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In silence round me—the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
For ever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die—but see, again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly than their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies,
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch-enemy Death-yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne-the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink,
And tremble, and are still. O God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill
With all the waters of the firmament

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent and overwhelms
Its cities-who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by ?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

....

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ALFRED TENNYSON: 1810-.

Tennyson, the greatest of our living poets, became poet-laureate on the death of Wordsworth in 1850. He is the son of a Lincolnshire clergyman, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first volume of poems appeared in 1830, and a second in 1833. These were reprinted, with alterations and additions, in 1842. His larger works are The Princess, a Medley; In Memoriam, a series of beautiful elegiac poems on the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam, son of the historian; Maud; Idylls of the King; and Enoch Arden.

FROM THE DYING SWAN.1

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.

One willow over the river wept,

And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,

Chasing itself at its own wild will,

And far thro' the marish green and still

The tangled water-courses slept,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy

Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear

The warble was low, and full and clear;

And floating about the under-sky,

1 The extracts from Mr Tennyson's poems are made by permission of Mr Tennyson.

M

Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flowed forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice

With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is rolled

Thro' the open gates of the city afar,

To the shepherd who watcheth the evening-star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,
And the willow-branches hoar and dank,
And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,
And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank,
And the silvery marish-flowers that throng
The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song.

FROM LOCKSLEY HALL.

VISION OF THE WORLD'S PROGRESS.

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be ;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly
dew

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue ;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunderstorm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

FROM IN MEMORIAM.

THE DIRGE OF THE OLD YEAR.

Ring out wild bells to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light :
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.

ROBERT BROWNING: 1812——.

Robert Browning has the reputation of being one of the most original, and at the same time one of the most unpopular poets of the present day. He was educated at the London University. His chief poems are the drama of Paracelsus, Pipi Passes, Men and Women, and his Dramatic Lyrics.

FROM DRAMATIC LYRICS.1

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD.

Oh, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows—
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower—

Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

The extracts from the poems of Mr and Mrs Browning are made by permission of Messrs Chapman and Hall.

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