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More bounteous aspects on me beam,
The mightier transports move and thrill:
So keep I fair through faith and prayer
A virgin heart in work and will.

When down the stormy crescent goes,
A light before me swims;

Between dark stems the forest glows,
I hear a noise of hymns:

Then by some secret shrine I ride,
I hear a voice, but none are there;
The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
The tapers burning fair.

Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,
The silver vessels sparkle clean;

The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
And solemn chants resound between.
Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres
I find a magic bark;

I leap on board, no helmsman steers,―
I float till all is dark:

A gentle sound, an awful light!
Three angels bear the holy Grail
With folded feet, in stoles of white,
On sleeping wings the sail.

Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!
My spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,
And, starlike, mingles with the stars.

When on my goodly charger borne,
Through dreaming towns I go

The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,

The streets are dumb with snow:

The tempest crackles on the leads,

And, singing, spins from brand and mail;
But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
And gilds the driving hail.

I leave the plain, I climb the height,
No branchy thicket shelter yields;
But blessed forms in whistling storms
Fly o'er waste fens and windy fields.

A maiden-knight,-to me is given
Such hope, I know not fear,-
I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven
That often meet me here.

I muse on joy that will not cease,
Pure spaces clothed in living beams,
Pure lilies of eternal peace,

Whose odours haunt my dreams;
And, stricken by an angel's hand,
This mortal armour that I wear,-

This weight and size,—this heart and eyes
Are touched, are turned to finest air.

The clouds are broken in the sky,
And through the mountain-walls
A rolling organ-harmony

Swells up, and shakes and falls ;
Then move the trees, the copses nod,
Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
"O just and faithful knight of God,
Ride on the prize is near!"
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange,
By bridge and ford, by park and pale;
All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide,
Until I find the holy Grail.

EXCELSIOR.

Alfred Tennyson.

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village pass'd
A youth, who bore, mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eye beneath
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light

Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above the spectral glaciers shone,

And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!

"Try not the pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

"O stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye;
But still he answered with a sigh,
Excelsior!

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch !
Beware the awful avalanche !"

This was the peasant's last Good night;
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air
Excelsior!

A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless but beautiful, he lay;
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!

Longfellow.

A PSALM OF LIFE.

Tell me not in mournful numbers
"Life is but an empty dream;"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real-life is earnest,

And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and time is fleeting:

And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb driven cattle;
Be a hero in the strife.

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant;
Let the dead Past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living Present;
Heart within, and God o'erhead.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Foot-prints on the sands of Time;

Foot-prints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

Longfellow.

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THE DEATHBED.

We watch'd her breathing through the night,

Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life

Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seem'd to speak,
So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied-

We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids clos'd-she had
Another morn than ours..

Hood.

LAGO VARESE.

I stood beside Varese's lake,-
Mid that redundant growth

Of vines, and maize, and bower, and brake,
Which Nature, kind to sloth,

And scarce solicited by human toil,
Pours from the riches of the teeming soil.

A mossy softness distance lent

To each divergent hill:

One crept away, looking back as it went,
The rest lay round and still;

The westering sun, not dazzling now, nor bright,
Shed o'er the mellow land a molten light.

And, sauntering up a circling cove,
I found upon the strand
A shallop, and a girl who strove
To drag it to dry land:

I stood to see — -the girl look'd round - her face
Had all her country's clear and definite grace.

She rested with the air of rest,
So seldom seen, of those
Whose toils remitted gives a zest

Not languor to repose.

Her form was poised yet buoyant, firm though free;
And liberal of her bright black eyes was she.

Her hue reflected back the skies,
Which redden'd in the west;
And joy was laughing in her eyes,
And bounding in her breast:
Its rights and grants exulting to proclaim,
Where pride had no inheritance, nor shame.

This sunshine of the Southern face,
At home we have it not;
And if they be a reckless race,

These Southerns, yet a lot

More favour'd on the checker'd earth is theirs,—
They have life's sorrows, but escape its cares.

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