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In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms. Then come the gloomy

hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts, and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. HYPERION.

Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more

The rose of youth restore?

PALINGENESIS.

O precious evenings! all too swiftly sped!
Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages

Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages,
And giving tongues unto the silent dead!

SONNET ON MRS. KEMBLE'S READINGS FROM SHAKESPEARE.

NOVEMBER 28.

When I stood by the sea-shore and listened to the... familiar roar of its waves, it seemed but a step from the threshold of a foreign land to the fireside of home. OUTRE-MER.

Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless,

In foreign harbors shall behold

That flag unrolled,

'T will be as a friendly hand

Stretched out from his native land,

Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless!

THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP.

Fanny Kemble Butler, 1809.

NOVEMBER 28.

Robert Lowth, 1710; William Blake, 1757; Cousin, 1792.

As was said to Sidney's Arcadia: "Live ever, sweet, sweet book! the simple image of his gentle wit, and the golden pillar of his noble courage." DRIFT-WOOD.

But the good deed, through the ages
Living in historic pages,

Brighter grows and gleams immortal,
Unconsumed by moth or rust.

THE NORMAN BARON.

He was a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the morning,

Gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened thought into action.

NOVEMBER 30.

EVANGELINE.

The basis of his character was good, sound common-sense, trodden down and smoothed by education; but this level groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancing-floor whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks.

HYPERION.

Make not thyself the judge of any man. THE MASQUE OF PANDORA. Therefore take from henceforth, as guides in the path of existence,

Prayer, with her eyes raised to heaven, and Innocence, bride of man's childhood.

THE CHILDREN OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, Tr. from Tegnér.

Sir Philip Sidney, 1554; W. Phillips, 1811.

NOVEMBER 30.

Dean Swift, 1667; Sir Egerton Brydges, 1762.

THE BROKEN OAR.

ONCE upon Iceland's solitary strand

A poet wandered with his book and pen, Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen, Wherewith to close the volume in his hand. The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand, The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken, And from the parting cloud-rack now and then Flashed the red sunset over sea and land. Then by the billows at his feet was tossed A broken oar; and carved thereon he read, "Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee"; And like a man, who findeth what was lost, He wrote the words, then lifted up his head, And flung his useless pen into the sea.

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