But if the mind

Be inclined

To unquietness, That only may be called The worst of all distress.

He that is melancholy,
Detesting all delight,
His wits by sqttish folly
Are ruinated quite.
Sad discontent and murmurs
To him are incident;

Were he possessed of honors,
He could not be content.
Sparks of joy

Fly away;
Floods of care arise;
And all delightful motion
In the conception dies.

But those that are contented However things do fall, Much anguish is prevented,

707

Into some other fashion doth it range; Thus goes the floating world beneath the moon; Wherefore, my mind, above time, motion, place, Rise up, and steps unknown to nature trace.

A GOOD that never satisfies the mind,

A beauty fading like the April showers, A sweet with floods of gall that runs combined, A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours, A honor that more fickle is than wind,

A glory at opinion's frown that lowers, A treasury which bankrupt time devours, A knowledge than grave ignorance more blind, A vain delight our equals to command, A style of greatness in effect a dream,

A swelling thought of holding sea and land, A servile lot, decked with a pompous name: Are the strange ends we toil for here below Till wisest death makes us our errors know. WILLIAM DRUMMOND.

A Sweet Pastoral.

GOOD muse, rock me asleep With some sweet harmony! The weary eye is not to keep Thy wary company.

Sweet love, begone a while!

Thou know'st my heaviness; Beauty is born but to beguile My heart of happiness.

See how my little flock,

That loved to feed on high, Do headlong tumble down the rock, And in the valley die.

The bushes and the trees,

That were so fresh and green, Do all their dainty color lease, And not a leaf is seen.

Sweet Philomel, the bird

That hath the heavenly throat, Doth now, alas! not once afford Recording of a note.

WHO gave thee, O beauty,
The keys of this breast,
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
Say, when in lapsed ages
Thee knew I of old?
Or what was the service
For which I was sold?
When first my eyes saw thee
I found me thy thrall,
By magical drawings,
Sweet tyrant of all!
I drank at thy fountain
False waters of thirst;
Thou intimate stranger,
Thou latest and first!
Thy dangerous glances
Make women of men;
New-born, we are melting
Into nature again.

Lavish, lavish promiser,
Nigh persuading gods to err!
Guest of million painted forms,
Which in turn thy glory warms!
The frailest leaf, the mossy bark,

The acorn's cup, the rain-drop's are,
The swinging spider's silver line,
The ruby of the drop of wine,
The shining pebble of the pond
Thou inscribest with a bond,
In thy momentary play,
Would bankrupt nature to repay.
Ah, what avails it

To hide or to shun
Whom the Infinite One

Hath granted His throne!
The heaven high over
Is the deep's lover;
The sun and sea,
Informed by thee,
Before me run,
And draw me on,
Yet fly me still,

As fate refuses

To me the heart fate for me chooses.
Is it that my opulent soul
Was mingled from the generous whole;
Sea-valleys and the deep of skies
Furnished several supplies;
And the sands whereof I'm made
Draw me to them, self-betrayed?
I turn the proud portfolios
Which hold the grand designs
Of Salvator, of Guercino,
And Piranesi's lines.

I hear the lofty paans

Of the masters of the shell,
Who heard the starry music
And recount the numbers well;

Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,

Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.

Oft, in streets or humblest places,
I detect far-wandered graces,
Which, from Eden wide astray,
In lowly homes have lost their way.

Thee gliding through the sea of form,
Like the lightning through the storm,
Somewhat not to be possessed,
Somewhat not to be caressed,
No feet so fleet could ever find,
No perfect form could ever bind.

709

Thou eternal fugitive,

Hovering over all that live,
Quick and skilful to inspire
Sweet, extravagant desire,
Starry space and lily-bell

Filling with thy roseate smell,
Wilt not give the lips to taste
Of the nectar which thou hast.

All that's good and great with thee
Works in close conspiracy;

Thou hast bribed the dark and lonely
To report thy features only,
And the cold and purple morning,
Itself with thoughts of thee adorning;
The leafy dell, the city mart,
Equal trophies of thine art;
E'en the flowing azure air

Thou hast touched for my despair;
And, if I languish into dreams,
Again I meet the ardent beams.
Queen of things! I dare not die
In being's deeps past ear and eye;
Lest there I find the same deceiver,
And be the sport of fate forever.
Dread power, but dear! if God thou be,
Unmake me quite, or give thyself to me.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.

THE awful shadow of some unseen power

Floats, though unseen, among us― visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; Like moonbeams, that behind some piny mountain shower,

It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance,
Like hues and harmonies of evening,

Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of beauty, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim, vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

Ask why the sunlight not for ever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown;

Why fear, and dream, and death, and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom; why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope.

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given;
Therefore the names of demon, ghost, and

heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endeavor — Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to sever

From all we hear and all we see

Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal and omnipotent
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his
heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes!

Thou that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came!
Depart not, lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I called on poisonous names with which our youth

is fed;

Wood-Notes.

As sunbeams stream through liberal space And nothing jostle or displace,

So waved the pine-tree through my thought,
And fanned the dreams it never brought.

"WHETHER is better, the gift or the donor? Come to me,"

Quoth the pine-tree,

"I am the giver of honor.
My garden is the cloven rock,

And my manure the snow;

And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, In summer's scorching glow.

"He is great who can live by me.
The rough and bearded forester
Is better than the lord;
God fills the scrip and canister,
Sin piles the loaded board.
The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant the lord that shall be;
The lord is hay, the peasant grass,

One dry, and one the living tree.
Who liveth by the ragged pine
Foundeth a heroic line;

It seemed the likeness of their own;
They knew by secret sympathy
The public child of earth and sky.
You ask," he said, ""what guide

Me through trackless thickets led, Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide?'

I found the water's bed.

The water-courses were my guide;

I travelled grateful by their side,

Or through their channel dry;

They led me through the thicket damp,

Through brake and fern, the beaver's camp,
Through beds of granite cut my road,
And their resistless friendship showed:
The falling waters led me,

The foodful waters fed me,

And brought me to the lowest land,

Unerring to the ocean-sand.

The moss upon the forest bark

Was pole-star when the night was dark;
The purple berries in the wood

Supplied me necessary food;
For Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,

When the night and morning lie,
When sea and land refuse to feed me,
"Twill be time enough to die;
Then will yet my mother yield

A pillow in her greenest field,
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.
Who liveth in the palace hall
Waneth fast and spendeth all.
He goes to my savage haunts,
With his chariot and his care;
My twilight realm he disenchants,
And finds his prison there.

"What prizes the town and the tower?
Only what the pine-tree yields;
Sinew that subdued the fields;

The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods
Chants his hymn to hills and floods,
Whom the city's poisoning spleen
Made not pale, or fat, or lean;
Whose iron arms, and iron mould,
Know not fear, fatigue, or cold.

I give my rafters to his boat,
My billets to his boiler's throat;
And I will swim the ancient sea,
To float my child to victory,

And grant to dwellers with the pine
Dominion o'er the palm and vine.

711

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.
Cut a bough from my parent stem,
And dip it in thy porcelain vase;

A little while each russet gem

Will swell and rise with wonted grace; But when it seeks enlarged supplies, The orphan of the forest dies.

Whoso walks in solitude,

And inhabiteth the wood,

Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird,
Before the money-loving herd,

Into that forester shall pass

From these companions, power and grace;

Clean shall he be, without, within,

From the old adhering sin,