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laugh at in strangers: scandal and satire prevail most in country places; and a propensity to ridicule every the slightest or most palpable deviation from what we happen to approve, ceases with the progress of common sense and decency. True worth does not exult in the faults and deficiency of others; as true refinement turns away from grossness and deformity, instead of being tempted to indulge in an unmanly triumph over it. Raphael would not faint away at the daubing of a sign-post, nor Homer hold his head the higher for being in the company of a Grub-street bard. Real power, real excellence does not seek for a foil in imperfection; nor fear contamination from coming in contact with that which is coarse and homely. It reposes on itself, and is equally free from spleen and affectation. But the spirit of gentility is the mere essence of spleen and affectation;

of affected delight in its own would-be qualifications, and of ineffable disdain poured out upon the involuntary blunders or accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses to treat as its inferiors.

SOUNDS.-ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

I.

Hearken, hearken!

The rapid river carrieth
Many noises underneath

The hoary ocean;
Teaching his solemnity,
Sounds of inland life and glee,
Learnt beside the waving tree,
When the winds in summer prank
Toss the shades from bank to bank,
And the quick rains, in emotion
Which rather glads than grieves,
Count and visibly rehearse
The pulses of the universe
Upon the summer leaves-
Learnt among the lilies straight,
When they bow them to the weight
Of many bees, whose hidden hum
Seemeth from themselves to come-
Learnt among the grasses green,
Where the rustling mice are scen,
By the gleaming, as they run,
Of their quick eyes in the sun;
And lazy sheep are browzing through,
With their noses trailed in dew;

And the squirrel leaps adown.
Holding fast the filbert brown;
And the lark, with more of mirth
In his song that suiteth earth,
Droppeth some in soaring high,
To pour the rest out in the sky:
While the woodland dcves, apart
In the copse's leafy heart,
Solitary not ascetic,

Hidden and yet vocal, seem
Joining, in a lovely psalm,

Man's despondence, nature's calm,
Half mystical and half pathetic,
Like a sighing in a dream.

All these sounds the river telleth,
Softened to an undertone

Which ever and anon he swelleth
By a burden of his own,

In the ocean's ear,

Ay! and ocean seems to hear,
With an inward gentle scorn,

Smiling to his caverns worn.

II.

Hearken, hearken!

The child is shouting at his play
Just in the tramping funeral's way;

The widow moans as she turns aside

To shun the face of the blushing bride,

While, shaking the tower of the ancient church, The marriage bells do swing;

And in the shadow of the porch

An idiot sits, with his lean hands full

Of hedgerow flowers and a poet's skull,
Laughing loud and gibbering,
Because it is so brown a thing,

While he sticketh the gaudy poppies red
In and out the senseless head,

Where all sweet fancies grew instead.
And you may hear, at the self-same time,
Another poet who reads his rhyme,
Low as a brook in the summer air-

Save when he droppeth his voice adown,
To dream of the amaranthine crown

His mortal brows shall wear.

And a baby cries with a feeble sound

'Neath the weary weight of the life uew-toun; And an old man groans-with his testament Only half signed-for the life that's spent;

And lovers twain do softly say,

As they sit on a grave, "for aye, for aye!" And foeman twain, while Earth, their mother, Looks greenly upward, curse each other.

A school-boy drones his task, with looks
Cast over the page to the elm-tree rooks:
A lonely student cries aloud,

Eureka! clasping at his shroud;

A beldame's age-cracked voice doth sing
To a little infant slumbering:

A maid forgotten weeps alone,

Muffling her sobs on the trysting-stone;
A sick man wakes at his own mouth's wail;
A gossip coughs in her thrice-told tale;
A muttering gamester shakes the dice:
A reaper foretells good-luck from the skies;
A monarch vows as he lifts his hand to them;
A patriot leaving his native land to them,
Invokes the world against perjured state;
A priest disserts upon linen skirts;
A sinner screams for one hope more;
A dancer's feet do palpitate

A piper's music out on the floor;

And nigh to the awful Dead, the living

Low speech and stealthy steps are giving,
Because he cannot hear;

And he who on that narrow bier

Has room enow, is closely wound

In a silence piercing more than sound.

III.

Hearken, hearken!

God speaketh to thy soul;

Using the supreme voice which doth confound All life with consciousness of Deity,

All senses into one;

As the seer-saint of Patmos, loving John,
For whom did backward roll

The cloud-gate of the future, turned to see
The Voice which spake. It speaketh now-
Through the regular breath of the calm creation,
Through the moan of the creature's desolation,
Striking, and in its stroke resembling

The memory of a solemn vow,

Which pierceth the din of a festival

To one in the midst-and he letteth fall

The cup, with a sudden trembling.

IV.

Hearken, hearken!

God speaketh in thy soul;
Saying, "O thou, that movest

With feeble steps across this earth of mine,
To break beside the fount thy golden bowl
And spill its purple wine--

Look up to heaven and see how like a scroll,

My right hand hath thine immortality
In an eternal grasping! Thou, that lovest
The songful birds and grasses underfoot,
And also what change mars, and tombs pollute-
I am the end of love!-give love to me!
O thou that sinnest, grace doth more abound
Than all thy sin! sit still beneath my rood,
And count the droppings of my victim-blood,
And seek none other sound!"

V.

Hearken, hearken!

Shall we hear the lapsing river
And our brother's sighing, ever,
And not the voice of God?

THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN.-GOLDSMITH.

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild,
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.

A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had chang'd, nor wished to change his place;
Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train,
He chid their wanderings, but reliev'd their pain;
The long-remember'd beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sate by his fire, and talk'd the night away;
Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,

Shoulder'd his crutch, and show'd how fields were won.

Pleas'd with his guests, the good man learn'd to glow,

And quite forgot their vices in their woe:
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And e'en his failings lean'd to virtue's side;

.

But in his duty prompt at every call,

He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay,
Allur'd to brighter worlds and led the way.

Beside the bed where parting life was laid,
And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismay'd,
The reverend champion stood. At his control,
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,
And his last faltering accents whisper'd praise.

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorn'd the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff, remain'd to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,
With ready zeal each honest rustic ran;
E'en children follow'd, with endearing wile,

And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile.
His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest,
Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares distrest;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs, were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

ON THE BEING OF A GOD-YOUNG.

Retire; the world shut out-thy thoughts call home!
Imagination's airy wing repress;

Lock up thy senses;-let no passion stir;-
Wake all to Reason;-let her reign alone;-

Then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth

Of nature's silence,-midnight, thus inquire,

As I have done; and shall inquire no more.
In Nature's channel, thus the questions run.

What am I? and from whence? I nothing know,
But that I am; and since I am, conclude
Something eternal. Had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been; eternal there must be.
But what eternal ?-why not human race;
And Adam's ancestors without an end?
That's hard to be conceived; since every link

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