The meanest thing, earth's feeblest worm, He feared to scorn or hate; But, honoring in a peasant's form The equal of the great, He blessed the steward, whose wealth makes Yet loathed the haughty wretch that takes A hand to do, a head to plan, A heart to feel and dare Tell man's worst foes, here lies the man Who drew them as they are. EBENEZER Elliott. NAPOLEON. MORE or less than man-in high or low, Battling with nations, flying from the field: Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield: Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war, Nor learn that tempted fate will leave the loftiest star. Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide When the whole host of hatred stood hard by, To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled With a sedate and all-enduring eye When fortune fled her spoiled and favorite child, He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find And thus reward the toils which to those summits led. BEN JONSON 'IS learning such, no author, old or new, Escaped his reading that deserved his view; And such his judgment, so exact his taste, Of what was best in books, or what books best, That had he joined those notes his labors took From each most praised and praise-deserving book, And could the world of that choice treasure boast, It need not care though all the rest were lost. LUCIUS CARY (Lord Falklarıd). DANTE. EACE dwells not here-this rugged face The sullen warrior sole we trace, O time! whose verdicts mock our own JOHN MILTON. 'HREE poets, in three distant ages born, a TO SHAKESPEARE. T length, Olympian lord of morn, When through golden clouds descending, O'er nature's lovely pageant bending, There, on its bank, beneath the mulberry's shade, Thy fingers strung his sleeping shell, And bade him wake and warm the world Then Shakespeare rose! His daring hand he flings, And lo! a new creation flows! There, clustering round, submissive to his wir O thou! to whose creative power While grace and goodness round the aitar stand, Learning's anointed train, and beauty's rose-lipped band- Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown, Deep in the West as independence roves, Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance But thou art proof against them, and, indeed A little further off, to make thee room: And what her monarch lost her monarch-bard shall And we have wits to read, and praise to give. save. CHARLES Sprague. WASHINGTON IRVING. HAT! Irving! thrice welcome, warm heart You bring back the happiest spirit from And the gravest sweet humor that ever was there That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, Of all, that insolent Greece or haughty Rome With the whole of that partnership's stock and good He was not of an age, but for all time! Mix well, and, while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives And all the Muses still were in their prime, From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED MASTER, HATH LEFT US. O draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please: As neither man nor Muse can praise too Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; much. 'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways For a good poet's made as well as born. Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines In each of which he seems to shake a lance, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage And despairs day, but for thy volume's light! BEN JONSON. EPITAPH ON SHAKESPEARE. HAT needs my Shakespeare for his honored The labor of an age in pilèd stones? Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a starry-pointing pyramid? MARIUS. High thoughts may seem, 'mid passion's strife, And proud hopes in the human heart May be to ruin hurled, Like mouldering monuments of art Yet there is something will not die, Some towering thoughts still rear on high, LYDIA MARIA CHILD. SUFFERINGS AND DESTINY OF THE ETHINKS I see it now, that one solitary, ad. venturous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wishedfor shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy wave. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered ves sel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing Juggested by a painting by Vanderlyn, of Marius seated among their all but desperate undertaking, and landed, at last, P the ruins of Carthage. ILLARS are fallen at thy feet, Fanes quiver in the air, And thou alone art there. No change comes o'er thy noble brow, Though friends and fame depart; And genius hath electric power, Which earth can never tame; Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower- The dreams we loved in early life May melt like mist away; after a few months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks o Plymouth-weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, without shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes. Shut, now, the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers? Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes enumerated witnin the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this! Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labor and spare meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk? was it the deep malady of a blighed hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching, in its last moments, at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea?-was it some or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope! Is it possible that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious! EDWARD Everett. LEATHER STOCKING. These lines refer to the good wishes which Elizabeth, in Mr. Cooper's novel > "The Pioneers," seems to have manifested, in the last chapter, for the welfare of "Leather Stocking," when he signified, at the grave of the Indian, his determination to quit the settlements of men for the unexplored forests of the West, and when, whistling to his dogs, with his rifle on his shoulder, and his pack on his back, he left the village of Templeton. AR away from the hillside, the lake and the hamlet, The rock, and the brook, and yon meadow so gay; From the footpath that winds by the side of the stream let; From his hut, and the grave of his friend, far away— He is gone where the footsteps of men never ventured, Where the glooms of the wild-tangled forest are centred, Where no beam of the sun or the sweet moon has entered, No bloodhound has roused up the deer with his bay. Light be the heart of the poor lonely wanderer; Firm be his step through each wearisome mile- And all but the last throb of memory fails him, And o'er him the leaves of the ivy be shed, THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ. May 28, 1857. T was fifty years ago, In the pleasant month of May, In the beautiful Pays de Vaud, A child in its cradle lay. HILE with a strong and yet a gentle hand, Let partial spirits still aloud complain, Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face, Your drooping country, torn with civil hate, The sea's our own; and now all nations greet, The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys Had you, some ages past, this race of glory This Cæsar found; and that ungrateful age, That sun once set, a thousand meaner stars If Rome's great senate could not wield that sword, You, that had taught them to subdue their foes, So when a lion shakes his dreadful mane, As the vexed world, to find repose, at last Then let the muses, with such notes as these, @ EDMUND WALLER WOLSEY'S ADVICE TO CROMWELL. ROMWELL, I did not think to shed a tear And-when I am forgotten, as I shall be, Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition. To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not Thy God's, and truth's, then if thou fall'st, O Crom well! Thou fall'st a blessed martyr. Serve the king, and-pr'ythee, lead me in. To the last penny; 't is the king's: my robe, I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell: WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR LORD MACAULAY. Turk 'HE dreamy rhymer's measured snore Falls heavy on our ears no more, And by long strides are left behind The dear delights of womankind, Who wage their battles like their loves, In satin waistcoats and kid gloves, And have achieved the crowning work When they have trussed and skewered Another comes with stouter tread, And stalks among the statlier dead. He rushes on and hails by turns High-crested Scott, broad breasted Burns, And shows the British youth, who ne'er Will lag behind, what Romans were, When all the Tuscans and their Lars Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR a JOSEPH MAZZINI LIGHT is out in Italy, A golden tongue of purest flame. We watched it burning, long and lone, And every watcher knew its name, And knew from whence its fervor came, That one rare light of Italy, Which put self-seeking souls to shame' This light which burnt for italy Through all the blackness of her night, She doubted, once upon a time, Because it took away her sight. She looked and said, "There is no light "" It was thine eyes, poor Italy! That knew not dark apart from bright. |