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How complicate, how wonderful, is man!

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How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes,
From different natures marvellously mixed,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguished link in being's endless chain !
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied and absorpt!
Though sullied and dishonored, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
A worm! a god! - I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost! at home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wondering at her own. How reason reels!
Oh! what a miracle to man is man!
Triumphantly distressed! what joy, what dread!
Alternately transported and alarmed!
What can preserve my life, or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.

'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof:
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields, or mourned along the gloom
Of pathless woods, or down the craggy steep
Hurled headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool,
Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds,
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod;
Active, aërial, towering, unconfined,
Unfettered with her gross companion's fall.
Even silent night proclaims my soul immortal;

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Even silent night proclaims eternal day!
For human weal Heaven husbands all events:
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.

Why, then, their loss deplore, that are not lost?
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around
In infidel distress? Are angels there?
Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire ?

They live! they greatly live a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceived, and from an eye
Of tenderness let heavenly pity fall
On me, more justly numbered with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital is the grave!
This is Creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is Folly's creed.
How solid all, where change shall be no more!

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EXERCISE XXXIII.

The Graves of the Patriots.—PERCIVAL.

Here rest the great and good-here they repose
After their generous toil. A sacred band,
They take their sleep together, while the year
Comes with its early flowers to deck their graves,
And gathers them again, as winter frowns.
Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre: green sods
Are all their monument, and yet it tells
A nobler history than pillared piles,
Or the eternal pyramids. They need

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No statue nor inscription to reveal

Their greatness. It is round them; and the joy

With which their children tread the hallowed ground
That holds their venerated bones, the peace

That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth
That clothes the land they rescued,

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these, though mute,

As feeling ever is when deepest, these

Are monuments more lasting than the fanes

Reared to the kings and demigods of old.

Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade

Over their lowly graves; beneath their boughs
There is a solemn darkness, even at noon,
Suited to such as visit at the shrine
Of serious liberty. No factious voice
Called them into the field of generous fame,
But the pure, consecrated love of home.
No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes
In all its greatness. It has told itself

To the astonished gaze of awe-struck kings,
At Marathon, at Bannockburn, and here,
Where first our patriots sent the invader back,
Broken and cowed. Let these green elms be all
To tell us where they fought, and where they lie.
Their feelings were all nature, and they need
No art to make them known. They live in us,
While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold,
Worshipping nothing but our own pure hearts,
And the one universal Lord. They need
No column, pointing to the heaven they sought,
To tell us of their home. The heart itself,
Left to its own free purpose, hastens there,
And there alone reposes. Let these elms
Bend their protecting shadow o'er their graves,
And build with their green roof the only fane,
Where we may gather on the hallowed day,

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That rose to them in blood, and set in glory.
Here let us meet; and while our motionless lips
Give not a sound, and all around is mute

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In the deep sabbath of a heart too full

For words or tears-here let us strew the sod
With the first flowers of spring, and make to them
An offering of the plenty Nature gives,

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And they have rendered ours

perpetually.

EXERCISE XXXIV.

Satan's Address to Beelzebub.-MILTON.

If thou beest he; — but oh! how fallen! how changed
From him who, in the happy realms of light,

Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads though bright! If he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope,

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And hazard in the glorious enterprise,

Joined with me once, now misery hath joined

In equal ruin! Into what pit thou seest

From what height fallen; so much the stronger proved

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He with his thunder; and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his

rage

Can else inflict, do I repent or change,

Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of spirits armed,

That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed

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In dubious battle on the plains of heaven,

And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?

All is not lost: the unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not, to be overcome;
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power,
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire; that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy, and shame beneath
This downfall: since by fate the strength of gods
And this empyreal substance cannot fail;
Since through experience of this great event
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand foe,

Who now triumphs, and, in the excess of joy
Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of heaven.

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EXERCISE XXXV.

The Coliseum by Moonlight.-BYRON.

MANFRED ALONE.

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops

Of the snow-shining mountains.

I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face

Beautiful!

Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

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