TIME.

FROM "NIGHT THOUGHTS."

But from its loss.

THE bell strikes one: we take no note of time, To give it, then, a tongue, Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, It is the knell of my departed hours: Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. It is the signal that demands despatch; How much is to be done! my hopes and fears Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge Look down on what? a fathomless abyss; A dread eternity; how surely mine! And can eternity belong to me,

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

Time the supreme! - Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all eternity can give ;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adored.

Ah! how unjust to Nature and himself,
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure Nature for a span too short:
That span too short, we tax as tedious too;
Torture invention, all expedients tire,
To lash the lingering moments into speed,
And whirl us (happy riddance !) from ourselves.
Art, brainless Art! our furious charioteer,
(For Nature's voice, unstifled, would recall,)
Drives headlong towards the precipice of death!
Death, most our dread; death, thus more dread-

ful made:

O, what a riddle of absurdity!
Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels:
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse: like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, Thought. As Atlas groaned
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement :
The next amusement mortgages our fields;
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful Time if prisons set us free.
Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turned.
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age;
Behold him when past by; what then is seen
But his broad pinions, swifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast, cry out on his career.

Ye well arrayed! ye lilies of our land!

Ye lilies male! who neither toil nor spin,
(As sister-lilies might) if not so wise
As Solomon, more sumptuous to the sight!
Ye delicate who nothing can support,
Yourselves most insupportable! for whom
The winter rose must blow, the sun put on
A brighter beam in Leo; silky-soft
Favonius, breathe still softer, or be chid;
And other worlds send odors, sauce, and song,
And robes, and notions, framed in foreign looms!
O ye Lorenzos of our age! who deem
One moment unamused a misery
Not made for feeble man! who call aloud
For every bawble drivelled o'er by sense;
For rattles, and conceits of every cast,
For change of follies and relays of joy,
To drag you patient through the tedious length
Of a short winter's day, say, sages! say,
Wit's oracles! say, dreamers of gay dreams!
How will you weather an eternal night,
Where such expedients fail?

TO-MORROW.

FROM "IRENE."

EDWARD YOUNG.

TO-MORROW'S action! can that hoary wisdom,
Borne down with years, still doat upon to-morrow!
The fatal mistress of the young, the lazy,
The coward and the fool, condemned to lose
An useless life in waiting for to-morrow,
To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow,
Till interposing death destroys the prospect.
Strange that this general fraud from day to day
Should fill the world with wretches, undetected!
The soldier, laboring through a winter's march,
Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph;
Still to the lover's long-expecting arms
To-morrow brings the visionary bride.
But thou, too old to bear another cheat,
Learn that the present hour alone is man's.
SAMUEL JOHNSON,

CHRISTMAS HYMN.

FROM THE ODE "ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY."

No war or battle's sound

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high uphung; The hooked chariot stood

Unstained with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was

by.

To rest upon his mountain crag, but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind

'T is a time For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim, Whose tones are like the wizard's voice of Time Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful

And holy visions that have passed away,

And left no shadow of their loveliness

On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts
The coffin-lid of Hope and Joy and Love,
And bending mournfully above the pale,

Revolutions sweep

O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles
Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and
bow

Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise,

Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations; and the very stars,

THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.

FULL knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.

Old year, you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year, you shall not die.

He lieth still he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.

He hath no other life above.

He gave me a friend, and a true true-love, And the New-year will take 'em away.

Old year,' you must not go;

So long as you have been with us,
Such joy as you have seen with us,
Old year, you shall not go.

He frothed his bumpers to the brim ;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But, though his eyes are waxing dim,
And though his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.

Old year, you shall not die ;

We did so laugh and cry with you,
I've half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you must die.

He was full of joke and jest,

But all his merry quips are o'er.

To see him die, across the waste

His son and heir doth ride post-haste,

But he 'll be dead before.

Every one for his own.

The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the New-year, blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.

How hard he breathes! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.

The shadows flicker to and fro :

The cricket chirps: the light burns low : 'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.

Shake hands before you die.

Old year, we'll dearly rue for you :
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die.

His face is growing sharp and thin. Alack! our friend is gone.

Close up his eyes tie up his chin: Step from the corpse, and let him in That standeth there alone,

And waiteth at the door.

There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

WHEN I DO COUNT THE CLOCK. WHEN I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silvered o'er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard; Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense,

Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.