thousand inhabitants came out of the town on the same errand; and in spite of my guards, I believe there could not be fewer than ten thousand who at several times, mounted my body by the help of ladders. But a proclamation was soon issued to forbid it upon pain of death. When the workmen found it was impossible for me to break loose, they cut all the strings that bound me; whereupon, I rose up, with as melancholy a disposition as ever I had in my life.

Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control
That o'er thee swell and throng;

They will condense within thy soul,

And change to purpose strong.

But he who lets his feelings run
In soft luxurious flow,

Shrinks when hard service must be done,

And faints at every woe.

Faith's meanest deed more favor bears,
Where hearts and wills are weighed,
Than brightest transports, choicest prayers,
Which bloom their hour and fade.

NEWMAN.

XLIV

TO A WATERFOWL

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

The "Father of American Song" is WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. He was contemporary with Irving and Cooper. He was born in 1794 at Cummington, Massachusetts. He tells us himself that from the "earliest years he was a delighted observer of external nature." Although admitted to the bar as a lawyer he, at the first opportunity, abandoned his profession for journalism and literature. In 1829 he became editor-in-chief and part proprietor of the New York "Evening Post." He translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. In his poems he never surpassed his early "Thanatopsis" and "Ode to a Waterfowl." The subject of the first of these poems is treated with a noble seriousness. Bryant was truly a poet of nature. He died in 1878, having witnessed nearly the first hundred years of our national life.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake or marge of river wide
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—
The desert and illimitable air-

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky they certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone

Will lead my steps aright.

XLV

THE RETIRED CAT

WILLIAM COWPER

WILLIAM COWPER

WILLIAM COWPER was born in England in 1731. After a life clouded at times with mental disease he died in 1800. He was fifty years old before his poetical genius was exhibited. His greatest work was "The Task." It is mainly a description of himself and his life in the country. He loved nature entirely for her own sake. To the suggestion of Lady Austen we are indebted for his humorous ballad, "John Gilpin." Of his other poems, the most famous are "The Castaway" and "Boadicea." His letters are among the best in the English language.

A poet's cat, sedate and grave
As poet well could wish to have,
Was much addicted to inquire
For nooks to which she might retire,
And where, secure as mouse in chink,
She might repose, or sit and think.
I know not where she caught the trick-
Nature perhaps herself had cast her
In such a mould philosophique,

Or else she learnt it of her master.

Sometimes ascending, debonair,
An apple tree, or lofty pear,

Lodged with convenience in the fork,
She watch'd the gardener at his work;
Sometimes her ease and solace sought
In an old empty watering-pot;
There, wanting nothing save a fan,
To seem some nymph in her sedan
Apparel'd in exactest sort,

And ready to be borne to court.

But love of change, it seems, has place Not only in our wiser race;

Cats also feel, as well as we,

That passion's force, and so did she.
Her climbing, she began to find,
Exposed her too much to the wind,
And the old utensil of tin

Was cold and comfortless within;
She therefore wish'd instead of those
Some place of more serene repose,
Where neither cold might come, nor air
Too rudely wanton with her hair,
And sought it in the likeliest mode
Within her master's snug abode.

A drawer, it chanced, at bottom lined
With linen of the softest kind,
With such as merchants introduce
From India, for the ladies' use,
A drawer impending o'er the rest,

sedan: a lady's chair, used instead of a carriage.