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. WHERE LIES THE LAND? WHERE lies the land to which the ship would go? And where the land she travels from? Away, On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face, On stormy nights when wild northwesters rave, Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past. Where lies the land to which the ship would go? And where the land she travels from? Away, ARTHUR H. CLOUGH. A PSALM OF LIFE TELL me not, in mournful numbers, 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, 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, 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, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Let us, then, be up and doing, 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 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough And after April, when May follows, And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, The buttercups, the little children's dower - Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! ROBERT BROWNING. |