HEAVENLY HARMONY IN IMMORTAL SOULS.

21I

Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive: For do but note a wild and wanton herd,

Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
air of music touch their ears,

Or

any

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze

By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils ;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night

And his affections dark as Erebus :

Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

Enter PORTIA and NERISSA.

Por. That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Ner. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.

Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less :

A substitute shines brightly as a king

Until a king be by, and then his state

Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters. Music hark!

Ner. It is your music, madam, of the house.
Por. Nothing is good, I see, without respect :
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.

Ner. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.
Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
When neither is attended, and I think

The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season season'd are
To their right praise and true perfection!

Merchant of Venice, Act v. Sc. 1, 1. 54.

Sorrow for a misspent Life.

There is no power in holy men,

Nor charms in prayer, nor purifying form
Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,
Nor agony, nor, greater than all these,
The innate tortures of that deep despair,
Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
But all in all sufficient to itself,
Would make a hell of heaven can exorcise,
From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense

Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
Upon itself.

LORD BYRON.

A a

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new ;

Most true it is that I have look'd on truth

Askance and strangely. . . .

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand :
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd ;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.

Sonnet, cx.

Humility and Contrition in Wiew

of Death.

Since repentance is a duty of so great and giant-like bulk, let no man crowd it up into so narrow room as that it is strangled in its birth for want of time, and air to breathe in. JEREMY TAYLOR.

longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell :
Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let love even with
your
life decay,
my
Lest the wise world should look into your moan

And mock you with me after I am gone.
O, lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death, dear love, forget me quite,