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666

VOLCANO. VOLUNTARY. VOW.

VOLCANO.

THE dread volcano ministers to good:

Its smother'd flames might undermine the world: Loud Etnas fulminate in love to man. Young.

The winds are aw'd, nor dare to breathe aloud,
The air seems never to have borne a cloud,
Save where volcanoes send to heaven their curl'd
And solemn smokes, like altars of the world.
Edward C. Pinckney.

VOLUNTARY.

OH! simply open wide the temple door,
And let the solemn, swelling organ greet,
With voluntaries meet,

The willing advent of the rich and poor!
And while to God the loud hosannahs soar,
With rich vibrations from the vocal throng-
From quiet shades that to the woods belong
And brooks with music of their own,
Voices may come to swell the choral song,
With notes of praise they learned in musings lone.
T. Hood.

VOW.

DID not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye ('Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument) Persuade my heart to this false perjury;

Vows, for thee broke, deserve not punishment.

A woman I forswore; but I will prove

(Thou being a goddess) I forswore not thee: My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love:

Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me. Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is; Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, Exhal'st this vapour vow; in thee it is:

If broken then, it is no fault of mine; If by me broke, what fool is not so wise, To lose an oath to win a paradise?

Shakspere.

WANT.

WANT-WANTS.

WANT is a bitter and a hateful good,
Because its virtues are not understood.
Yet many things, impossible to thought,
Have been, by need, to full perfection brought.
The daring of the soul proceeds from thence,
Sharpness of wit, and active diligence;
Prudence at once, and fortitude it gives,
And, if in patience taken, mends our lives;
For even that indigence which brings me low,
Makes me myself, and him above, to know;

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A good which none would challenge, few would choose,
A fair possession, which mankind refuse!
If we from wealth to poverty descend,

Want gives to know the flatterer from the friend.

Dryden.

Give want her welcome, if she comes; we find
Riches to be but burthens to the mind.

Herrick.

Man's rich with little, were his judgment true;
Nature is frugal, and her wants are few:
Those few wants answer'd, bring sincere delights;
But fools create themselves new appetites.

Against our peace we arm our will:
Amidst our plenty something still
For horses, houses, pictures, planting,
To thee, to me, to him is wanting;
That cruel something unpossest
Corrodes and leavens all the rest,
That something if we could obtain,
Would soon create a future pain.

Oh! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet

With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet,

For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel,

Young.

Prior.

Before I knew the woes of want

And the walk that costs a meal!

T. Hood.

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LASTLY, stood War, in glittering arms yclad,
With visage grim, stern look, and blackly hued;
In his right hand a naked sword he had,

That to the hilts was all with blood imbrued;
And in his left, (that kings and kingdoms rued,)
Famine and fire he held, and therewithal,

He razed towns, and threw down towers and all.
Cities he sack'd, and realms, (that whilom flowered
In honour, glory, and rule, above the rest,)
He overwhelm'd, and all their fame devour'd,
Consum'd, destroy'd, wasted, and never ceas'd
Till he their wealth, their name, and all oppress'd;
His face forehew'd with wounds, and by his side
There hung his targe, with gashes deep and wide.
Sackville.

Now one's the better-then the other best,
Both tugging to be victor, breast to breast;
Yet neither conqueror or is conquered,
So is the equal poise of this fell war.

The amiable vice

Shakspere.

Hid in magnificence and drowned in state,
Loses the fiend, receives the sounding name

Of glorious war; and through the admiring throng,
Uncurst the ornamented murderers move.-Fawcett.

But what most showed the vanity of life,
Was to behold the nations all on fire,
In cruel broils engaged, and deadly strife.
Most christian kings, enflamed by black desire,
With honourable ruffians in their hire,

Came war to wage, and blood around to pour:
Of this sad work when each begins to tire,

They set them down just where they were before, Till for new scenes of woe peace shall their force

restore.

Thomson.

The death-shot hissing from afar,
The shock, the shout, the groan of war.

Byron.

WAR.

War knows no rest,

War owns no sabbath; war with impious toil
Unspent, with blood unsated, to the fiends
Of vengeance still rebellious, still pursues
His work of death; nor pauses, nor relents
For laws divine, nor sight of human woe.

The hunting tribes of air and earth,
Respect the brethren of their birth;
Nature, who loves the claim of kind,
Less cruel, chase to each assigned.
The falcon, poised on soaring wing,
Watches the wild-duck by the spring;
The slow-hound wakes the fox's lair,
The grey-hound presses on the hare;
The eagle pounces on the lamb,
The wolf devours the fleecy dam;
Even tiger fell, and sullen bear
Their likeness and their lineage spare.
Man, only, mars kind nature's plan,
And turns the fierce pursuit on man!
Plying war's desultory trade,
Incursion, flight, and ambuscade,
Since Nimrod, Cush's mighty son,
At first the bloody game begun.

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Grahame.

War and the great in arms shall poets sing,
Havoc and tears, and spoils and triumphing;
The morning march that flashes in the sun,
The feast of vultures when the day is done,
And the strange tale of many slain for one.

Scott.

Rogers.

And what is war? A dark and desperate game,
Where lives and limbs, and hearts, and souls of men
Are staked for knaves who profit by our shame,
And filch our gold, and scorn and crush us then,
While millions fall for reasons few may ken.
The single murderer we devoutly hate,
And curse the felon pinioned in his den;
But thousands slain, and realms made desolate,

Then him who murders most, we hail and call him

great.

S. Mullen.

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