HEAVEN.- From Festus. Is heaven a place where pearly streams Glide over silver sand? Like childhood's rosy, dazzling dreams Of some far fairy land? Is heaven a clime where diamond dews Ah no; not such, not such is heaven! Such cannot be the guerdon given For saints and sinners here below, There shall we dwell with Sire and Son, And with the Mother-maid, And with the Holy Spirit, one, In glory like arrayed; And not to one created thing But all our joy shall be in God, ARNOLD WINKELRIED. - Montgomery. “MAKE way for liberty!" he cried; Made way for liberty, and died! It must not be; this day, this hour, And felt as though himself were he Behold him, Arnold Winkelried! There sounds not to the trump of fame Unmarked he stood amid the throng, Till you might see, with sudden grace, And, by the uplifting of his brow, He bowed amongst them like a tree, Swift to the breach his comrades fly : Thus Switzerland again was free; ON MYSELF. - Cowley. THIS only grant me, that my means may Too low for envy, for contempt too high. Some honor I would have, Not from great deeds, but good alone; lie Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends Not on the number, but the choice, of friends. Books should, not business, entertain the light, Than palace; and should fitting be My garden painted o'er With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine field. Thus would I double my life's fading space; These unbought sports, this happy state, To-morrow let my sun his beams display, THE GRASSHOPPER. - Tennyson. VOICE of the summer wind, No Tithon thou, as poets feign, (Shame fall 'em, they are deaf and blind,) Clap thy shielded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet. Thou art a mailed warrior, in youth and strength complete. * Among the many this one. The beauty of Tithonus, son of a king of Troy, gained for him the affection of one of the goddesses. He begged her, as a favor, to make him immortal, and his request was granted. But, as he had forgotten to ask to retain the vigor and beauty of youth, beautiful fables of the ancient Greeks was portable to him, he begged the goddess to remove him from the world. As he could not die, she changed him into a grasshopper. Armed cap-a-pie, "Sans peur et sans reproche," * Merry grasshopper, Thou art so glad and free, And as light as air; Thou hast no sorrow or tears, But a short youth, sunny and free. Soon thy joy is over. A summer of loud song, And slumbers in the clover, That brush thee with their silken tresses? Shooting, singing, ever springing In and out the emerald glooms; Lighting on the golden blooms? *Without fear and without reproach; an epithet applied to Bayard, a French knight distinguished for his courage and his integrity. He died in 1524. |