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'Ah, once more,' I cried, 'ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew!

Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you!'

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,

In the rustling night air came the answer-
'Would'st thou be as they are? Live as they!

'Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,

These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll.
Why?-self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

'Bounded by themselves and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see.'

O air-born voice! long since, severely clear
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
'Resolve to be thyself! and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery !'

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

MORALITY.

E cannot kindle when we will

WE

The fire which in the heart resides,

The spirit bloweth and is still,

In mystery our soul abides,

But tasks in hours of insight willed
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.

With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat

Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return
All we have built do we discern.

Then, when the clouds are off the soul,
When thou dost bask in Nature's eye,
Ask how she viewed thy self-control,

Thy struggling tasked morality—
Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air,
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair.

And she, whose censure thou dost dread, Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, See, on her face a glow is spread,

A strong emotion on her cheek!

"Ah, child!' she cries, 'that strife divine— Whence was it, for it is not mine?

'There is no effort on my brow—
I do not strive, I do not weep;

I rush with the swift spheres, and glow
In joy, and, when I will, I sleep.
Yet that severe, that earnest air,
I saw, I felt it once-but where ?

'I knew not yet the gauge of time,
Nor wore the manacles of space;
I felt it in some other clime-

I saw it in some other place.

'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, And lay upon the breast of God.'

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

ALL SAINTS.

NE feast, of holy days the crest,

ONE

I, though no churchman, love to keep, All-Saints, the unknown good that rest

In God's still memory folded deep.

The bravely dumb that did their deed,
And scorned to blot it with a name,

Men of the plain heroic breed,

That loved Heaven's silence more than fame.

Such lived not in the past alone,

But thread to-day the unheeding street,

And stairs to Sin and Famine known

Sing with the welcome of their feet;

The den they enter grows a shrine,

The grimy sash an oriel burns,
Their cup of water warms like wine,
Their speech is filled from heavenly urns.

About their brows to me appears

An aureole traced in tenderest light,
The rainbow-gleam of smiles through tears
In dying eyes, by them made bright,
Of souls that shivered on the edge
Of that chill ford repassed no more,
And in their mercy felt the pledge
And sweetness of the farther shore.

JAMES RUSSELL Lowell.

GOOD LIFE, LONG LIFE.

T is not growing like a tree,

IT

In bulk, doth make men better be; Or standing long, an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May;

Although it fall and die that night,
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.

BEN JONSON.

I WILL ARISE.

HO, toiling on the weary round of life,

WHO,

But feels sometimes,—when all the way is dark,

And mists of sense and clouds of weariness

Close round him, and before him stretches out
Life's journey, an interminable moor,

And all the future like a barren road

Through the long waste of years,-lo, suddenly
The mists rise like a curtain, and he knows
The presence of the everlasting hills;

Height after height, peak after peak revealed;
The filmy downward cataract, the chill
Unearthly whiteness of untrodden snows;

And, somewhere in the space 'twixt them and heaven,
The eagle circling sunward! So his soul
Knows it must quit the smooth ignoble paths,
To tread on rugged heights, scale precipices,

Sway on the trembling bridge which spans the foam,
Creep where the thund'rous avalanche sweeps, the bolt
Shivers the patient rocks, feel the mad winds
Rush round him like a chaos. If he know
Something of new-born joy, yet is it dashed
With craven chills of fear; fain would he climb,
But looking upward dare not. Then, perchance,
Shines out athwart the gathered clouds of sense
The great sun's awful face; and lo! the snows
Which erewhile showed so cold, so deadly calm,
Redden with a blush of life; the light reveals,
High on the scarpèd cliffs, the giddy paths

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