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These crowd around to ask him of his health;
These bow in honest duty and respect;
And these arrange a sofa or a chair.
And these conduct him there.

"Allow me, Sir, the honor;"-Then a bow
Down to the earth-Is't possible to show
Meet gratitude for such kind condescension?
5. The poor man hung his head,
And to himself he said,

"This is indeed beyond my comprehension:"
Then looking round,

One friendly face he found,

And said" Pray tell me why is wealth preferr'1
To wisdom?"—"That's a silly question, friend!'
Replied the other-" have you never heard,
A man may lend his store

Of gold or silver ore,

But wisdom none can borrow, none can lend?"

LESSON CLVI.

Address to the Ocean.-LORD BYRON.

I. THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar :
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
2. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean,-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown

3. His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him shivering, in thy playful spray,
And howling to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
Then dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay.

4. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war!
These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake,

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar

Alike the Armada's* pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.†

5. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they!
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts :-not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

6. Thou, glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

(Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving,)-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

Ar-má-da, a fleet of armed ships. The term is usually applied to the Spanish flert, called the INVINCIBLE ARMADA, consisting of 130 ships, inten to act against England in 1588, in the reign of Elizabeth.

+ Cape Traf-al-gar, on the southwestern coast of Spain. Off this Cape, on the 21st of October, 1805, was obtained the celebrated victory of the British fleet, commanded by Lord Nelson, over the combined fleets o France and Spain Lord Nelson lost his life in the action, aged 47 years.

7. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.

LESSON CLVII.

Wisdom.-POLLOK.

1. WISDOM is humble, said the voice of God. "Tis proud, the world replied. Wisdom, said God, Forgives, forbears, and suffers, not for fear Of man, but God. Wisdom revenges, said The world, is quick and deadly of resentment, Thrusts at the very shadow of affront,

And hastes, by death, to wipe its honor clean.

2. Wisdom, said God, loves enemies, entreats,
Solicits, begs for peace. Wisdom, replied
The world, hates enemies, will not ask peace,
Conditions spurns, and triumphs in their fall.
Wisdom mistrusts itself, and leans on Heaven,
Said God. It trusts and leans upon itself,
The world replied.

3.
Wisdom retires, said God,
And counts it bravery to bear reproach
And shame, and lowly poverty, upright;

And weeps with all who have just cause to weep.
Wisdom, replied the world, struts forth to gaze,
Treads the broad stage of life with clamorous foot,
Attracts all praises, counts it bravery

Alone to wield the sword, and rush on death;
And never weeps, but for its own disgrace.

4. Wisdom, said God, is highest, when it stoops Lowest before the Holy Throne; throws down Its crown, abased; forgets itself, admires,

And breathes adoring praise. There Wisdom stoops,
Indeed, the world replied, there stoops, because
It must, but stoops with dignity; and thinks
And meditates the while of inward worth

LESSON CLVIII.

The Inhumanity of Slavery.-Cowper.

1.. Он, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade,

Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart;
It does not feel for man. The nat'ral bond
Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

2. He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not color'd like his own; and having pow'r
T'enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interpos'd,
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.

3. Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys:
And worse than all, and most to be deplor'd,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.

4. Then what is man! And what man seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
5. No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation pris'd above all price;

I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.

6. Slaves cannot breathe in England: if their lungs Receive her air, that moment they are free;

They touch our country, and their shackles fall
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through ev'ry vein

Of all your empire: that where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

LESSON CLIX.

The Cuckoo.-LOGAN.

1. HAIL, beauteous stranger of the wood,
Attendant on the spring!

Now heav'n repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.

2. Soon as the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear:
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?

3. Delightful visitant! with thee

I hail the time of flow'rs,

When heav'n is fill'd with music sweet
Of birds among the bow'rs.

4. The school-boy wand'ring in the wood,
To pull the flow'rs so gay,

Starts, thy curious voice to hear,
And imitates thy lay.

3. Soon as the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fly'st the vocal vale,

An annual guest in other lands,
Another spring to hail.

6. Sweet bird, thy bow'r is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year!

7. O could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
We'd make, with social wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe.
Companions of the spring.

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