The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the grave, where sorrow is unknown;
No traveller ever reached that blest abode,
But found out thorns and briars on the road.
Oh sacred sorrow, by whom souls are tried,
Sent not to punish mortals, but to guide;
If thou art mine, (and who shall proudly dare
To tell his Maker he has had his share?)
Still let me feel for what thy pangs are sent,
And be my guide, and not my punishment.-Crabbe.
The sweetest flower in pleasure's path,
Will bloom on sorrow's grave.
For sorrow is the messenger between
The poet and men's bosoms:-Genius can
Fill with unsympathizing gods the scene,
But grief alone can teach us what is man.
Hear me! for I will speak, and build up all
My sorrow with my song, as yonder walls
Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed,
A cloud that gathered shape; for it may be
That while I speak of it, a little while
My heart may wander from its deeper woe.
A fairy shield your genius made,
And gave you on your natal day;
Your sorrow only sorrow's shade,
Keeps real sorrow far away.
He who has most of heart, knows most of sorrow.
You've seen the lightning's flash at night
Play brightly o'er a cloudy pile;
The moonshine tremble on the height,
When winter glances cold and bright;-
And like that flash, and like that light,
Is sorrow's vain and heartless smile.
ONE thinks the soul is air; another, fire;
Another, blood diffus'd about the heart;
Another saith the elements conspire,
And to her essence each doth give a part.
But, as the sharpest eye discerneth nought,
Except the sunbeam in the air do shine,
So the best soul with her reflecting thought,
Sees not herself without some light divine.
The soul of man, a native of the skies,
High-born and free, her freedom should maintain
Unsold, unmortgag'd for earth's little bribes.
Let earth dissolve-yon ponderous orb descend,
And grind us into dust-the soul is safe!
The man emerges-mounts above the wreck,
As towering flame from nature's funeral pyre!
Let fortune empty all her quiver in me,
I have a soul that, like an ample shield,
Can take in all, and verge enough for more.
The soul that desires not release from the clay,
Is no bird in a cage, but a corpse in the tomb.
Anware, from the Persian.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives,
But when the whole world turns to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
The soul on earth is an immortal guest,
Compelled to starve at an unreal feast:
A spark that upward tends by nature's force,
A stream diverted from its parent source;
A drop dissevered from the boundless sea,
A moment parted from eternity;
A pilgrim panting for a rest to come,
An exile anxious for his native home.
SOVEREIGNTY.
JOVE's own tree,
That holds the woods in awful sovereignty,
Requires a depth of lodging in the ground;
High as his topmost boughs to heaven ascend,
So low his roots to hell's dominions tend. Dryden.
A sovereign's great example forms a people;
The public breast is noble, or is vile,
As he inspires it.
I HATE those potent madmen who keep all
Mankind awake while they, by their great deeds,
Are drumming hard upon this hollow world,
Only to make a sound to last for ages.
Well-sounding verses are the charms we use,
Heroic thoughts and virtue to infuse:
Things of deep sense we may in prose unfold,
But they move more in lofty numbers told.
By the loud trumpet which our courage aids,
We learn that sound, as well as sense, persuades.
SOURCE.
OF himself is none;
But that eternal Infinite, and One,
Who never did begin, and ne'er can end,
On him all beings as their source depend.-Dryden.
But were not nature still endow'd at large
With all which life requires, though unadorn'd
With such enchantment? Wherefore then her form
So exquisitely fair? her breath perfum'd
With such etherial sweetness? whence her voice
Inform'd at will to raise or to depress
The impassioned soul? whence the robes of light
Which thus invest her with more lovely pomp
Than fancy can describe? whence but from Thee,
O Source Divine of overflowing love? Akenside.
THE ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,
With bold fantastic spectres to rejoice.
A horrid spectre rises to my sight,
Close by my side, and plain and palpable,
In all good seeming and close circumstance,
As man meets man.
SPECTACLE-SPECTATOR.
FORTH riding underneath the castle wall,
A dunghill of dead carcasses he spied,
The dreadful spectacle of that sad house of pride.
AVAUNT! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes,
Which thou dost glare with!
They who have, or who have not, whom their great
Throne and set high! servants
Which are to France the spies and speculations,
Intelligent of our state.
Thenceforth to speculations high and deep
I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind
Considered all things visible.
Sweet words, like dropping honey, she did shed;
And 'twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake
A silver sound that heavenly music seemed to make.
Spenser.
The air, a chartered libertine, is still,
And mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his voice and honied sentences.-Shakspere.
When the fowler blows his whistle,
To ensnare the birds with his mimic cry,
The bird hears, as it were, the song of his companion,
And flies down from the air and enters the net;
So, too, the dervishes, by their human speech, catch men,
That they may call them by that spell to salvation.
Jelaleddin, from the Persian.
Speech is the vestibule of the palace of love;
Speech is the new wine of the garden of love;
There is no work for the intellect like speech;
There is no memorial in the world like speech;
All that is born in the world, whether old or new,
The wise man saith, is born of speech.
Sweet as the syren's tongue those accents fall,
Speech is the golden harvest that followeth the flowering of thought;
Yet oftentimes runneth it to husk, and the grains be withered and scanty:
Speech is reason's brother, and a kindly prerogative
That likeneth him to his Maker, who spake and it was done:
Spirit may mingle with spirit, but sense requireth a symbol;
And speech is the body of a thought, without which Martin F. Tupper.
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