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They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed

Where the long grasses stifle the water within the

stream's bed;

And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows

star

Into eve, and the blue far above us, so blue and so

far!

-Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland will each leave his mate

To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate

Till for boldness they fight one another: and then, what has weight

To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand

house

There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse!

God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,

To give sign, we and they are his children, one family

here.

From "Saul" - ROBERT BROWNING.

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WHERE LIES THE LAND?

WHERE lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face,
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;
Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below
The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild northwesters rave,
How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!
The dripping sailor on the reeling mast

Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

ARTHUR H. CLOUGH.

A PSALM OF LIFE

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! -
For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest !

And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, -act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD

Он, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England
now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops -at the bent spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower

- Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ROBERT BROWNING.

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