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What things have we seen

EARL OF MARLBOROUGH.

[Lord-President of the Council to King James I. Parliament was dissolved March 10, and he died March 14, 1628.]

Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him. . . .

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have Killed with report that old man eloquent.

been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

To the Lady Margaret Ley.

Μ11 ΤΟΝ.

JOHN WICKLIFFE.

As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear

Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main ocean they, this deed accursed

Of his dull life: then when there hath been Into the Avon, Avon to the tide

thrown

Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past; wit that might warrant be An emblem yields to friends and enemies,
For the whole city to talk foolishly

How the bold Teacher's doctrine, sanctified

dispersed.

Fill that were cancelled; and when that was gone, By truth, shall spread, throughout the world We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies (Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise.

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Far from the sun and summer gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,

To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face the dauntless child
Stretched forth his little arms and smiled.
"This pencil take," she said, "whose colors clear
Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!.
This can unlock the gates of joy ;

Of horror that, and thrilling fears,

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."

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Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie

A little nearer Spenser, to make room

Eccles. Sonnets, Part II. xvii.: To Wickliffe. WORDSWORTH

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The Avon to the Severn runs,

The Severn to the sea;

And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad,
Wide as the waters be.'

From Address before the "Sons of New Hampshire" (1849).
DANIEL WEBSTER.

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For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb. How shall I then begin, or where conclude,

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Whose eloquence - brightening whatever it tried,

Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave --Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide, As ever bore freedom aloft on its wave! Lines on the Death of Sheridan.

-

T. MOORE.

Ye men of wit and social eloquence !
He was your brother, bear his ashes hence!
While powers of mind almost of boundless range,
Complete in kind, as various in their change,
While eloquence, wit, poesy, and mirth,
That humbler harmonist of care on earth,
Survive within our souls, while lives our sense
Of pride in merit's proud pre-eminence,
Long shall we seek his likeness, — long in vain,
And turn to all of him which may remain,
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man.
And broke the die in moulding Sheridan *

Monody on the Death of Sheridan.

AMOS COTTLE.

BYRO.

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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Thine is a strain to read among the hills,

by the source

The old and full of voices; Of some free stream, whose gladdening presence

fills

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HAWTHORNE

HARP of New England Song,

That even in slumber trembled with the touch

Of poets who like the four winds from thee waken
All harmonies that to thy strings belong,-
Say, wilt thou blame the younger hands too much
Which from thy laureled resting place have taken
Thee crowned one in their hold? There is a name
Should quicken thee! No carol Hawthorne sang,
Yet his articulate spirit, like thine own,

Made answer, quick as flame,
To each breath of the shore from which he sprang,
And prose like his was poesy's high tone.

But he whose quickened eye

Saw through New England's life her inmost spirit,-
Her heart, and all the stays on which it leant,—
Returns not, since he laid the pencil by

Whose mystic touch none other shall inherit!
What though its work unfinished lies? Half-bent
The rainbow's arch fades out in upper air;

The shining cataract half-way down the height
Breaks into mist; the haunting strain, that fell
On listeners unaware,
Ends incomplete, but through the starry night
The ear still waits for what it did not tell.

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

Publishers: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston

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