He builded better than he knew;
The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know'st thou what wove yon
wood bird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids,
To gaze upon the Pyramids ;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere,
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast Soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise,
The Book itself before me lies,
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
His words are music in my ear,

I see his cowled portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

For which we bear to live or dare to die,
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise.
Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair opening to some court's propitious shine,
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reaped in iron harvests of the field?
Where grows?- where grows it not? If vain
our toil,

We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere ;
"T is nowhere to be found, or everywhere:
'T is never to be bought, but always free,
And, fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with
thee.

Ask of the learned the way? The learned are

Take Nature's path, and mad Opinion's leave; All states can reach it, and all heads conceive; Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell; There needs but thinking right, and meaning well; And, mourn our various portions as we please, Equal is common sense and common ease.

ALEXANDER POPE.

A HAPPY LIFE.

How happy is he born and taught That serveth not another's will; Whose armor is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Not tied unto the world with care

Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise,
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who hath his life from rumors freed;

Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make accusers great;

Who God doth late and early pray

More of his grace than gifts to lend, And entertains the harmless day

With a well-chosen book or friend,

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And, having nothing, yet hath all.

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

THE HERMIT.

AT the close of the day, when the hamlet is still,
And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove,
When naught but the torrent is heard on the hill,
And naught but the nightingale's song in the grove,
'T was thus, by the cave of the mountain afar,
While his harp rung symphonious, a hermit began;
No more with himself or with nature at war,
He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man:

"Ah! why, all abandoned to darkness and woe,
Why, lone Philomela, that languishing fall?
For spring shall return, and a lover bestow,
And sorrow no longer thy bosom inthrall.

| But, if pity inspire thee, renew the sad lay, Mourn, sweetest complainer, man calls thee to

mourn!

O, soothe him whose pleasures like thine pass away! Full quickly they pass, but they never return.

"Now, gliding remote on the verge of the sky, The moon, half extinguished, her crescent displays;

But lately I marked when majestic on high
She shone, and the planets were lost in her blaze.
Roll on, thou fair orb, and with gladness pursue
The path that conducts thee to splendor again!
But man's faded glory what change shall renew?
Ah, fool! to exult in a glory so vain!

Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride; From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free.'

"And darkness and doubt are now flying away;
No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn.
So breaks on the traveler, faint and astray,
The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn.
See truth, love, and mercy in triumph descending,
And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom!
On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are
blending,

'And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb."

JAMES BEATTIE.

THE RETIREMENT. FAREWELL, thou busy world, and may We never meet again; Here I can eat and sleep and pray, And do more good in one short day Than he who his whole age outwears Upon the most conspicuous theaters, Where naught but vanity and vice appears.