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6.

The lesson of Thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die; but see, again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth--
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them.

Oh, there is not lost

One of Earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,

The freshness of her far beginning lies,
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch-enemy Death; yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne, the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe

Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From Thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

7. There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them; and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes

8.

Retire, and in Thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at Thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble, and are still.

O God! when Thou

Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire

The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill
With all the waters of the firmament

The swift, dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at Thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities, who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of Thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of Thy face
Spare me and mine; nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad, unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, Thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of Thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

DEFINITIONS.-1. Är ́ehi trăve, an ornament which rests immediately on a column. Ăn'thems, church music adapted to passages from the Scriptures. Därk'ling, dark. Sup pli eã ́tion, prayer. Swayed, bent; moved. In ae çess'i ble, not to be approached. Sănet'ū a ries, holy places. Ae çèpt ́ançe, favor. 2. €om mūn’įon, intercourse. 3. Tran quil'li ty, quietness; a calm state. 4. Grănd'eūr, splendor of appearance. An nī ́hi lāt ed, reduced to nothing. Єor'o nal, crown. Em a na'tion, outgrowth.

56. THE SUNBEAM.

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS was born in Liverpool, September 25, 1794. She manifested a taste for poetry at an early age. Her first volume, published in 1808, contained a few pieces written when she was but ten years old. Some of her works are The Vespers of Palermo; The Siege of Valencia; The Last Constantine, and Other Poems; The Forest Sanctuary; National Lyrics and Songs for Music; and Scenes and Hymns of Life. Her poems are sweet, natural, and pleasing. Her lyrics are her finest productions; some of them are perfect in pathos and sentiment. She died in Dublin, May 16, 1835.

1. THOU art no lingerer in monarch's hall:
A joy thou art and a wealth to all,

A bearer of hope unto land and sea :
Sunbeam, what gift has the world like thee?

2. Thou art walking the billows, and Ocean smiles: Thou hast touched with glory his thousand isles; Thou hast lit up the ships and the feathery foam, And gladdened the sailor, like words from home.

3. To the solemn depths of the forest shades

Thou art streaming on through their green arcades;
And the quivering leaves that have caught thy glow
Like fireflies glance to the pools below.

4. I looked on the mountains: a vapor lay,
Folding their heights in its dark array;
Thou brakest forth, and the mist became
A crown and a mantle of living flame.

5. I looked on the peasant's lowly cot:
Something of sadness had wrapped the spot;
But a gleam of thee on its casement fell,
And it laughed into beauty at that bright spell.

6. To the earth's wild places a guest thou art,
Flushing the waste like the rose's heart;
And thou scornest not from thy pomp to shed
A tender light on the ruin's head.

7. Thou tak'st through the dim church-aisle thy way,
And its pillars from twilight flash forth to day,
And its high pale tombs, with their trophies old,
Are bathed in a flood of burning gold.

8. And thou turnest not from the humblest grave
Where a flower to the sighing winds may wave;
Thou scatter'st its gloom like the dreams of rest,
Thou sleepest in love on its grassy breast.

9. Sunbeam of summer, oh, what is like thee,
Hope of the wilderness, joy of the sea?
One thing is like thee, to mortals given :

The faith touching all things with hues of heaven.

DEFINITIONS.—3. Är cădeş', series of arches or arched walks. 7. Trō'phies, things taken from an enemy and preserved as memorials of victory.

57.-THE GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD.

1. THEY grew in beauty side by side;
They filled one home with glee:
Their graves are severed far and wide
By mount and stream and sea.

2. The same fond mother bent at night
O'er each fair sleeping brow;

She had each folded flower in sight:
Where are those dreamers now?

3. One 'midst the forest of the West,

By a dark stream, is laid

:

The Indian knows his place of rest
Far in the cedar shade.

4. The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one:
He lies where pearls lie deep;

He was the loved of all, yet none
O'er his low bed may weep.

5. One sleeps where Southern vines are dressed
Above the noble slain :

He wrapped his colors round his breast
On a blood-red field of Spain.

6. And one,-o'er her the myrtle showers
Its leaves, by soft winds fanned:
She faded 'midst Italian flowers,
The last of that bright band.

7. And parted thus they rest, who played
Beneath the same green tree,

Whose voices mingled as they prayed
Around one parent knee,—

8. They that with smiles lit up the hall,
And cheered with songs the hearth.
Alas for love, if thou wert all,

And naught beyond, O Earth!

MRS. HEMANS.

58. THE CLOUD.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was born at Field Place, Sussex, England, August 4, 1792. At the age of ten he went to a school near Brentford, thence to Eton, and five years later to University College, Oxford. His works comprise a number of volumes of poetry, essays, and translations. His tragedy of The Cenci is held to be one of the best of modern times. Shelley's style is precise, impetuous, brilliant, and vigorous. His poems are often full of abstract subtleties, frail as mist, yet surprisingly beautiful: they deal more frequently with an ideal world than with the world as it is or has been. He was drowned while boating in the Bay of Spezia, Italy, July 8, 1822.

1. I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams;

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