You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,— The nobler and the manlier one? Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! It made Anacreon's song divine; He served but served PolycratesA tyrant; but our masters then Were still, at least, our countrymen. The tyrant of the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades ! O, that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind! Such chains as his were sure to bind. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Such as the Doric mothers bore; Trust not for freedom to the Franks,- Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! To think such breasts must suckle slaves. Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,- Byron. *99* THE NEW-YEAR. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, Ring out the old, ring in the new, The year Ring out the grief that saps the mind, Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring out the want, the care, the sin, Ring out false pride in place and blood, Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be. Alfred Tennyson. 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 sunbeams Or 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, O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue; |