THOMAS CARLYLE
SCOTLAND, 1795-1881

To-Day

O here hath been dawning

So Another blue Day:

Think wilt thou let it
Slip useless away?

Out of Eternity

This new Day is born;
Into Eternity,

At night, will return.

Behold it aforetime
No eye ever did:

So soon it for ever
From all eyes is hid.

Here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think, wilt thou let it
Slip useless away?

This Mysterious Mankind

The mighty Thomas-who shook the nineteenth century with his protest and his prophecy-wrote only a few verses, and none of these were of a high order. Yet he was essentially a poet, a king-poet; and his prose pages are shot through with all the glowing fires of a lofty poetry. We get frequent inshinings of the lyric and the epic Muse in

his "French Revolution" and in his "Heroes and HeroWorship." No poet of any land or of any age has ever surpassed the high import in the marching thunders of this brief passage from his "Sartor Resartus." Ah, the power and the pathos of it all!

G

ENERATION after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry, one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science, one madly dashed to pieces on the rocks of Strife in war with his fellow:-and then the Heaven-sent is recalled, his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow.

Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane, haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in: the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence? O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little Life
Is rounded with a sleep."

THOM

THOMAS HOOD

ENGLAND, 1798-1845

HOMAS HOOD was born and died in London.

His life
was one of severe toil and much suffering, always
sustained, however, with manly resolution and cheerful
spirit. He wrote voluminously, both in verse and prose.
He was
a man of peculiar and original genius, which
manifested itself with equal power and ease in humor
and pathos.

His revolutionary Song of the Shirt appeared in Punch
a short time before Hood died, himself a victim of over-
work. It was written at a time when the attention of
benevolent English men and women had been awakened
to the inadequate wages paid to poor needlewomen, and
their consequent distress. Its timely appearance, as well
as its high literary merit, produced a great effect. It is
valuable as an expression of that deep and impassioned
sympathy with suffering, which was a leading trait in
Hood's nature. His few serious poems are instinct with
imagination and true pathos.

The Song of the Shirt

WITH

ITH fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread-
Stitch-stitch-stitch!

In poverty, hunger and dirt,

And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,
She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

Punit

Xmas

1843

Shop

"Work-work-work!

While the cock is crowing aloof! And work-work-work!

Till the stars shine through the roof! It's O, to be a slave

Along with the barbarous Turk,

Where woman has never a soul to save, If THIS is Christian work.

"Work-work-work!

Till the brain begins to swim;
Work-work-work!

Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam and gusset and band,
Band and gusset and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in my dream.

"O men with sisters dear!

O men with mothers and wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch-stitch-stich!

In poverty, hunger and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A SHROUD as well as a shirt!

"But why do I talk of death,
That phantom of grisly bone?
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own-
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fast I keep:

O God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work-work-work!

My labor never flags;

And what are its wages? A bed of straw.
A crust of bread-and rags:

A shattered roof-and this naked floor-
A table-a broken chair-

And a wall so blank my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!

"Work-work-work!

From weary chime to chime; Work-work-work!

As prisoners work for crime! Band and gusset and seam,

Seam and gusset and band,

Till the heart is sick and the brain benumbed, As well as the weary hand!

"Work-work-work!

In the dull December light;

And work-work-work!

When the weather is warm and bright;

While underneath the eaves

The brooding swallows cling,

As if to show me their sunny backs,
And twit me with the spring.

"O, but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,

With the sky above my head,

And the grass beneath my feet!