WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Thanatopsis.

To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.

Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings.

Sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

March.

The stormy March has come at last,

With wind and clouds and changing skies;

I hear the rushing of the blast

That through the snowy valley flies.

Autumn Woods.

But 'neath yon crimson tree,

Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,

Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,

Her blush of maiden shame.

Forest Hymn.

The groves were God's first temples.

The Death of the Flowers.

The melancholy days are come,

The saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods,
And meadows brown and sear.

The Battle-Field.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again:
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

The Problem.

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome.

He builded better than he knew.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone.

Hymn. At the completion of the Concord Monument.

Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK

Marco Bozzaris.

Strike - for your altars and your fires;
Strike - for the green graves of your sires;
God, and your native land!

One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.

On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake. Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days; None knew thee but to love thee, 45 Nor named thee but to praise.

Burns.

Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined, -

The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

Curiosity.

Lo, where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.

Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends, An incarnation of fat dividends.

Centennial Ode.

Stanza 22.

Behold! in Liberty's unclouded blaze
We lift our heads, a race of other days.

To my Cigar.

Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctors' spite;

Thy clouds all other clouds dispel,
And lap me in delight.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

A Psalm of Life.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting.*
Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

* Life is short, and the art long.

HIPPOCRATES, (Aphorism I.)

Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

The Light of Stars.

Know how sublime a thing it is

To suffer and be strong.

It is not always May.

For Time will teach thee soon the truth,

There are no birds in last year's nest!

Maidenhood.

Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!

The Goblet of Life.

O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted ones, who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, and yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried!

Resignation.

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair.