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23.-LOVE.

THEY sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.

In heaven ambition cannot dwell,
Nor avarice in the vaults of hell;
Earthly these passions, as of earth,
They perish where they have their birth,
But love is indestructible;

Its holy flame for ever burneth;

From heaven it came, to heaven returneth:
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,

At times deceived, at times oppressed,
It here is tried and purified,

And hath in heaven its perfect rest:
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest time of love is there.
Oh! when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then for pains and fears
The day of woe, the anxious night
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An overpayment of delight.

SOUTHEY.

24.-ALEXANDER THE GREAT. FROM THE TENTH BOOK OF LUCAN'S PHARSALIA.

DISDAINING what his father won before,
Aspiring still, and restless after more,

He left his home; while fortune smoothed his way,
And o'er the fruitful East enlarged his sway.
Red Slaughter marked his progress as he past;
The guilty sword laid human nature waste,
Discoloured Ganges' and Euphrates' flood,
With Persian this, and that with Indian blood.
He seemed in terror to the nations sent,

The wrath of Heaven, a star of dire portent,
And shook, like thunder, all the continent!

Nor yet content, a navy he provides,
To seas remote his triumphs now he guides,
Nor winds nor waves his progress could withstand;
Nor Libya's scorching heat, and desert land,
Nor rolling mountains of collected sand.

Had Heaven but given him line, he had outrun
The farthest journey of the setting sun,
Marched round the poles, and drank discovered Nile
At his spring-head.—But winged fate the while
Comes on with speed, the funeral hour draws near:
Death only could arrest his mad career,

Who to his grave the world's sole empire bore,
With the same envy 't was acquired before;
And wanting a successor to his reign,
Left all to suffer conquest once again.

HUGHES.

25. THE BATTLE OF HOHENLINDEN.

ON Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

But Linden saw another sight,
When the drum beat, at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.

By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,
Each horseman drew his battle-blade,
And furious every charger neighed,
To join the dreadful revelry.

Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
Then rushed the steed to battle driven,
And, louder than the bolts of Heaven,
Far flashed the red artillery.

But redder yet that light shall glow
On Linden's hills of stained snow,
And bloodier yet the torrent flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
Shout in their sulphurous canopy.

The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory, or the grave!
Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry!

Few, few shall part where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding-sheet;
And every turf beneath their feet

Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.

CAMPBELL.

26.-TABLE TALK.

WHEN Cromwell fought for power, and while he reigned The proud protector of the power he gained,

Religion harsh, intolerant, austere,

Parent of manners like herself severe,

Drew a rough copy of the Christian face,

Without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace:

But when the Second Charles assumed the sway, ›

And arts revived beneath a softer day,

Then, like a bow long forced into a curve,

The mind, released from too constrained a nerve,

Flew to its first position with a spring,
That made the vaulted roofs of Pleasure ring.
His court, the dissolute and hateful school
Of Wantonness, where vice was taught by rule,
Swarmed with a scribbling herd, as deep inlaid
With brutal vice as ever Circe made.
Nor ceased, till, ever anxious to redress
The abuses of her sacred charge, the press,

The Muse instructed a well-nurtured train
Of abler votaries to cleanse the stain.

In front of these came Addison. In him
Humour in holiday and sightly trim,
Sublimity and attic taste, combined,
To polish, furnish, and delight the mind.
Then Pope, as harmony itself exact,
In verse well disciplined, complete, compact,
Gave virtue and morality a grace,

That, quite eclipsing Pleasure's painted face,
Levied a tax of wonder and applause,
Even on the fools that trampled on their laws.
But he (his musical finesse was such,

So nice his ear, so delicate his touch)
Made poetry a mere mechanic art;
And every warbler has his tune by heart.
Nature imparting her satiric gift,

Her serious mirth, to Arbuthnot and Swift,
With droll sobriety they raised a smile
At Folly's cost, themselves unmoved the while.
Contemporaries all surpassed, see one;
Short his career indeed, but ably run;
Churchill, himself unconscious of his powers,
In penury consumed his idle hours;
Lifted at length, by dignity of thought
And dint of genius, to an affluent lot,
He laid his head in Luxury's soft lap,
And took, too often, there his easy nap.
Surly, and slovenly, and bold, and coarse,
Too proud for art, and trusting in mere force,
Spendthrift alike of money and of wit,
Always at speed, and never drawing bit,
He struck the lyre in such a careless mood
And so disdained the rules he understood,
The laurel seemed to wait on his command,
He snatched it rudely from the Muses' hand.

COWPER.

27.—ODE TO THE departing year (1795).

SPIRIT who sweepest the wild harp of Time!
It is most hard, with an untroubled ear
Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!
Yet, mine eye fixed on Heaven's unchanging clime,
Long had I listened, free from mortal fear,
With inward stillness and submitted mind;
When, lo! its folds far waving on the wind,
I saw the train of the departing Year!
Starting from my silent sadness,

Then with no unholy madness,

Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight,

I raised the impetuous song, and solemnized his flight

Hither, from the recent tomb,
From the prison's direr gloom,

From Distemper's midnight anguish;

And thence, where Poverty doth waste and languish ; Or where, his two bright torches blending,

Love illumines Manhood's maze;

Or where o'er cradled infants bending,
Hope has fixed her wishful gaze.
Hither, in perplexed dance,

Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance!
By Time's wild harp, and by the hand
Whose indefatigable sweep

Raises its fateful strings from sleep,

I bid you haste, a mixed tumultuous band!

From every private bower,

And each domestic hearth,

Haste for one solemn hour;

And with a loud and yet a louder voice, O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth,

Weep and rejoice!

Still echoes the dread Name that o'er the earth
Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of Hell.
And now advance in saintly jubilee

Justice and Truth! They too have heard thy spell;
They too obey thy name, divinest Liberty!

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