THE SEA BY BRYAN WALLER PROCTER The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free! It runneth the earth's wide regions round! I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be; With the blue above, and the blue below, If a storm should come and awake the deep, I love, oh, how I love to ride I never was on the dull, tame shore, The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, I've lived since then, in calm and strife, With wealth to spend and a power to range, Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea! OH, MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE BY GEORGE ELIOT Oh, may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirr'd to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, Breathing as beauteous order that controls With growing sway that growing life of man. So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, fail'd, and agonized That sobb'd, religiously in yearning song, And what may yet be better,-saw within To higher reverence more mix'd with love,— This is life to me, Which martyr'd men have made more glorious That purest heaven; be to other souls Whose music is the gladness of the world. SELF-DEPENDENCE 1 BY MATTHEW ARNOLD Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me And a look of passionate desire O'er the sea and to the stars I send; "Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew; Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you, Feel my soul becoming vast like you!" From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, In the rustling night air came the answer— "Unaffrighted by the silence round them, These demand not that the things without them, “And with joy the stars perform their shining, And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll; 1 1By permission of The Macmillan Co. For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting All the fever of some differing soul. "Bounded by themselves, and unregardful O air-born voice! long since, severely clear, THINGS THAT NEVER DIE BY CHARLES DICKENS The pure, the bright, the beautiful, The timid hand stretched forth to aid A brother in his need, A kindly word in grief's dark hour That proves a friend indeed; |