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The parson was working his Sunday's text,-
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the-Moses-was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill,-
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,

At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,-
Just the hour of the earthquake shock!
What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once-
All at once, and nothing first-
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

11. End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.

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II. THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

1. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

2. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped its growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

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3. Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

4. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathéd horn!

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings

5. Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

III. THE LAST LEAF.

1. I saw him once before,

As he passed by the door,
And again

The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

2. They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,

Not a better man was found

By the crier on his round

Through the town.

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CHARACTERIZATION BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

1. No English poet, with the possible exception of Byron, has so ministered to the natural appetite for poetry in the people as Tennyson. Byron did this-unintentionally, as all genius does -by warming and arousing their dormant sentiment: Tennyson

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by surprising them into the recognition of a new luxury in the harmony and movement of poetic speech. I use the word "luxury" purposely; for no other word will express the glow and richness and fulness of his technical qualities. It was scarcely a wonder that a generation accustomed to look for compact and palpable intellectual forms in poetry—a generation which was still hostile to Keats and Shelley, and had not yet caught up with Wordsworth-should at first regard this new flower as an interpolating weed. But when its blossom-buds fully expanded into gorgeous, velvety-crimsoned, golden-anthered tiger-lilies, filling the atmosphere of our day with deep, intoxicating spiceodors, how much less wonder that others should snatch the seed and seek to make the acknowledged flower their own?

2. Tennyson must be held guiltless of all that his followers and imitators have done. His own personal aim has been pure and lofty; but without his intention or will, or even expectation, he has stimulated into existence a school of what might be called Decorative Poetry. I take the adjective from its present application to a school of art. I have heard more than one distinguished painter in England say of painting, "It is simply a decorative art." Hence it needs only a sufficiency of form to present color; the expression of an idea, perspective, chiaro-oscuro do not belong to it; for these address themselves to the mind, whereas art addresses itself only to the eye." This is no place to discuss such a materialistic heresy; I mention it only to make my meaning clear. We may equally say that decorative poetry addresses itself only to the ears, and seeks to occupy an intermediate ground between poetry and music. I need not give instances. They are becoming so common that the natural taste of mankind, which may be surprised and perverted for a time, is beginning to grow fatigued, and the flower-as Tennyson justly complains in his somewhat petulant poem-will soon be a weed again.

3. Such poems as Morte d' Arthur, The Talking Oak, Locksley Hall, Ulysses, and The Two Voices, wherein thought, passion, and imagination, combined in their true proportions, breathe through full, rich, and haunting forms of verse, at once gave Tennyson his place in English literature. The fastidious care with which every image was wrought, every bar of the movement adjusted

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