Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky ;
He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore ;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid,

As mid the virgin train she strayed,

Nor knew her beauty's best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;
The gay enchantment was undone,
A gentle wife, but fairy none.
Then I said, "I covet truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth.”
As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs ;
I inhaled the violet's breath ;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird;
Beauty through my senses stole;

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

RETIREMENT.

INSCRIPTION IN A HERMITAGE.

BENEATH this stony roof reclined,
I soothe to peace my pensive mind ;
And while, to shade my lowly cave,
Embowering elms their umbrage wave,
And while the maple dish is mine,
The beechen cup, unstained with wine,
I scorn the gay licentious crowd,
Nor heed the toys that deck the proud.

ON A BEAUTIFUL DAY.

O UNSEEN Spirit! now a calm divine

Comes forth from thee, rejoicing earth and air! Trees, hills, and houses, all distinctly shine, And thy great ocean slumbers everywhere.

The mountain ridge against the purple sky Stands clear and strong, with darkened rocks and dells,

And cloudless brightness opens wide and high A home aerial, where thy presence dwells.

The chime of bells remote, the murmuring sea,

The song of birds in whispering copse and wood, The distant voice of children's thoughtless glee, And maiden's song, are all one voice of good.

Amid the leaves' green mass a sunny play
Of flash and shadow stirs like inward life:
The ship's white sail glides onward far away,
Unhaunted by a dream of storm or strife.
JOHN STERLING.

INVOCATION TO LIGHT.

FROM "PARADISE LOST,” BOOK III.

HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproachèd light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness
borne,

With other notes than to the Orphean lyre,
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,
Though hard and rare : thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou
Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
C'ease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old :
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud, instead, and ever-during dark,
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men

year

It hailed the ships, and cried, "Sail on,
Ye mariners, the night is gone!"

And hurried landward far away,
Crying, "Awake! it is the day!'

It said unto the forest, "Shout!
Hang all your leafy banners out!"

It touched the wood-bird's folded wing,
And said, "O bird, awake and sing!”
And o'er the farms, "O chanticleer,
Your clarion blow; the day is near!"

It whispered to the fields of corn,
"Bow down, and hail the coming morn !”

UP! quit thy bower! late wears the hour,
Long have the rooks cawed round the tower;
O'er flower and tree loud hums the bee,
And the wild kid sports merrily.
The sun is bright, the sky is clear;
Wake, lady, wake! and hasten here.

Up, maiden fair! and bind thy hair,
And rouse thee in the breezy air!
The lulling stream that soothed thy dream
Is dancing in the sunny beam.
Waste not these hours, so fresh, so gay:
Leave thy soft couch and haste away!

Up! Time will tell the morning bell
Its service-sound has chimèd well;
The aged crone keeps house alone,
The reapers to the fields are gone.
Lose not these hours, so cool, so gay :
Lo! while thou sleep'st they haste away!

MORNING.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

IN the barn the tenant cock,
Close to partlet perched on high,
Briskly crows (the shepherd's clock !)
Jocund that the morning 's nigh.

Swiftly from the mountain's brow, Shadows, nursed by night, retire: And the peeping sunbeam now, Paints with gold the village spire.

Philomel forsakes the thorn,
Plaintive where she prates at night;
And the lark, to meet the morn,
Soars beyond the shepherd's sight.

From the low-roofed cottage ridge,

See the chattering swallow spring ; Darting through the one-arched bridge, Quick she dips her dappled wing.

Now the pine-tree's waving top
Gently greets the morning gale:
Kidlings now begin to crop
Daisies, on the dewy dale.

THE night was dark, though sometimes a faint

star

A little while a little space made bright.
The night was long and like an iron bar
Lay heavy on the land: till o'er the sea
Slowly, within the East, there grew a light
Which half was starlight, and half seemed to be
The herald of a greater. The pale white
Turned slowly to pale rose, and up the height
Of heaven slowly climbed. The gray sea grew
Rose-colored like the sky. A white gull flew
Straight toward the utmost boundary of the East,
Where slowly the rose gathered and increased.
It was as on the opening of a door

By one that in his hand a lamp doth hold,
Whose flame is hidden by the garment's fold,
The still air moves, the wide room is less dim.

More bright the East became, the ocean turned Dark and more dark against the brightening sky,

Sharper against the sky the long sea line.
The hollows of the breakers on the shore
Were green like leaves whereon no sun doth shine,
Though white the outer branches of the tree.

MORNING.

FROM "THE MINSTREL."

BUT who the melodies of morn can tell?
The wild brook babbling down the mountain-
side;

The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell;
The pipe of early shepherd dim descried
In the lone valley; echoing far and wide
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above;
The hollow murmur of the ocean-tide ;
The hum of bees, the linnet's lay of love,
And the full choir that wakes the universal grove.

The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark ; Crowned with her pail the tripping milkmaid sings;

The whistling ploughman stalks afield; and, hark!

Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings;

Through rustling corn the hare astonished springs;

Slow tolls the village-clock the drowsy hour ; The partridge bursts away on whirring wings; Deep mourns the turtle in sequestered bower, And shrill lark carols clear from her aerial tower.

JAMES BEATTIE.

THE SABBATH MORNING.

WITH silent awe I hail the sacred morn,
That slowly wakes while all the fields are still!
A soothing calm on every breeze is borne ;
A graver murmur gurgles from the rill;
And echo answers softer from the hill;
And sweeter sings the linnet from the thorn :
The skylark warbles in a tone less shrill.
Hail, light serene! hail, sacred Sabbath morn!
The rooks float silent by in airy drove ;
The sun a placid yellow lustre throws ;
The gales that lately sighed along the grove
Have hushed their downy wings in dead repose;
The hovering rack of clouds forgets to move,
So smiled the day when the first morn arose !
JOHN LEYDEN.

As poised on vibrant wings,
Where its sweet treasure swings,
The honey-lover clings

To the red flowers,

So, lost in vivid light,

So, rapt from day and night,
I linger in delight,

Enraptured o'er the vision-freighted hours.

ROSE TERRY COOKE.

A SUMMER NOON.

WHO has not dreamed a world of bliss
On a bright sunny noon like this,
Couched by his native brook's green maze,
With comrade of his boyish days,
While all around them seemed to be
Just as in joyous infancy?

Who has not loved, at such an hour,
Upon that heath, in birchen bower,
Lulled in the poet's dreamy mood,
Its wild and sunny solitude?
While o'er the waste of purple ling
You mark a sultry glimmering;
Silence herself there seems to sleep,
Wrapped in a slumber long and deep,
Where slowly stray those lonely sheep
Through the tall foxglove's crimson bloom,
And gleaming of the scattered broom.
Love you not, then, to list and hear
The crackling of the gorse-flowers near,
Pouring an orange-scented tide
Of fragrance o'er the desert wide?
To hear the buzzard's whimpering shrill,
Hovering above you high and still?
The twittering of the bird that dwells
Among the heath's delicious bells?
While round your bed, o'er fern and blade,
Insects in green and gold arrayed,
The sun's gay tribes have lightly strayed;
And sweeter sound their humming wings
Than the proud minstrel's echoing strings.

NOONTIDE.

WILLIAM HOWITT.

BENEATH a shivering canopy reclined,
Of aspen-leaves that wave without a wind,
I love to lie, when lulling breezes stir
The spiry cones that tremble on the fir;
Or wander mid the dark-green fields of broom,
When peers in scattered tufts the yellow bloom;
Or trace the path with tangling furze o'errun,
When bursting seed-bells crackle in the sun,
And pittering grasshoppers, confus'dly shrill,
Pipe giddily along the glowing hill :