missest life at hand.

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As I stood thus, a neighbouring wood of elms
Was moved, and stirred, and whispered loftily,
Much like a pomp of warriors with plumed helms,
When some great general, whom they long to see,
Is heard behind them, coming in swift dignity;
And then there fled by me a rush of air,
That stirred up all the other foliage there,
Filling the solitude with panting tongues;
At which the pines woke up into their songs,

Shaking their choral locks; and on the place
There fell a shade, as on an awe-struck face ·
And overhead, like a portentous rim

Pulled over the wide world, to make all dim,
A grave, gigantic cloud came hugely uplifting him.

It passed with its slow shadow; and I saw
Where it went down beyond me on a plain,
Sloping its dusky ladders of thick rain;
And on the mist it made, and blinding awe,
The sun, reissuing in the opposite sky,
Struck the all-colored arch of his great eye,
And the disburdened country laughed again;
The leaves were amber; the sunshine
Scored on the ground its conquering line;
And the quick birds, for scorn of the great cloud,
Like children after fear, were merry and loud.

THE DRYADS.- Leigh Hunt.

THESE are the tawny Dryads, who love nooks
In the dry depth of oaks;

Or feel the air in groves, or pull green dresses
For their glad heads in rooty wildernesses;
Or on the gold turf, o'er the dark lines
Which the sun makes when he declines,
Bend their linked dances in and out the pines.
They tend all forests old, and meeting trees,
Wood, copse, or queach, or slippery dell o'erhung
With firs, and with their dusty apples strewn;
And let the visiting beams the boughs among,
And bless the trunks from clingings of disease
And wasted hearts that to the night-wind groan.

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