Who's in or out, who moves the grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity, nor spleen;

Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet-show;
Let but the puppets move, I've my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master wire,

What constitutes a state?

Churchill.

Not high rais'd battlements, or labor'd mound,
Thick wall, or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd;
Not bays and broad arm'd ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Nor starr'd and spangled courts,

Where low-brow'd baseness wafts perfumes to pride-
No! men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endu'd,
In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;
Men who their duties know,

But know their rights; and knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chainThese constitute a state.

Sir William Jones.

STATESMAN.

A STATESMAN, that can side with every faction,
And yet most subtly can entwist himself,

When he hath wrought the business up to danger.

Shirley.

Thus the court wheel goes round, like fortune's ball; One statesman rising on another's fall. R. Brome.

THE saying that the world must end in smoke
Seems true in these last days of steam and coke,
When the loud engine, on the iron rails,
O'er ancient ties and sympathies prevails.
Homeless, and counting love of home a dream,
From land to land we pass in clouds of steam,
For ever on the same dull, level ground,

With universal sameness all around.

Gostick, from the German of Ludwig I., King of
Bavaria.

Lay down your rails, ye nations near and far—
Yoke you full trains to Steam's triumphal car;
Link town to town; unite in iron bands
The long-estranged and oft-embattled lands.
Peace, mild-eyed seraph-knowledge, light divine,
Shall send their messengers by every line.
Men, join'd in amity, shall wonder long

That Hate had power to lead their fathers wrong;
Or that false Glory lured their hearts astray,
And made it virtuous and sublime to slay.-Mackay.

Blessings on Science, and her handmaid Steam!
They make Utopia only half a dream;

And show the fervour of capacious souls,

Who watch the ball of progress as it rolls:

That all as yet completed, as begun,

Is but the dawning that precedes the sun.-Mackay.

STING.

As some wayfaring man passing a wood,
Whose waving top hath long a seamark stood,
Goes jogging on, and in his mind nought hath,
But how the primrose finely strews the path,
And sweetest violets lay down their heads
At some tree's root on mossy feather beds,
Until his heel receives an adder's sting,
Whereat he starts, and back his head doth fling.
William Browne.

STORM. STORY.

STORM.

AND either tropic now

607

'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven: the clouds, From many a horrid rift, abortive poured

Fierce rain with lightning mixt, water with fire,
In rain reconciled: nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vex'd wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks,
Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God! yet only stood'st
Unshaken! nor yet stayed the terror there:
Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round [shrieked,
Environed thee: some howled, some yelled, some
Some bent at thee their fiery darts; while thou
Sat'st unappalled in calm and sinless peace.-Milton.

It is a storm-when the hot blood
Outvies in rage the boiling flood,
And each loose passion of the mind
Is like a furious gust of wind,

Which beats his bark with many a wave,

Till he casts anchor in the grave.-Dr. Henry King.

STORY.

THEIR copious stories, oftentimes begun,
End without audience and are never done.

Shakspere.

A story should, to please, at least seem true,
Be apropos, well told, concise, and new:
And whensoe'er it deviates from these rules
The wise will sleep and leave applause to fools.

Trust not to each accusing tougue,
As most weak persons do,

But still believe that story wrong,
That ought not to be true.

Stillingfleet.

Sheridan.

608

STRANGE. STREAM.

STRANGE.

MEN say the times are strange; 't is true;
'Cause many strange things hap to be;
Let it not then seem strange to you
That here one strange thing more you see.
Thomas Mace.

I stood upon that height, in summer time,
When years had rolled o'er childhood's happy hour,
The smiling fields, enriched with fragrant thyme,
And cowslips' bell, were lovely as of yore;
But not to me flew open wide the door;
A stranger held the sway, in other hands
Had passed the right: I was unknown,-no more.
It seemeth strange, time could dissolve such bands,
And make me feel so lone in once my father's lands.
Stuart Farquharson.

STREAM.

THE current that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so by many winding nooks he strays,
With willing sport, to the wild ocean.
Then let me go, and hinder not my course;
I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,
And make a pastime of each weary step,
Till the last step have brought me to my rest.
Shakspere.

Oh! who has not hung in a fanciful dream
O'er the prospect of Heaven in a smooth gliding stream,
And between the deep clouds that float over its breast
Seem to catch a bright glimpse of the realms of the blest;
View the fountains of light that eternally shine,
And hear angel-harps sing with music divine,
Till he turn'd with a sigh from earth's turbulent scene
And panted to soar through the azure serene?
Arthur Brook.

STRENGTH. STRIFE. STROKE.

STRENGTH.

609

WHAT is strength, without a double share

Of wisdom? Vast, unwieldy, burthensome,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall

By weakest subtleties; strength's not made to rule,
But to subserve, where wisdom bears command.

Milton.

She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew-
As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,
As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,
And kept her heart serene within its zone.
There was awe in the homage which she drew,
Her spirit seem'd as seated on a throne
Apart from the surrounding world, and strong
In its own strength-most strange in one so young.

Byron.

STRIFE.

O! WHO can lead, then, a more happy life,
Than he, that, with clean mind and heart sincere,
No greedy riches knows, nor bloody strife.-Spenser.

How beautifully sad the dubious strife

Twixt pride and feeling! like a rainbow hung
In smiles o'er clouds with gloomy grandeur rife,
As they in rain upon the earth are flung.

T. L. Merritt.

STROKE.

FOR Hercules himself must yield to odds;
And many strokes, though with a little axe,
Hew down, and fell the hardest timber'd oak.

Shakspere.

Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike;
One does not stroke me nor the other strike.

Jonson.

His white-maned steeds, that bowed beneath the yoke, He cheered to courage with a gentle stroke.

Dryden.