A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law. Then she took up her burden of life again, Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge! For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies And, in the hereafter, angels may THANATOPSIS.-W. C. BRYANT. To him who, in the love of Nature, holds When thoughts Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, To Nature's teachings, while from all around- Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim To mix forever with the elements; To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Shalt thou retire alone,-nor couldst thou wish That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes So live, that when thy summons comes to join To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, OPPOSITE EXAMPLES.-HORACE MANN. I ask the young man who is just forming his habits of life, or just beginning to indulge those habitual trains of thought out of which habits grow, to look around him, and mark the cxamples, whose fortune he would covet, or whose fate he would abhor. Even as we walk the streets, we meet with exhibitions of each extreme. Here, behold a patriarch whose stock of vigor three-score years and ten seem hardly to have impaired. His erect form, his firm step, his elastic limbs, and undimmed senses, are so many certificates of good conduct; or, rather, so many jewels and orders of nobility with which nature has honored him for his fidelity to her laws. His fair complexion shows that his blood has never been corrupted; his pure breath, that he has never yielded his digestive apparatus to abuse; his exact language and keen apprehension, that his brain has never been drugged or stupefied by the poisons of distiller or tobacconist. Enjoying his appetites to the highest, he has preserved the power of enjoying them. As he drains the cup of life, there are no lees at the bottom. His organs will reach the goal of existence together. Painlessly as a candle burns down in its socket, so will he expire; and a little imagination would convert him into another Enoch, translated from earth to a better world without the sting of death. But look at an opposite extreme, where an opposite history is recorded. What wreck so shocking to behold as the wreck of dissolute man;-the vigor of life exhausted, and yet the first steps in an honorable career not taken; in himself a lazar-house of diseases; dead, but, by a heathenish custom of society, not buried! Rogues have had the initial letter of their title burnt into the palms of their hands; even for murder, Cain was only branded on the forehead; but over the whole person of the debauchee or the inebriate, the signatures of infamy are written. How nature brands him with stigma and opprobrium! How she hangs labels all over him, to testify her disgust at his existence, and to admonish others to beware of his example! How she loosens all his joints, sends tremors along his muscles, and bends forward his frame, as if to bring him upon all-fours with kindred brutes, or to degrade him to the reptile's crawling! How she disfig ures his countenance, as if intent upon obliterating all traces of her own image, so that she may swear she never made him! How she pours rheum over his eyes, sends foul spirits to inhabit his breath, and shrieks, as with a trumpet, from every pore of his body, "BEHOLD A BEAST!" Such a man may be seen in the streets of our cities every day; if rich enough, he may be found in the saloons, and at the tables of the upper ten;" but surely, to every man of purity and honor, to every man whose wisdom as well as whose heart is unblemished, the wretch who comes cropped and bleeding from the pillory, and redolent with its appropriate perfumes, would be a guest or a companion far less offensive and disgusting. 66 Now let the young man, rejoicing in his manly proportions, and in his comeliness, look on this picture, and on this, and then say, after the likeness of which model he intends his own erect stature and sublime countenance shall be configured. And yonder, bluest of the isles, Her sapphire gates Beguiling to her bright estates. I heed not, if Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;- Under the walls of Paradise. Under the walls Where swells and falls The bay's deep breast at intervals A cloud upon this liquid sky. The day, so mild, Is Heaven's own child, With earth and ocean reconciled;- Around me steal Are murmuring to the murmuring keel. Over the rail My hand I trail Within the shadow of the sail, A joy intense, The cooling sense Glides down my drowsy indolence. With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Where summer sings and never dies,O'erveiled with vines, She glows and shines Among her future oil and wines. Her children, hid The cliffs amid, Are gamboling with the gamboling kid; Or down the walls, With tipsy calls, Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls. The fisher's child, With tresses wild, Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled, With glowing lips Sings as she skips, Or gazes at the far off ships. |