WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.

Sometime in feasts and follies, for he went If Thought and Love desert us, from that day Lifelike through all things; and his thoughts Let us break off all commerce with the Muse : then rose

With Thought and Love companions of our way; -
Like sparkles in the bright wine, brighter still; Whate'er the senses take or may refuse, —
Sometimes in dreams, and then the shining words The mind's interual Heaven shall shed her dews
Would wake him in the dark before his face. Of inspiration on the humblest lay.
All things talked thoughts to him. The sea

went mad
To show his meaning ; and the awful sun
Thundered his thoughts into him ; and at night
The stars would whisper theirs, the moon sigh

THE POET OF TO-DAY.
hers.

More than the soul of ancient song is given

To thee, O poet of to-day ! - thy dower
Comies, from a higher than Olympian heaven,

In holier beauty and in larger power.
THE POET'S IMPULSE.

To thee Humanity, her woes revealing,
FROM "CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE,” CANTO II. I Would all her griefs and ancient wrongs re.
Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings !'...

hearse; ye!

| Would make thy song the voice of her appealing, With night, and clouds, and thunder, and ai And sob her mighty sorrows through thy verse. soul

While in her season of great darkness sharing, To make these felt and feeling, well may be i

Hail thou the coming of each promise-star Things that have made me watchful; the far

Which climbs the midnight of her long despair.

ing, of your departing voices is the knoll

And watch for morning o'er the hills afar. Of what in me is sleepless, — if I rest. But where of ye, 0 tempests! is the goal ? | Wherever Truth her holy warfare wages, Are ye like those within the human breast ?

Or Freedom pines, there let thy voice be heard ; Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high sound like a prophet-warning down the ages nest?

The human utterance of God's living word.

roll

Could I embody and unbosom now

But bring not thou the battle's stormy chorus, That which is most within me, - could I wreak The tramp of armies, and the roar of fight, My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw Not war's hot smoke to taint the sweet morn Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or o'er as, weak,

i Nor blaze of pillage, reddening up the night. All that I would have sought, and all I seek, Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe - into one o, let thy lays prolong that angel-singing, word,

Girdling with music the Redeemer's star, And that one word were Lightning, I would And breathe God's peace, to earth “glad tidings' speak;

bringing But as it is, I live and die unheard,

. From the near heavens, of old so dim and far! With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a

SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT (Grace Greenwood). sword.

LORD BYRON.

THE INNER VISION.

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes

To pace the ground, if path there be or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
Which he forbears again to look upon ;
Pleased rather with some soft iileal scene,
The work of fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.

BOOKS.
FROM " THE KALÉDER OF SHEPERDES," 1528.
He that many bokes redys,
Cunnyinge shall he be.
Wysedlome is soone caught ;
In many leues it is sought :
But slonth, that no boke bought,
For reason taketh no thought ;
His thryfte cometh behynde.

ANONYMOUS

BOOKS.
For why, who writes such histories as these
Doth often bring the reader's heart such ease,
As when they sit and see what he doth note,
Well fare his heart, say they, this book that

wrote !

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;

Which when we once can tinde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.

Who would be more,

Swelling through store,
Forfeit their paradise by their pride.

JOHN HIGGINS,

GEORGE HERBERT.

THE FLOWER.

YUSSOUF. How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean A STRANGER came one night to Yussouf's tent, Are thy returns ! even as the flowers in spring; Saying, “ Behold one outcast and in dread, To which, besides their own demean,

| Against whose life the bow of power is bent, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head ; Grief melts away

I come to thee for shelter and for food,
Like snow in May,

To Yussouf, called through all our tribes The As if there were no such cold thing.

Good.'” Who would have thought my shrivelled heart “ This tent is mine," said Yussouf, “but no more Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Than it is God's; come in, and be at peace ; Quite underground ; as flowers depart

Freely shalt thou partake of all my store To see their mother root, when they have blown ; As I of his who buildeth over these Where they together

Our tents his glorious roof of night and day, All the hard weather,

And at whose door none ever yet heard Nay.” Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

So Yussouf entertained his guest that night, These are thy wonders, Lord of power, And, waking him ere day, said : “Here is gold, Killing and quickning, bringing down to hell My swiftest horse is saddled for thy flight, And up to heaver in an houre;

Depart before the prying day grow bold.”
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,
We say amisse,

So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
This or that is :
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

That inward light the stranger's face made grand,

Which shines from all self-conquest; kneeling low, O that I once past changing were,

He bowed his forehead upon Yussouf's hand, Fast in thy paradise, where no flower can wither! Sobbing: “O Sheik, I cannot leave thee so ; Many a spring I shoot up fair,

I will repay thee; all this thou hast done
Offring at heav'n, growing and groning thither ; Unto that Ibrahim who slew thy son!”

Nor dóth my flower
Want a spring-showre,

“Take thrice the gold," said Yussouf, “ for with My sinnes and I joining together.

thee

Into the desert, never to return, But, while I grow in a straight line,

My one black thought shall ride away from me ; Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own, | First-born, for whom by day and night I yearn, Thy anger comes, and I decline :

| Balanced and just are all of God's decrees ; What frost to that? what pole is not the zone Thou art avenged, my first-born, sleep in peace!” Where all things burn,

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown ?

ABOU BEN ADHEM.
And now in age I bud again ;
After so many deaths I live and write ;

ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase !) I once inore smell the dew and rain,

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And relish versing : O my only light,

And saw within the moonlight in his room,
It cannot be

Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
That I am he

An angel writing in a book of gold :
On whom thy tempests fell all night! | Exceeding peace had maile Ben Adhem bold,

WILLIAM WINTER.

And to the presence in the room he said, But only in his sleep I came to him,
“What writest thou ?” The vision raised its head, And gave him fitful glimpses of my face,
And, with a look made of all sweet accord, Whereof he after sang, in sweetest words ;
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord." Then died, and came to me. But evermore,
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,” | Through lonely days, and passion-haunted nights,
Replied the angel. Abou spoke niore low, A life of starlit gloom, do poets seek
But cheerly still ; and said, “I pray thee, then, To rend the mystic veil that covers me,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." And evermore they grasp the empty air.
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

For only in their dreams I come to them,
It came again, with a great wakening light,

And give them fitful glimpses of my face, And showed the names whom love of God had

And lull them, siren-like, with words of hope – blessed,

That promise, sometime, to their ravished eyes, And, lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest !

Beauty, the secret of the universe,
LEIGH HUNT.

God's thought, that gives the soul eternal peace.

Then the voice ceased, and only, through the mist, BEAUTY.

The shaken roses murmured, and the wind. I had a dream, one glorious, sunimer night, In the rich bosom of imperial June. Languid I lay upon an odorous couch,

VANITY. Golden with amber, festooned wildly o'er

The sun comes up and the sun goes down, With crimson roses ; and the longing stars

And day and night are the same as one ; Wept tears of light upon their clustered leaves.

The year grows green, and the year grows brown, Above me soared the azure vault of heaven,

And what is it all, when all is done ? Vast and majestic ; cinctured with that path

| Grains of sombre or shining sand, Whereby, perchance, the sea-born Venus found

Gliding into and out of the hand.
Her way to higher spheres; that path which seems
A coronet of silver, gemmed with stars,

And men go down in ships to the seas,
And bound upon the forehead of the night. And a hundred ships are the same as one ;
There, as I lay, the musical south wind

And backward and forward blows the breeze,
Shook all the roses into murmurous life, And what is it all, when all is done?
And poured their fragrance o'er me, in a shower A tide with never a shore in sight
Of crimson mist ; and softly, through the mist, Getting steadily on to the night.
Came a low, sweet, enchanting melody,
A far-off echo from the land of dreams,

The fisher droppeth his net in the stream, Which with delicious languor filled the air,

And a hundred streams are the same as one ; And steeped in bliss the senses and the soul.

And the maiden dreameth her love-lit dream, Then rose a shape, a dim and ghostly shape,

And what is it all, when all is done? Whereto no feature was, nor settled form,

The net of the fisher the burden breaks, A shadowy splendor, seeming as it came

And alway the dreaining the dreamer wakes. A pearly summer cloud, shot through and through

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD
With faintest rays of sunset ; yet within
A spirit dwelt ; and, floating from within,

A PSALM OF LIFE.
A murmur trembled sweetly into words : -
I am the ghost of a most lovely dream,

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Which haunted, in old days, a poet's mind.

Life is but an empty dream! And long he sought for, wept, and prayed for me ;

For the soul is dead that slumbers, And searched through all the chambers of his soul, And things are not what they seem. And searched the secret places of the earth,

Life is real ! Life is earnest ! The lonely forest and the lonely shore;

And the grave is not its goal ; And listened to the voices of the sea,

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
What time the stars shone out, and midnight cold

Was not spoken of the soul.
Slept on the dark waves whispering at his feet ;
And sought the inystery in a human form,

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Amid the haunts of men, and found it not ;

Is our destined end or way ; And looked in woman's fond, bewildering eyes, But to act, that each to-morrow and mirrored there his own, and saw no sign : Find us farther than to-day.