RIDICULE-SHAME.

It wounds, indeed,

To bear affronts too great to be forgiven,
And not have power to punish.

my

Patience! soul disdains its stoic maxim,
The coward's virtue, and the knave's disguise:
Ovengeance! take me all-I'm wholly thine!

These the sole accents from his tongue that fell,
But volumes lurk'd below that fierce farewell.

There are things

469

DRYDEN.

BYRON'S Island.

Which make revenge a virtue by reflection,
And not an impulse of mere anger; though
The law sleeps, justice wakes, and injur'd souls
Oft do a public right with private wrong.

BYRON'S Marino Faliero.

No! When the battle rages dire,
And the rous'd soul is all on fire,
Think'st thou a noble heart can stay,

Flate's rancorous impulse to obey?

MRS. HOLFORD's Margaret of Anjou Revenge we find

The abject pleasure of an abject mind.

GIFFORD'S Juvenal.

Whom vengeance track'd so long,

Feeding its torch with the thought of wrong.

J. G. WHITTIER

RIDICULE-SHAME.

For often vice, provok'd to shame, Borrows the colour of a virtuous deed:

Thus libertines are chaste, and misers good,

A coward valiant, and a priest sincere.

SEWELL'S Sir Walter Raleigh

470

RIGHT-RIVERS.

I can bear scorpions' stings, tread fields of fire;
In frozen gulfs of cold eternal lie;

Be toss'd aloft through tracts of endless void —
But cannot live in shame.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

For still the world prevail'd, and its dread laugh,
Which scarce the firm philosopher can scorn.

Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,

Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life, to endless sleep.

DYER'S Gronger Hill.

O! I have thought, and, thinking, sigh'd,

By ever-flowing streams arteries of earth,
That, widely branching, circulate its blood;
Whose ever-throbbing pulses are the tides.

MOORE

THOMAS WARD.

ROGUES-RURAL SCENES, &c.

But theu, unchang'd from year to year,
Gayly shalt play and glitter here;
Amid young flowers and tender grass,
Thine endless infancy shalt pass;
And, singing down thy narrow glen,
Shall mock the fading race of men.

471

W. C. BRYANT.

have taken,

Who may trace the ways that ye
Ye streams and drops? who separate ye all,
And find the many places ye 've forsaken,
To come and rush together down the fall?

MISS HANNAH F. GOULD.

So blue yon winding river flows,
It seems an outlet from the sky,
Where, waiting till the west wind blows,
The freighted clouds at anchor lie.

Here laden carts with thundering wagons meet,
Wheels clash with wheels, and bar the narrow street.

GAY's Trivia.

472

RURAL SCENES &c.

At eve the ploughman leaves the task of day,
And, trudging homeward, whistles on the way:
And the big-udder'd cows with patience stand,
And wait the strokings of the damsel's hand.

GAY'S Rural Sporta

See you gay goldfinch hop from spray to spray,
Who sings a farewell to the parting day;
At large he flies, o'er hill, and dale and down:
Is not each bush, each spreading tree his own?
And canst thou think he'll quit his native brier
For the bright cage o'erarch'd with golden wire?

GAY'S Dione.

Here, too, dwells simple truth; plain innocence;
Unsullied beauty; sound, unbroken youth,
Patient of labour, with a little pleas'd;
Health ever blooming; unambitious toil;
Calm contemplation, and poetic ease.

THOMSON'S Seasons

Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose ;
There as I pass'd with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came soften'd from below:
The swain responsive to the milkmaid sung;
The sober herd that low'd to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool;
The playful children, just let loose from school;
The watch-dog's voice, that bay'd the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind:
:-
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,

And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made.

GOLDSMITH'S Deserted Village

Yellow sheaves from rich Ceres the cottage had crown'd,

Green rushes were strew'd on the floor;

The casement's sweet woodbine crept wantonly round.
And deck'd the sod seats at the door.

CUNNINGHAM

SABBATH.

God made the country, and man made the town.

Adieu, the city's ceaseless hum,

The haunts of sensual life adieu!

473

COWPER'S Task.

Green fields, and silent glens! we come
To spend this bright spring day with you!

J. ALDRICH.

O how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which nature to her votary yields?
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields?

Anon, to change the homely scene,
Lest it pall while too serene,

To the gay city we remove,

BEATTIE'S Minstrel.

Where other things there are to love,
And, grac'd by novelty, we find

The city's concourse to our mind.

From the Spanish.

The cold, heartless city, with its forms
And dull routine; its artificial manners,
And arbitrary rules; its cheerless pleasures,
And mirthless masquing.

J. N. BARKER.

SABBATH.

How still the morning of the hallow'd day!
Mute is the voice of rural labour; hush'd

The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with faded flowers,
That yesternoon bloom'd waving in the breeze.
The faintest sound attracts the ear- the hum
Of early bee the trickling of the dew
The distant bleating midway up the hill.
Calmness seems thron'd on yon unmoving hill.
40*

GRAHAMB