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My day or night myself I make

Whene'er I sleep or play; And could I ever keep awake With me 't were always day.

With heavy sighs I often hear

You mourn my hapless woe; But sure with patience I can bear A loss I ne'er can know.

Then let not what I cannot have My cheer of mind destroy : Whilst thus I sing, I am a king, Although a poor blind boy.

COLLEY CIBBER.

THE RAINY DAY.

THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary ;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

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Good night! I'd say the griefs, the joys,
Just hinted in this mimic page,
The triumphs and defeats of boys,
Are but repeated in our age;
I'd say your woes were not less keen,
Your hopes more vain, than those of men,
Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen

At forty-five played o'er again.

I'd say we suffer and we strive

Not less nor more as men than boys, With grizzled beards at forty-five, As erst at twelve in corduroys; And if, in time of sacred youth,

We learned at home to love and pray, Pray Heaven that early love and truth May never wholly pass away.

And in the world, as in the school,

I'd say how fate may change and shift, The prize be sometimes with the fool,

The race not always to the swift:
The strong may yield, the good may fall,
The great man be a vulgar clown,
The knave be lifted over all,

The kind cast pitilessly down.

Who knows the inscrutable design?

Blessed be He who took and gave! Why should your mother, Charles, not mine, Be weeping at her darling's grave? We bow to Heaven that willed it so, That darkly rules the fate of all, That sends the respite or the blow, That's free to give or to recall.

This crowns his feast with wine and wit,
Who brought him to that mirth and state?
His betters, see, below him sit,

Or hunger hopeless at the gate.
Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel
To spurn the rags of Lazarus?
Come, brother, in that dust we 'll kneel,
Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.

So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed :
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance
And longing passion unfulfilled.
Amen! whatever fate be sent,

Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
Although the head with cares be bent,

And whitened with the winter snow.

Come wealth or want, come good or ill, Let young and old accept their part, And bow before the awful will,

And bear it with an honest heart.

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When sorrows come, they come not single spies, Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,

But in battalions.

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And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.

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WOLSEY. I have touched the highest point of Or wallow naked in December snow,

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