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THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.

(From "Romola."')

HE great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history, hunger and labor, seed time and harvest, love and death.

Even if, instead of following the dim daybreak, our imagination pauses on a certain historical spot, and awaits the fuller morning, we may see a world-famous city, which has hardly changed its outline since the days of Columbus, seeming to stand as an almost unviolated symbol, amidst the flux of human things, to remind us that we still resemble the men of the past more than we differ from them, as the great mechanical principles on which those domes and towers were raised must make a likeness in human building that will be broader and deeper than all possible change.

DEATH'S FINAL CONQUEST. THE glories of our blood and state,

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armor against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings;
Scepter and crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill;
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still;
Early or late,

They stoop to fate,

And must give up their murmuring breath,
When they, pale ca tives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow;

Then boast no more your mighty deeds;
Upon Death's purple altar now

See where the victor-victim bleeds;
Your heads must come

To the cold tomb;

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in their dus*
JAMES SHIK..EY.

ELEGY, WRITTEN IN A COUN

TRY CHURCHYARD.

HE curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea,

MARIAN EVANS CROSS. (George Eliot.")

The plowman homeward plods his weary

way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a moulder-
ing heap,

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-
built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly

bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall
burn,

Or busy house-wife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er

gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour;

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn, or animated bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;

Chill penury repressed their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade; nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture
decked,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their names, their years, spelled the unlettered muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply; And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires; E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonored dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate, E'en chance, by lonely Contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,—

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, "Oft have we seen him at the peep of

dawn,

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding Approach and read (for thou canst read) the

beech,

That wreathes its old, fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies he would

rove;

Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless

love.

lay,

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth,
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send;

"One morn, I missed him on the customed He gave to misery, all he had, a tear;

hill,

Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; Another came, nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array,
Slow through the churchway path we saw
him borne:

He gained from Heaven, 'twas all he wished, a friend.

No further seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose ;)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
THOMAS GRAY.

The Curfere colls the Knell of parting Day,
The Plowman homeward plody his weary Way.
The Conving Herd wird slowly der the Lea,
And laves the World to Donkness to to me.

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farther week his Merits to disclose
Or orar, his Frailties from their dread Abode:
(There they alike in trembling-Hope repose)
The Bovor of his Father, & his God.

Your humble Serv

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Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul.
Yes, this was once Ambition's airy hall,
The dome of Thought, the palace of the Soul.
Behold through each lack-luster, eyeless
hole,

The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit,

And Passion's host, that never brooked con-
trol.

Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ,
People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON.

THANATOPSIS.

who the love of Nature holds

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The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the
vales.

Stretching in pensive quietness between ;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured
round all,

Communion with her visible forms, she Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,

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Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow
house,

Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart,
Go forth, under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around,
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,
Comes a still voice: Yet a few days, and
thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many
tears,

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall
claim,

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock,

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the still abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that
tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, traverse Barca's desert sands,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings; yet the dead are

there,

And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down

In their last sleep; the dead reign there
alone.

So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall
leave

Their mirth and their employments, and shall

come

And make their bed with thee. As the long train

Of ages glide away, the sons of men,

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