TO A WATERFOWL

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

WHITHER, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-
The desert and illimitable air

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

CATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

T must be so

IT

JOSEPH ADDISON

Plato, thou reasonest well!

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?-
'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us;

'Tis Heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity! Pleasing, dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes, must we pass
The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me,
But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.

Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us,
And that there is, all nature cries aloud

Through all her works, he must delight in virtue;
And that which he delights in must be happy.

!

But when? Or where? This world was made for Cæsar. I'm weary of conjectures - this must end them.

Thus I am doubly armed. My death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me.
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die !
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years ;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds.

BREATHES THERE THE MAN WITH SOUL SO

DEAD

WALTER SCOTT

BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footprints he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand ?
If such there be, go mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,-
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,

CH. LIT. VII-16

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?

WILLIAM KNOX

William Knox was a Scotch poet born in 1788, who died early, having written but little, "The Lonely Hearth" and "Songs of Israel" being the most noted of his works. The following poem was a great favorite of President Lincoln.

H, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Он

Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around and together be laid;

And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.

The infant, a mother attended and loved,
The mother, that infant's affection who proved,
The husband, that mother and infant who blessed,
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.

The maid, on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye
Shone beauty and pleasure-her triumphs are by ;
And the memories of those who have loved her and praised
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

The hand of the king that the scepter hath borne,
The brow of the priest that the miter hath worn,
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep,
The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

The saint, who enjoyed the communion of Heaven,
The sinner, who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the multitude goes, like the flower or the weed,
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same that our fathers have been ;
We see the same sights that our fathers have seen ;
We drink the same stream, and we view the same sun,
And run the same course that our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking, our fathers would shrink;

To the life we are clinging, they also would cling;
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.

They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;

They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;