Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance;

And in this way he gained an honest mainte

nance.

The old man still stood talking by my side;

But now his voice to me was like a stream Scarce heard, nor word from word could I divide; And the whole body of the man did seem Like one whom I had met with in a dream

Or like a man from some far region sent

To give me human strength by apt admonish

ment.

My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills,
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labor, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty poets in their misery dead.
Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,
My question eagerly did I renew —

"How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"

He with a smile did then his words repeat;
And said that, gathering leeches, far and wide
He travelled, stirring thus about his feet

The waters of the pools where they abide.
"Once I could meet with them on every side,
But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may."

While he was talking thus, the lonely place,

The old man's shape and speech - all troubled

me;

In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently.
While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
He, having made a pause, the same discourse re-
newed.

And soon with this he other matter blended-
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanor kind,
But stately in the main; and when he ended
I could have laughed myself to scorn, to find
In that decrepit man so firm a mind.
"God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;
I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely

moor!"

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Ode on a Grecian Urn.

THOU still unravished bride of quietness! Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

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A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme! What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? what maidens loath?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy ?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play onNot to the sensual ear, but more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone! Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal; yet do not grieve— She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss;

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu:
And happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,

For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest! What little town by river or sea-shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heav'n y-cleped Euphrosyne,
And, by men, heart-easing Mirth!
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth
With two sister graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as some sages sing)

The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing —

As he met her once a-Maying —
There, on beds of violets blue
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity—

Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek-
Sport, that wrinkled care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come! and trip it, as you go,

On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free-
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night
From his watch-tow'r in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-brier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;

Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill
Through the high wood echoing shrill;
Sometime walking, not unseen,

By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,

Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, Whilst the landscape round it measures Russet lawns, and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray -
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savory dinner set

Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,

To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes with secure delight
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound

To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade ;
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the live-long daylight fail;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale
With stories told of many a feat:
How fairy Mab the junkets eat
She was pinched and pulled, she said,
And he by friar's lantern led;
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

699

When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And, crop-full, out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold -
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear

In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp and feast and revelry,
With mask, and antique pageantry —
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream:
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.

And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony-
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed

Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

JOHN MILTON.

Il Penseroso.

HENCE, vain deluding joys,

The brood of folly without father bred!
How little you bestead,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sunbeamsOr likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy!
Hail, divinest Melancholy!

Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue-
Black, but such as in esteem

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above

The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended;
Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore,
To solitary Saturn bore-

His daughter she (in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain).
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.

Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn!
Come! but keep thy wonted state,
With even step and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes;
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till

With a sad, leaden, downward cast

Thou fix them on the earth as fast;

And join with thee calm peace, and quiet

Spare fast, that oft with gods doth diet,

And hears the muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove's altar sing;
And add to these retired leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne —
The cherub Contemplation;
And the mute silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song

In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustomed oak.

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly

Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among

I woo, to hear thy even-song;
And, missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry, smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way;
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar;
Or if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom-
Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth,

Or the bellman's drowsy charm,

To bless the doors from nightly harm;

Or let my lamp at midnight hour

Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft out-watch the bear
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook;
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,

Whose power hath a true consent
With planet or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,

Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.

But, oh, sad virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musæus from his bower!
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
And made hell grant what love did seek!
Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold —
Of Camball, and of Algarsife-
And who had Canace to wife,

That owned the virtuous ring and glass —
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar king did ride!
And, if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung —
Of tourneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.

Thus, night, oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited morn appear –
Not tricked and flounced, as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,

But kerchiefed in a comely cloud
While rocking winds are piping loud,
Or ushered with a shower still
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves.
And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine or monumental oak,

Where the rude axe with heaved stroke
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day's garish eye,
While the bee with honeyed thigh,

That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring

With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep;
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings, in airy stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid;

And, as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or th' unseen genius of the wood.

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But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antic pillars massy proof, And storied windows, richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voiced quire below, In service high, and anthems clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.

And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth show, And every herb that sips the dew, Till old experience do attain To something like prophetic strain.

These pleasures, Melancholy, give, And I with thee will choose to live. JOHN MILTON.

Song.

SWEET are the thoughts that savor of content
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent —
The poor estate scorns fortune's angry frown:
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such

bliss,

Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.