FROM "MERCHANT OF VENICE."
THE quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath it is twice blessed,
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes :
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings:
But mercy is above this sceptered sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's, TIRED Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep, When mercy seasons justice.
He, like the world, his ready visits pays
Where fortune smiles: the wretched he forsakes,
And lights on lids unsullied by a tear.
COME, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low,
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;
O, make me in those civil wars to cease:
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed;
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see.
'Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say, But have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber when
"He giveth his beloved sleep."
O earth, so full of dreary noise!
O men, with wailing in your voice!
O delved gold the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And "giveth his beloved sleep."
His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap;
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
"He giveth his beloved sleep."
For me, my heart, that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on his love repose
Who "giveth his beloved sleep."
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
FROM "SECOND PART OF HENRY IV."
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafening clamors in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down ;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life
KING HENRY. How many thousand of my Is rounded with a sleep.
Are at this hour asleep!-O sleep! O gentle
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile,
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch
A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
YES! bear them to their rest; The rosy babe, tired with the glare of day, The prattler, fallen asleep e'en in his play; Clasp them to thy soft breast,
Bless them in dreams with a deep, hushed delight.
Yet must they wake again, Wake soon to all the bitterness of life, The pang of sorrow, the temptation strife, Aye to the conscience pain : O night!
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains Canst thou not take with them a longer flight?
On them a brother's grace of God's own bound- The bells are swinging,
Their little golden circlet in a flutter
With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter, Till all are ringing,
Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing; And with a lulling sound
The music floats around,
And drops like balm into the drowsy ear;
Commingling with the hum
Of the Sepoy's distant drum,
And lazy beetle ever droning near.
Sounds these of deepest silence born,
Like night made visible by morn;
Nor sin nor age nor pain their cherub beauty So silent that I sometimes start
To hear the throbbings of my heart,
And watch, with shivering sense of pain,
To see thy pale lids lift again.
The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes,
Peeps from the mortise in surprise
At such strange quiet after day's harsh din ; Then boldly ventures out,
And looks about,
And with his hollow feet
Treads his small evening beat,
Darting upon his prey
In such a tricky, winsome sort of way,
His delicate marauding seems no sin. And still the curtains swing,
The bells a melancholy murmur ring,
Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt, alone. Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,
And the bright-beaming stars
That through the casement shone.
PERCY BYsshe Shelley.
FROM "QUEEN MAB."
How wonderful is Death!
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When, throned on ocean's wave,
It blushes o'er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!
Hath then the gloomy Power
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchers
Seized on her sinless soul?
Must then that peerless form Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, those azure veins Which steal like streams along a field of snow, That lovely outline which is fair
As breathing marble, perish? Must putrefaction's breath Leave nothing of this heavenly sight But loathsomeness and ruin? Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it only a sweet slumber Stealing o'er sensation,
Which the breath of roseate morning
Chaseth into darkness?
Will Ianthe wake again,
And give that faithful bosom joy,
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life, and rapture from her smile?
Yes! she will wake again,
Although her glowing limbs are motionless,
And silent those sweet lips,
Once breathing eloquence
That might have soothed a tiger's rage,
Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.
Her dewy eyes are closed,
And on their lids, whose texture fine
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,
The baby Sleep is pillowed :
Her golden tresses shade
The bosom's stainless pride,
A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky;
I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees,
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away:
Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
OUR life is twofold; sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past, — they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power,
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not, what they
will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows. - - Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? What are they?
Creations of the mind? The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
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