Not while the birds such lays of gladness sing; Not while bright flowers around my footsteps wreathe. The spring hath ripened into summer-tíme, With silent steps the lord of light moves on; Greets my dull ear with music in its tone! Summer is gone, and autumn's soberer hues On the broad meadows and the quiet stream; Slant through the fading trees with ruddy gleam! Cooler the breezes play around my brow; I am content to die--but, oh! not now." The bleak wind whistles; snow-showers, far and near, The spring is come again-the joyous spring! The child of earth is numbered with the dead! CLOSET SCENE FROM HAMLET.-SHAKSPEARE. Enter QUEEN and HAMLET. Hamlet. Now, mother, what's the matter? Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. What's the matter now? No, by the rood, not so: Queen. Have you forgot me? Queen. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak. Ham. Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge. You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you. Queen. What wilt thou do?-thou wilt not murder me? Ham. Leave wringing of your hands: peace; sit you down, And let me wring your heart: for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff; If damned custom have not brazed it so That it is proof and bulwark against sense. Queen. What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me? Ham. As from the body of contraction plucks A rhapsody of words. Heaven's face doth glow; Queen. Ah me! what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index? Where every god did seem to set his seal, This was your husband.--Look you, now, what follows: Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? The heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble, Queen. As will not leave their tinct. Oh, speak to me no more! Ham. A murderer and a villain: A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Queen. Ham. Of shreds and patches; No more! A king Save me and hover o'er me with your wings, [Enter GHOST You heavenly guards!-What would your gracious figure? Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, Ghost. Do not forget: this visitation Ham. How is it with you, lady? Queen. Alas! how is't with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? Whereon do you look? Ham. On him! on him! Look you, how pale he giares! His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, Would make them capable. Do not look on me, Lest, with this piteous action, you convert My stern effects: then what I have to do Will want true color; tears, perchance, for blood. Ham. Do you see nothing there? Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see. Ham. Nor did you nothing hear? No, nothing, but ourselves, Ham. Why look you there! look, how it steals away! My father in his habit as he lived! Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal! [Exit GHOST, Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain : This bodiless creation, ecstasy Is very cunning in. Ham. Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, Queen. O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in twain. And live the purer with the other half. Good-night: once more, good night! And when you are desirous to be blest, MARK TWAIN'S STORY OF "THE GOOD LITTLE BOY. Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at Sabbath school. He would not play hookey, even when sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. None of e other boys could ever make this boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn't lie, no matter how convenient it was. Ho just said it was wrong to lie, and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply ridiculous. The furious ways that Jacob had, surpassed every thing. He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he wouldn't give hot pennies to organ grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys used to try to reason it cut and come to an understanding with him, but they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion; as I said before, they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was "afflicted," and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm to come to him. This good little boy read all the Sunday school books; they were his greatest delight; this was the whole secret of it. He believed in the good little boys they put in the Sunday school books; he had every confidence in them. He longed to come across one of them alive, once; but he never did. They all died before his time, maybe. Whenever he read about a particularly good one, he turned over quickly to see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles and gaze on him; that good little boy always died in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his relations and the Sunday school children standing around the grave in pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half of stuff in them. He was always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good little boys, on account of his always dying in the last chapter. Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted to be put in representing him gloriously declining to lie to his mother, and she weeping for joy about it; and pictures representing him standing on the door-step giving a penny to the poor beggar woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait around the corner, as he came from school, and welted him over the head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to be put in a Sunday school book. It made him feel a little uncomfort |