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Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake

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Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river;

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots:
I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows;

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HAIL, HOLY LIGHT.

SAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam,

May I express thee unblamed? since God is
light,

And never but in unapproachéd light
Dwelt from eternity-dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun,
Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless Infinite!

For wonderful indeed are all his works.
Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all
Had in remembrance always with delight!
But what created mind can comprehend
Their number, or the wisdom infinite
That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep?
I saw when, at his word, the formless mass,
This world's material mould, came to a heap:
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar
Stood ruled, stood vast Infinitude confined;
Till, at his second bidding, darkness fled,
Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
JOHN MILTON.

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Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch

A broader, browner shade, Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'ercanopies the glade,

Beside some water's rushy brink

With me the Muse shall sit, and think

(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardor of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of care;

The panting herds repose:

Yet hark, how through the peopled air

The busy murmur glows!

The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honeyed spring

In Fortune's varying colors drest: :
Brushed by the hand of rough mischance
Or chilled by age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear in accents low
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display;
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone,-
We frolic while 't is May.

THOMAS GRAY.

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A WINTER MORNING.

IS morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tingeing all with his own rosy hue,
From every herb and every spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance
I view the muscular proportioned limb
Transformed to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,
As they designed to mock me, at my side
Take step for step; and, as I near approach

The cottage, walk along the plastered wall,
Preposterous sight! the legs without the man.
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad,
And, fledged with icy feathers, not superb.
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not, like hungering man,
Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load,
Deep plunging, and again deep plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass;
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,

With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned
The cheerful haunts of men -- to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary task.

Shaggy and lean and shrewd with pointed ears,
And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk
Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy.

*

Now from the roost, or from the neighboring pale,
Where, diligent to catch the first faint gleam
Of smiling day, they gossiped side by side,
Come trooping at the housewife's well-known call
The feathered tribes domestic. Half on wing
And half on foot, they brush the fleecy flood,
Conscious and fearful of too deep a plunge.
The sparrows peep, and quit the sheltering eaves
To seize the fair occasion. Well they eye
The scattered grain, and, thievishly resolved
To escape the impending famine, often scared
As oft return, a pert voracious kind.
Clean riddance quickly made, one only care
Remains to each, the search of sunny nook,
Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned
To sad necessity, the cock foregoes

His wonted strut, and, wading at their head
With well-considered steps, seems to resent

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WINTRY WEATHER.

INTER, wilt thou never, never go?

O Summer, but I weary for thy coming,

Longing once more to hear the Luggie flow,
And frugal bees, laboriously humming.
Now the east wind diseases the infirm,

And I must crouch in corners from rough weather;
Sometimes a winter sunset is a charm

When the fired clouds, compacted, blaze together,
And the large sun dips red behind the hills.
I, from my window, can behold this pleasure;
And the eternal moon, what time she fills
Her orb with argent, treading a soft measure,
With queenly motions of a bridal mood,
Through the white spaces of infinitude.

DAVID GRAY.

THE key of Nature is laid at man's feet, because he is its divinely-constituted Sovereign.

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