power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.

12. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone: there is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles The battle is not to the strong alone: it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

for us.

13. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission or slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! and let it come! I repeat it, sir:

The war is inevitable, Let it come!

14. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry "Peace! peace!" but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?

15. What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Patrick Henry.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. From the speech delivered in March, 1775, in the second Virginia Convention, in support of the resolution “that the colony be immediately put in a state of defense."

II. Sŏl'-açe, ae-eu-mu-lā'-tion, ree-on-çil-i-ã'-tion, in-vin'-çi-ble.

III. Be used in predication has many forms to express its distinctions of time, number, and person: am, art, is, are, was, wast, were, wert, been, be, and being-eleven in all. Tell how each word is used, and what it predicates (e. g., am predicates of I, or the person speaking, in present time; art predicates of thou, in present time, etc.).

IV. Illusions, siren, prostrated, supplicated, inviolate, effectual, supinely, extenuate, arduous.

V. "Having eyes, see not," etc. (quotation from Scripture: Jeremiah v. 21 and Ezekiel xii. 2). "British ministry" (in England the ministers of the king are always held responsible for the measures of the king) corresponds to the American "Cabinet." "And who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us"-did this prophecy prove true? What friends helped? "Our brethren are already in the field" (refers to a Committee of Safety appointed by the Massachusetts Assembly, February 9, 1775, to muster the "minutemen " and militia).

CXXXVI. THE SKYLARK.

1. Hail to thee, blithe spirit-
Bird thou never wert-
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art!

2. Higher still, and higher,

From the earth thou springest,

Like a cloud of fire:

The blue deep thou wingest,

And, singing still, dost soar, and soaring, ever singest.

3. In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run,

Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun.

4. The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven

In the broad daylight,

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

5. All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

6. What thou art, we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

7. Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

8. Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt—

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

9. What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?

10. We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

11. Yet if we could scorn

Hate and pride and fear,

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

12. Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

13. Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. Stanzas 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, and 17 of the original poem are omitted in this piece. What nation's poets have the most to say of the skylark ?—of the nightingale? Has America any song bird that is a favorite with the poets?

II. Blithe, un-pre-mĕd'-i-tāt-ed, měl'-o-dy, wrought (rawt), fraught (frawt), tri-um'-phal.

III. "Purple even" (4)—even is a contraction for what? Mark the feet and accented syllables of each line in this piece, and note the marvelous descriptive effect of its rhythm in expressing the shades of thought and feeling (e. g., the change of accent in the last line, which is of double length, and adds a different poetic tone to the rest. The feet accented on the first

syllable express the bird's pulsing flight through the air; but the feet ac. cented on the last syllable express his continued ascent). (See XCVIII.) IV. Blithe, profuse, melody, chant, vaunt, harmonious.

V. "Wert" (1) rhymes with "heart." (In England, the tendency is to pronounce er just as we pronounce ar: clerk is pronounced like clark; sergeant like sargeant, even with us.) "That from heaven, or near it "—is the alternative, "or near it," poetical, or the reverse? (The hyperbole of "from heaven" is burlesqued by the addition; it is as though one should say, "The wild waves roll in billows as high as the sky, or within a few feet of it.") "Higher still, and higher," does not continue the first stanza, but describes the first ascent of the lark. "Sunken sun" is generally used to mean the sun that has set; here it may mean the sun not yet risen, and "o'er which clouds are brightening." "Float and run "-is run "a good word to describe the flight of a bird? Note the beautiful simile in the 5th stanza; it suggests the simile of Homer in the 8th book of the "Iliad" (Tennyson's translation):

"As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars

Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart."

Note the contrast of art and like (i. e., of being and seeming) in 6th stanza. Stanza 7 is the climax of the similes, and is really an inverted simile, for it is rather the rhapsody of the lark that illustrates the poetic inspiration than the contrary. Ordinarily and properly the hidden and spiritual should be illustrated by the visible and material; the light of thought, the inspiration of the poet, could be illustrated through the simile that compared it with the song of a lark; but Shelley attempts to illustrate the lark song by comparing it with the inspiration of a poet--i. e., compares what is audible with what is inaudible, and not a sensuous fact at all. "I know not how thy joy," etc. (11)-(i. e., if we had no "saddest thought" we could not appreciate our sweetest songs"; the lark's sweetness tells of grief overcome)

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CXXXVII. FOSSIL POETRY.

1. Language is fossil poetry; in other words, we are not to look for the poetry which a people may possess only in its poems, traditions, and beliefs. Many a single word also is a concentrated poem, having stores of poet