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My God, I heard this day That none doth build a stately habitation But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, than is Man, to whose creation All things are in decay?

For Man is every thing,

And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
A beast, yet is, or should be, more—
Reason and speech we only bring.
Parrots may thank us, if they are not mute-
They go upon the score.

Man is all symmetrie

Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And all to all the world besides.

Each part may call the farthest brother; For head with foot hath private amitie,

And both with moons and tides.

Nothing hath got so farre

But Man hath caught and kept it as his prey.
His eyes dismount the highest starre;
He is in little all the sphere.

Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Finde their acquaintance there.

For us the winds do blow,

The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow.

Nothing we see but means our good,
As our delight, or as our treasure;
The whole is either our cupboard of food
Or cabinet of pleasure.

The starres have us to bed

Night draws the curtain, which the sunne withdraws.

Musick and light attend our head;
All things unto our flesh are kinde

In their descent and being-to our minde
In their ascent and cause.

Each thing is full of dutie: Waters united are our navigation-Distinguished, our habitation; Below, our drink-above, our meat; Both are our cleanlinesse. Hath one such¦ beautie?

Then how are all things neat!

More servants wait on Man Than he 'll take notice of. In every path He treads down that which doth befriend him

When sicknesse makes him pale and wan. O mightie love! Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him.

Since then, my God, Thou hast So brave a palace built, O dwell in it, That it may dwell with Thee at last! Till then afford us so much wit That, as the world serves us, we may serve Thee,

And both Thy servants be.

GEORGE HERBERT

HEAVENLY WISDOM.

O HAPPY is the man who hears Instruction's warning voice, And who celestial Wisdom makes His early, only choice;

For she has treasures greater far
Than east or west unfold,
And her reward is more secure
Than is the gain of gold.

In her right hand she holds to view
A length of happy years;
And in her left the prize of fame
And honor bright appears.

She guides the young, with innocence,
In pleasure's path to tread;
A crown of glory she bestows
Upon the hoary head.

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Yet where our duty's task is wrought In unison with God's great thought, The near and future blend in one, And whatsoe'er is willed is done!

And ours the grateful service whence Comes, day by day, the recompenseThe hope, the trust, the purpose staid, The fountain, and the noonday shade.

And were this life the utmost span,
The only end and aim of man,
Better the toil of fields like these
Than waking dream and slothful ease.

Our life, though falling like our grain, Like that revives and springs again; And early called, how blest are they

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and

stream,

The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial lightThe glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore: Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen, I now can see

no more.

II.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;

The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

III.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief;
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong.
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the
steep-

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong. I hear the echoes through the mountains throng;

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep.
And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity;
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday ;-
Thou child of joy,

Who wait in heaven their harvest-day! Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

happy shepherd boy!

IV.

Ye blessed creatures! I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal

The fulness of your bliss, I feel, I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,

And the children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines

warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm-
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
-But there's a tree, of many one,
A single field which I have looked upon—
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat.

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;

And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses-
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art—
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral-

And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song.

Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part-
Filling from time to time his "humorous

stage"

With all the persons, down to palsied age,
That life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

VIII.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity!

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage! thou eye among the blind,

But he beholds the light, and whence it That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep

flows

He sees it in his joy.

The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

VI.

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind!—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest,

On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave!
Thou over whom thy immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by!
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou pro-
voke

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own.
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind;
And, even with something of a mother's mind, The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

ODE.

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX.

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth

breed

Perpetual benediction: not, indeed,

For that which is most worthy to be blest-
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his
breast-

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised—

But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing,

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to
make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

To perish never—
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither-

Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling ever-

more.

X.

697

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once sc bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower

We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind:
In the primal sympathy

Which, having been, must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI.

And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels
fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are

won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears— To me the meanest flower that blows can

give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTII

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