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E'en all at once together found
Cecilia's mingled world of sound :-
O bid our vain endeavours cease:
Revive the just designs of Greece:
Return in all thy simple state!
Confirm the tales her sons relate!

W. Collins.

CL.

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT.

OUTHWARD with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and fast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.

His lordly ships of ice

Glistened in the sun :

On each side, like pennons wide
Flashing crystal streamlets run.

His sails of white sea-mist

Dripped with silver rain;

But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o'er the main.

Eastward from Campobello

Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed; Three days or more seaward he bore, Then, alas! the land wind failed.

Alas! the land wind failed,

And ice-cold grew the night :
And never more, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light.

He sat upon the deck,

The Book was in his hand;

'Do not fear! Heaven is as near,'
He said, 'by water as by land !'

In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal's sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,

The fleet of Death rose all around.

The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds ;
Every mast, as it passed,

Seemed to rake the passing clouds.

They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock:
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.

Southward, through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace,

With mist and rain, to the Spanish Main;
Yet there seems no change of place.

Southward, for ever southward,

They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-stream
Sinking, vanish all away.

H. W. Longfellow.

CLI,

AUTUMN.

SAW old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand shadowless, like Silence listening

To Silence ;-for no lonely bird would sing

Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn

Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn :—
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

Where are the songs of Summer?--With the Sun,
Oping the dusky eyelids of the South,

Till shade and silence waken up as one,

And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth.
Where are the merry birds?-Away, away

On panting wings through the inclement skies,
Lest owls should prey,

Undazzled at noonday,

And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes.

Where are the blooms of Summer?--In the west,
Blushing their last to the last sunny hours,
When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest
Like fearful Proserpine, snatched from her flowers
To a most gloomy breast.

Where is the pride of Summer,--the green prime,—
The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three
On the mossed elm: three on the naked lime

Trembling, and one upon the old oak tree.
Where is the Dryad's immortality?
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew,
Or wearing the long gloomy winter through
In the smooth holly's green eternity.

The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard,
The ants have brimmed their garners with ripe grain,
And honey-bees have stored

The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells:

The swallows all have winged across the main :

But here the Autumn melancholy dwells

And sighs her tearful spells

Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain.
Alone, alone,

Upon a mossy stone,

She sits and reckons up the dead and gone
With the last leaves for a love-rosary,
Whilst all the withered world looks drearily,

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On the Grasshopper and Cricket.

Like a dim picture of the drownéd past

In the hushed mind's mysterious far-away,
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last
Into that distance, gray upon the gray.

O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded
Under the languid downfall of her hair,
She wears a coronal of flowers faded

Upon her forehead,—and a face of care.
There is enough of withered everywhere
To make her bower,--and enough of gloom;
There is enough of sadness to invite,
If only for the rose that died, whose doom
Is Beauty's, she that with the living bloom
Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light.
There is enough of sorrowing; and quite
Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,
Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl,
Enough of fear and shadowy despair,
To frame her cloudy prison for the soul.

T. Hood.

CLII.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

HE poetry of earth is never dead :

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead :
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never :

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

J. Keats.

CLIII.

THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE.

AINT Augustine! well hast thou said,

That of our vices we can frame

A ladder, if we will but tread

Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things-each day's events,
That with the hour begin and end :
Our pleasures and our discontents

Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire-the base design

That makes another's virtues less :

The revel of the giddy wine,

And all occasions of excess,

The longing for ignoble things,

The strife for triumph more than truth, The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth,

All thought of ill-all evil deeds

That have their root in thoughts of ill,
Whatever hinders or impedes
The action of the nobler will,

All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright field of Fair Renown
The right of eminent domain !

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