AD MATREM

The child, the seed, the grain of corn,
The acorn on the hill,

Each for some separate end is born

In season fit, and still

Each must in strength arise to work the almighty will.

So from the hearth the children flee,

By that almighty hand

Austerely led; so one by sea

Goes forth, and one by land;

Nor aught of all man's sons escapes from that command.

So from the sally each obeys
The unseen almighty nod;

So till the ending all their ways

Blindfolded loth have trod;

Nor knew their task at all, but were the tools of God.

And as the fervent smith of yore

Beat out the glowing blade,

Nor wielded in the front of war

The weapons that he made,

But in the tower at home still plied his ringing trade ;

So like a sword the son shall roam

On nobler missions sent;

And as the smith remained at home

In peaceful turret pent,

So sits the while at home the mother well content.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Life is Struggle

'O wear out heart, and nerves, and brain,

To

And give oneself a world of pain;
Be eager, angry, fierce, and hot,
Imperious, supple-God knows what,
For what's all one to have or not;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
For 'tis not joy, it is not gain,
It is not in itself a bliss,
Only it is precisely this

That keeps us all alive.

To say we truly feel the pain,

And quite are sinking with the strain ;-
Entirely, simply, undeceived,

Believe, and say we ne'er believed
The object, e'en were it achieved,
A thing we e'er had cared to keep ;
With heart and soul to hold it cheap,
And then to go and try it again;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
O, 'tis not joy, and 'tis not bliss,
Only it is precisely this

That keeps us still alive.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

YOUTH AND MANHOOD

Early Death and Fame

FOR him who must see many years,
I praise the life which slips away
Out of the light and mutely; which avoids
Fame, and her less fair followers, envy, strife,
Stupid detraction, jealousy, cabal,
Insincere praises; which descends

The quiet mossy track to age.

But, when immature death
Beckons too early the guest
From the half-tried banquet of life,
Young, in the bloom of his days;
Leaves no leisure to press,
Slow and surely, the sweets
Of a tranquil life in the shade;
Fuller for him be the hours!
Give him emotion, though pain!

Let him live, let him feel: I have lived!
Heap up his moments with life,

Triple his pulses with fame!

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Will

WELL for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long:

He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong:

For him nor moves the loud world's random mock,
Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock,

That, compass'd round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned.

But ill for him who, bettering not with time,
Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will,
And ever weaker grows through acted crime,
Or seeming-genial venial fault,

Recurring and suggesting still!

He seems as one whose footsteps halt,
Toiling in immeasurable sand,

And o'er a weary sultry land,

Far beneath a blazing vault,

Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill,
The city sparkles like a grain of salt.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

YOUTH AND MANHOOD

The Portrait

WITH swift, bold strokes the portrait grows

Most swiftly at its birth;

And soon the outlined forms disclose
Its meaning and its worth.

For chiefly in his first designs

The artist's skill is shown;
Though blending hues and finer lines
Add beauty, force, and tone.

So youth with rapid pencil draws
A life, for good or ill,

And forms its habits and its laws,

The bias of its will.

With changing tints the canvas glows—
Life's fervours soon are past;
But lines most lightly drawn are those
Which often longest last.

We cannot turn the blotted page

Or cleanse the tainted source:
Youth sows the seed; we reap in Age

Its honour or remorse.

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY.