128.

A Poet's Thought.

TELL me, what is a poet's thought?

Is it on the sudden born?
Is it from the starlight caught?
Is it by the tempest taught?
Or by whispering morn?

Was it cradled in the brain?

Chained awhile, or nursed in night?
Was it wrought with toil and pain?
Did it bloom and fade again,
Ere it burst to light?

No more question of its birth:
Rather love its better part!
'Tis a thing of sky and earth,
Gathering all its golden worth
From the poet's heart.

B. W. PROCTER.

129.

The False May and the Real May.

MAY is a pious fraud of the almanac,

A ghastly parody of real Spring

Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;

Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date,

And, with her handful of anemones,
Herself as shivery, steal into the sun,

The season need but turn his hour-glass round,
And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear,

Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms,
Her budding breasts and wan dislustered front,
With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard,
All overblown. Then, warmly walled with books,
While my wood fire supplies the sun's defect,
Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams,
I take my May down from the happy shelf
Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row,

Waiting my choice to open with full breast,
And beg an alms of spring-time, ne'er denied
Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods
Throb thick with merle1 and mavis2 all the year.
J. R. LOWELL.

130.

The Wastefulness of Asceticism.

O FOOLISHNESS of men! that lend their ears
To those budge3 doctors of the Stoic1 fur,
And fetch their precepts from the Cynic5 tub,
Praising the lean and sallow abstinence !
Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth
With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,
Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,
But all to please and sate the curious taste?
And set to work millions of spinning worms,

That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk,
To deck her sons; and that no corner might

Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins

She hutched the all-worshipped ore and precious gems, To store her children with. If all the world

Should in a pet of temperance, feed on pulse,

Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze, The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised, Not half his riches known, and yet despised;

And we should serve him as a grudging master,

As a penurious niggard of his wealth,

And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons,

Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight,
And strangled with her waste fertility :

The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes,

The herds would over-multitude their lords;

The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought

diamonds

Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep,

I Blackbird.

2 Thrush.

3 Rugged.

4 Stoics, so called from the painted Stoa or Porch at Athens, where they taught. Their founder was Zeno. They held that virtue is the only good, and virtue consists in living according to Nature.

5 Diogenes, a philosopher of the Cynic school, lived in a tub. The Cynics despised the body and renounced luxury.

And so bestud with stars, that they below
Would grow inured to light, and come at last
To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows.

131.

J. MILTON.

The Passion for Novelty.

Ulysses. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.

Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright. To have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons,

That one by one pursue: If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,'
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost;-

Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

O'er-run and trampled on. Then what they do in present,

Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;

For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,—
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past;
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,

More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.

1 Straight forward.

W. SHAKESPEARE.

132.

The False Worship of Rank.

King. 'Tis only title thou disdain'st in her, the which
I can build up. Strange is it, that our bloods,
Of colour, weight, and heat, poured all together,
Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off
In differences so mighty. If she be

All that is virtuous, save what thou dislikest,
A poor physician's daughter, thou dislikest
Of virtue for the name: but do not so:

From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,
The place is dignified by the doer's deed:
Where great additions swell and virtue none,
It is a dropsied honour. Good alone
Is good without a name. Vileness is so:
The property by what it is should go,
Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair;
In these to nature she's immediate heir;
And these breed honour: that is honour's scorn,
Which challenges itself as honour's born,
And is not like the sire. Honours thrive,
When rather from our acts we them derive
Than our foregoers: the mere word's a slave,
Debauched on every tomb; on every grave,
A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb,

Where dust and damned oblivion is the tomb
Of honoured bones indeed.

W. SHAKESPEARE.

133.

The Inequality of Human Lives.

ALAS! what differs more than man from man!

And whence that difference? whence but from himself?

For see the universal race endowed

With the same upright form!—The sun is fixed,

And the infinite magnificence of heaven,
Fixed within reach of every human eye;
The sleepless ocean murmurs for all ears;
The vernal field infuses fresh delight

Into all hearts. Throughout the world of sense,
Even as an object is sublime or fair,
That object is laid open to the view
Without reserve or veil; and as a power
Is salutary, or an influence sweet,
Are each and all enabled to perceive

That power, that influence, by impartial law.
Gifts nobler are vouchsafed alike to all;

Reason, and, with that reason, smiles and tears;
Imagination, freedom in the will,

Conscience to guide and check, and death to be
Foretasted, immortality presumed.

The primal duties shine aloft-like stars;

The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless,
Are scattered at the feet of man-like flowers.

The generous inclination, the just rule,

*

Kind wishes, and good actions, and pure thoughts— No mystery is here; no special boon

For high and not for low, for proudly graced

And not for meek of heart.

The smoke ascends

To heaven as lightly from the cottage hearth
As from the haughty palace. He, whose soul
Ponders this true equality, may walk

The fields of earth with gratitude and hope;
Yet, in that meditation, will he find
Motive to sadder grief, as we have found,-
Lamenting ancient virtues overthrown

And for the injustice grieving, that hath made
So wide a difference betwixt man and man.

W. WORDSWORTH.

134.

THE shepherd lad, who in the sunshine carves,
On the green turf, a dial-to divide

The silent hours; and who to that report
Can portion out his pleasures, and adapt
His round of pastoral duties, is not left
With less intelligence for moral things
Of gravest import. Early he perceives