Through that long strife her constant hope was stayed She met the hosts of sorrow with a lock That altered not beneath the frown they wore ; The fiery shafts of pain, And rent the nets of passion from her path. Her glory is not of this shadowy state, Glory that with the fleeting season dies; But when she entered at the sapphire gate, What joy was radiant in celestial eyes! How heaven's bright depths with sounding welcomes rung, Pain, scorn, and sorrow bore, The mighty Sufferer, with aspect sweet, He who, returning glorious from the grave, Dragged Death, disarmed, in chains, a crouching slave. See, as I linger here, the sun grows low; Cool airs are murmuring that the night is near. O gentle sleeper, from thy grave I go Consoled though sad, in hope and yet in fear. The warfare scarce begun, Yet all may win the triumphs thou hast won: BRYANT. SORROW. He that lacks time to mourn lacks time to mend For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them. Nor aught that dignifies humanity. TREASURE-TROVE. THROUGH the forest idly, With a free and happy heart, Singing as I went. Cow'ring in the shade, I Did a floweret spy, Bright as any star in heaven, Sweet as any eye. Down to pluck it stooping, And in my garden-plot at home I planted it anew. All in a still and shady place Beside my home so dear; HENRY TAYLOR. And now it thanks me for my pains, And blossoms all the year. From the German of GOETHE. TO AUTUMN. SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd and plump the hazel-shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers ; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook ; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden croft, And gathering swallows twitter from the skies. THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. THE poetry of earth is never dead : KEATS. When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, With his delights, for when tired out with fun, On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one' in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. ODE WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1746. How sleep the brave who sink to rest, To dwell a weeping hermit there. THE LABOURER. You cannot pay with money The million sons of toil The sailor on the ocean, The peasant on the soil, But it cannot pay the soul. You gaze on the cathedral Whose turrets meet the sky; That in earth and darkness lie: So proudly in the air. KEATS. COLLINS. The workshop must be crowded Then the poet could not write. That man performs for man, Are cheered with one bright day. And fill the souls of men As the waters fill the sea. The man who turns the soil Need not have an earthly mind; The digger 'mid the coal Need not be in spirit blind : On each worthy labour done, The thought that for his followers Let the thought that comes from heaven, Be spread like heaven's own light! Ye men who hold the pen, Rise like a band inspired, And, poets, let your lyrics With hope for man be fired ; Till the earth becomes a temple, And every human heart Shall join in one great service, Each happy in his part.--From the German. |