Second Voice.

How lovely, how sweet the repose of the tomb!
No tempests are there; but the nightingales come,
And sing their sweet chorus of bliss.

First Voice.

The ravens of night flap their wings o'er the grave;
'Tis the vulture's abode; 't is the wolf's dreary cave,
Where they tear up the dead with their fangs.
Second Voice.

There the *cony, at evening, *disports with his love,
Or rests on the sod; while the turtles above

There darkness and dampness, with poisonous breath,
And loathsome decay, fill the dwelling of death;
The trees are all barren and bare.

Second Voice.

O! soft are the breezes that play round the tomb,
And sweet, with the violets' wafted perfume,
With lilies and jessamine fair.

First Voice.

The pilgrim, who reaches this valley of tears,
Would fain hurry by; and, with trembling and fears,
He is launched on the wreck-covered river.

Second Voice.

Here the traveler, worn with life's pilgrimage dreary,
Lays down his rude staff, like one that is weary,
And sweetly reposes forever.

LXXXIII.-WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
FROM ADDISON.

JOSEPH ADDISON, an English author, was born in 1672. He contributed largely to the Tatler, a periodical paper, and was also the chief writer of the Spectator. His writings afford the best models of style in our language. He died in 1719.

1. WHEN I am in a serious humor, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey, where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity

of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed the whole afternoon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another; the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of *satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born, and that they died.

2. Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave, and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull, intermixed with a kind of fresh, moldering earth, that, sometime or other, had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself, what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and *prebendaries, were crumbled among one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.

3. After having thus surveyed this magazine of mortality, as it were in the lump, I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments, which are raised in every quarter of that ancient *fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant *epitaphs, that if it were posssible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew, and, by that means, are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed, indeed, that the present war had

filled the church with many of those uninhabited *monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons, whose bodies were, perhaps, buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean.

4. I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imaginations; but, for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can, therefore, take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means, I can improve myself with those objects, which others consider with terror.

5. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for them, whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who +deposed them, when I see rival wits lying side by side, or holy men that divided the world by their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little *competitions, *factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, some, six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be cotemporaries, and make our appearance together.

LXXXIV.-ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD.
FROM GRAY.

THOMAS GRAY, an English poet, was born 1716, and was educated & Cambridge. The Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard, is the most celebrated and popular of his poems. He died in 1771.

1. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

2. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

3. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,

The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

4. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mold'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

5. The breezy call of +incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twitt' ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 6. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care;

Nor children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

7. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn +glebe has broke:
How tjocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke.

8. Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.
9. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike, th' inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

10. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,

If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

11. Can storied urn, or animated bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

12. Perhaps, in this neglected spot, is laid

Some heart once pregnant with *celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to tecstasy the living lyre:

13. But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury repressed their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

14. Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

15. Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

16. Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

17. Their lot forbade: nor, circumscribed alone

Their glowing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

18. The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of tingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride,

With tincense kindled at the Muse's flame.

19. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool, *sequestered vale of life,

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

20. Yet e'en these bones, from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still, erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

21. Their names, their years, spelled by the unlettered muse, The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she'strews,
Teaching the rustic moralist to die.