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When gods beset the woodland ways,
And lay in wait by all the streams.

One could be sure of something then
Severely simple, simply grand,
Or keenly, subtly sweet, as when

Venus and Love went hand in hand.

Now I would give (such is my neel)
All the world's store of rhythm and rhyme

To see Pan fluting on a reed

And with his goat-hoof keeping time!

MAURICE THOMPSON.

BOOKS.

FROM THE KALÉDER OF SHEPERDES," 1528.

He that many bokes redys,
Cunnyinge shall he be.
Wysedome is soone caught;
In many leues it is sought:
But slouth, that no boke bought,
For reason taketh no thought;

His thryfte cometh behynde.

ANONYMOUS.

THE SCHOLAR.

FROM EDWIN THE FAIR."

THIS life, and all that it contains, to him
Is but a tissue of illuminous dreams

Filled with book-wisdom, pictured thought and love
That on its own creations spends itself.

All things he understands, and nothing does.
Profusely eloquent in copious praise

Of action, he will talk to you as one

Whose wisdom lay in dealings and transactions;
Yet so much action as might tie his shoe
Cannot his will command; himself alone
By his own wisdom not a jot the gainer.
Of silence, and the hundred thousand things
"T is better not to mention, he will speak,
And still most wisely.

SIR HENRY TAYLOR.

THE BOOK-STALL.

Ir stands in a winding street,
A quiet and restful nook,
Apart from the endless beat
Of the noisy heart of Trade;
There's never a spot more cool
Of a hot midsummer day
By the brink of a forest pool,
Or the bank of a crystal brook
In the maples' breezy shade,
Than the book-stall old and gray.

Here are precious gems of thought
That were quarried long ago,
Some in vellum bound, and wrought
With letters and lines of gold;
Here are curious rows of "calf,"

And perchance an Elzevir;

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Here are countless "mos of chaff,
And a parchment folio,

Like leaves that are cracked with cold,
All puckered and brown and sear.

In every age and clime

Live the monarchs of the brain:
And the lords of prose and rhyme,
Years after the long last sleep
Has come to the kings of earth
And their names have passed away,
Rule on through death and birth;
And the thrones of their domain
Are found where the shades are deep
In the book-stall old and gray.

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

BOOKS.

FOR why, who writes such histories as these
Doth often bring the reader's heart such ease,
As when they sit and see what he doth note,
Well fare his heart, say they, this book that wrote!

JOHN HIGGINS.

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