QUIET HOURS.

NATURE.

FROM "THE PRELUDE.”

Ere we retired,

The cock had crowed, and now the eastern sky
Was kindling, not unseen, from humble copse
And open field, through which the pathway wound,
And homeward led my steps. Magnificent
The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
Glorious as e'er I had beheld — in front,
The sea lay laughing at a distance; near,
The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;
And in the meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn
Dews, vapors, and the melody of birds,
And laborers going forth to till the fields.

Ah! need I say, dear Friend! that to the brim My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows Were then made for me; bond unknown to me

Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,

A dedicated Spirit. On I walked

In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

THE VOICES OF NATURE.

CE of Nature in the heart,

VOICE

Narrow though our science, though

Here we only know in part,

Give us faith in what we know!

To a fuller life aspiring,

Satisfy the heart's desiring :

Tell us of a force, behind

Nature's force, supreme, alone:

Tell us of a larger mind

Than the partial power we own:

Tell us of a Being wholly

Wise and great and just and holy :—

Toning down the pride of mind

To a wiser humbleness,
Teach the limits of mankind,

Weak to know, and prompt to guess,
On the mighty shores that bound us
Childlike gathering trifles round us :

Teach how, yet, what here we know
To the unknown leads the way,

As the light that, faint and low,
Prophesies consummate day;
How the little arc before us

Proves the perfect circle o'er us :

How the marr'd unequal scheme
That on all sides here we meet,
Either is a lawless dream,

Or must somewhere be complete ;
Where or when, if near, or distant,
Known but to the One Existent.

He is. We meanwhile repair
From the noise of human things
To the fields of larger air,

To the shadow of His wings:
Listening for His message only
In the wild with Nature lonely.

FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE.

FROM "THE RECLUSE."

F truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope,
And melancholy fear subdued by faith;
Of blessed consolations in distress;
Of moral strength and intellectual power ;
Of joy in widest commonalty spread;
Of the individual mind that keeps her own
Inviolate retirement, subject there

To conscience only, and the law supreme

Of that intelligence which governs all

I sing: "fit audience let me find, though few!"

Beauty- - a living presence of the earth,
Surpassing the most fair ideal forms

Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed
From earth's materials waits upon my steps;
Pitches her tents before me as I move,

An hourly neighbor. Paradise, and groves
Elysian, fortunate fields - like those of old
Sought in the Atlantic main

why should they be

A history only of departed things,
Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

RESUSCITATION OF FANCY.

THE

HE edge of thought was blunted by the stress Of the hard world; my fancy had wax'd dull, All Nature seemed less nobly beautiful, Robbed of her grandeur and her loveliness; Methought the Muse within my heart had died, Till, late, awaken'd at the break of day, Just as the East took fire and doff'd its gray, The rich preparatives of light I spied;

But one sole star

none other anywhere —
A wild-rose odor from the fields was borne ;
The lark's mysterious joy filled earth and air,
And from the wind's top met the hunter's horn,
The aspen trembled wildly, and the morn
Breath'd up in rosy clouds, divinely fair!

CHARLES TURNER.

M

OST sweet is it with unuplifted eyes

To pace the ground, if path be there or none, While a fair region round the traveller lies Which he forbears again to look upon; Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, The work of fancy, or some happy tone Of meditation, slipping in between The beauty coming and the beauty gone. If thought and love desert us, from that day Let us break off all commerce with the Muse; With thought and love companions of our way, Whate'er the senses take or may refuse, The mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews Of inspiration on the humblest lay.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

FROM "ENDYMION."

A THING of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep