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THE PAST.

17

THE PAST.

WILT thou forget the happy hours

Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,
Heaping over their corpses cold

Blossoms and leaves instead of mould?
Blossoms which were the joys that fell,

And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

Forget the dead, the past? Oh yet

There are ghosts that may take revenge for it!
Memories that make the heart a tomb,

Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,
And with ghastly whispers tell

That joy, once lost, is pain.

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NIGHT AND DEATH.

NIGHT AND DEATH.

MYSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,

This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,

And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

J. Blanco White.

LONDON AT SUNRISE.

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LONDON AT SUNRISE:

(FROM WESTMINSTER BRIDGE).

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:

This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

W. Wordsworth.

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THE IDEAL HERMITAGE.

THE IDEAL HERMITAGE.

METHINKS that to some vacant hermitage
My feet would gladly turn-to some dry nook
Scooped out of living rock, and near a brook
Hurled down a mountain cove from stage to stage,
Yet tempering, for my sight, its bustling rage
In the soft heaven of a translucent pool;
Thence creeping under sylvan arches cool,
Fit haunt of shapes whose glorious equipage
Would elevate my dreams. A beechen bowl,
A maple dish, my furniture should be;

Crisp, yellow leaves my bed; the hooting owl
My night-watch: nor should e'er the crested fowl
From thorp or vill his matins sound for me,

Tired of the world and all its industry.

W. Wordsworth.

RETIREMENT.

2 I

RETIREMENT.

GIVE me a cottage on some Cambrian wild
Where, far from cities, I may spend my days,
And by the beauties of the scene beguil❜d,
May pity man's pursuits, and shun his ways.
While on the rock I mark the browsing goat,
List to the mountain-torrent's distant noise,
Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note,

I shall not want the world's delusive joys;
But with my little scrip, my book, my lyre,
Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more;
And when, with time, shall wane the vital fire,
I'll raise my pillow on the desert shore,
And lay me down to rest where the wild wave
Shall make sweet music o'er my lonely grave.
Henry Kirke White.

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