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The following, unlike most songs of the present day, contains a useful moral.

TO DAY.

THE joys of hope let others boast,

And in reversion rest;
Anticipation cheers them most,
Be mine the bliss possest.

What scenes tomorrow may be brought,
How prosperous, or how gay,

Will ne'er engage one wishful thought,
If happy prove to day.

The merchant trades to foreign lands,
And braves the billowy main;

And buys, and sells, and schemes, and plans,
In hopes of future gain.

But whelming waves, or wasting fire

May take his wealth away;
Uncertain good I ne'er desire,
Let me be rich to day.

The student, emulous of fame,
Pursues the distant prize;

Be mine e'en now an honored name,
Acknowledged by the wise.

The lover too dreams of delight,

His fondness to repay;

But ne'er let me the attachment slight,
That crowns my love to day.

And others life incautious spend
In wishes to reform;

Tomorrow to be good intend,
But think not to perform.
A better purpose shall be mine,

For danger waits delay;

And Heaven will on tomorrow shine,

If virtuous prove to day.

SELECTED.

AN ODE IN IMITATION OF ALCEUS.

Ascribed to Sir William Jones.

Οὐ λίθοι ἐδὲ ξύλα, ἐδὲ

Τέχνη τεκλόνων αἱ πόλεις εἰσὶν,

Ἀλλ' όπέ ποτ ̓ ἂν ὦσιν ̓́ΑΝΔΡΕΣ

Αὐτὲς σώζειν ειδότες,

Ελαῦθα τέχη καὶ πόλεις.

WHAT

ALC. quoted by ARISTIDES.

HAT constitutes a state;

Not highraised battlements, or labored mound,

Thick wall, or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broadarmed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,

Where lowbrowed baseness wafts perfume to pride;
No; MEN, highminded MEN,

With powers as far above dull brutes, endued
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 longaimed blow,

And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain;
These constitute a state,

And sovereign LAW, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate

Sits Empress, crowning good, repressing ill;
Smit by her sacred frown,

The fiend, discretion, like a vapor, sinks,
And e'en the alldazzling crown

Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.
Such was this heavenloved isle,

Than Lesbos fairer and the Cretan shore !
No more shall freedom smile?

Shall Britons languish, and be MEN no more?
Since all must life resign,

Those sweet rewards, which decorate the brave,
'Tis folly to decline,

And steal inglorious to the silent grave.

THE following extract from a humorous poem of Marvell, though destitute of the vigor of Dryden and the melody of Pope, may be an amusing accompaniment to the quaint paragraphs of Owen Feltham.

HOLLAND, that scarce deserves the name of land,

As but the offscouring of the British sand;
And so much earth, as was contributed

By English pilots, when they heaved the lead 9

Or what by the ocean's slow allusion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle shell
This indigested vomit of the sea

Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.

Glad then, as miners, who have found the ore,
They with mad labor fished the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergreese;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay
Less, than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills, which sordid beetles roll,
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed,
And oft at leapfrog o'er their steeples played ;
As if on purpose it on land had come

To show them what's their mare liberum.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level coyl.
The fish oft times the burgher dispossessed,
And sat; not as a meat, but as a guest ;
And oft the Tritons and the Sea nymphs saw
Whole shoals of Dutch carved up for Cabillau ;
Or, as they over the new level ranged

For pickled herring pickled heerin changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake.
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings.
For, as with pigmies, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he, that treasures grain,
Among the blind the oneeyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he, that drains.
Not who first sees the rising sun commands ;
But who could first discern the rising lands.
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their Lord and Country's father speak.

To make a bank was a great plot of state,
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

Hence some small dykegrave, unperceived, invades
The power, and grows, as it were, a king of spades;
But, for less envy some joined state endures,
Who look like a commission of the sewers;
For those Half-Anders, half wet and half dry
Nor bear strict service, nor free liberty.
Sure when religion did itself embark,
And from the east would westward steer its ark,
It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground,
Each one thence pillaged the first piece, he found.
Hence Amsterdam, Turk, Christian, Pagan, Jew,
Staple of sects, and mint of schism grew ;

That bank of conscience, where not one so strange
Opinion but finds credit and exchange.

In vain for Catholics ourselves we bear;
The universal church is only there.

Nor can civility there want for tillage,

Where wisely for their Court they chose a village.

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