Yet would he bless thee and be grateful, didst thou feed his spirit,
And teach him that thine almsgivings are charities, are loves:
-I saw a beggar in the street, and another beggar pitied him;
Sympathy sank into his soul, and the pitied one felt happier :
Anon passed by a cavalcade, children of wealth and gayety;
They laughed, and looked upon the beggar, and the gallants flung
him gold;

He, poor spirit-humbled wretch, gathered up their givings with a curse,

And went to share it with his brother, the beggar who had pitied him!

OF BEAUTY.

THOU mightier than Manoah's son, whence is thy great strength, And wherein the secret of thy craft, O charmer charming wisely?— For thou art strong in weakness, and in artlessness well skilled, Constant in the multitudes of change, and simple amidst intricate complexity.

Folly's shallow lip can ask the deepest question,

And many wise in many words should answer, What is beauty?-
Who shall separate the hues that flicker on a dying dolphin,
Or analyze the jewelled lights that deck the peacock's train,
Or shrewdly mix upon a palette the tints of an iridescent spar,
Or set in rank the wandering shades about a watered silk?

FOR beauty is intangible, vague, ill to be defined;

She hath the coat of a chameleon, changing while we watch it;
Strangely woven is the web, disorderly yet harmonious,

A glistening robe of mingled mesh, that may not be unravelled.
It is shot with heaven's blue, the soul of summer skies,
And twisted strings of light, the mind of noonday suns,

And ruddy gleams of life, that roll along the veins,

A coat of many colors, running curiously together.

There is threefold beauty for man; twofold beauty for the animal; And the beauty of inanimates is single: body, temper, spirit.

Multiplied in endless combination, issue the changeable results; Each class verging on the other twain, with imperceptible gradation;

And every individual in each having his propriety of difference,

So that the meanest of creation bringeth in a tribute of the beautiful.

Yea, from the worst in favor shineth out a fitness of design,
The patent mark of beauty, its Maker's name impressed.

For the great Creator's seal is set to all his works;

Its quarterings are Attributes of praise, and all the shield is beauty.
So that heraldic blazon is Creation's common signet;

And the universal family of life goeth in the colors of its Lord ;
But each one, as a several son, shall bear those arms with a dif-

ference:

Beauty, various in phase, and similar in seeming oppositions.
The coins of old Rome were struck with a diversity for each;

Barely two be found alike in every Cæsar's image:

So note thou the seals ranged around the charters of the Universe; The finger of God is the stamp upon them all, but each hath its separate variety.

BEAUTY, theme of innocence, how may guilt discourse thee?

Let holy angels sing thy praise, for man hath marred thy visage. Still the maimed torso of a Theseus can gladden taste with its pro

portions;

Though sin hath shattered every limb, how comely are the fragments!

And music leaveth on the ear a memory of sweet sounds;

And broken arches charm the sight with hints of fair completeness.
So, while humbled at the ruin, be thou grateful for the relics;
Go forth, and look on all around with kind, uncaptious eye:
Freely let us wander through these unfrequented ways,
And talk of glorious beauty filling all the world.

FOR beauty hideth every where, that Reason's child may seek her, And, having found the gem of price, may set it in God's crown. Beauty nestleth in the rosebud, or walketh the firmament with

planets;

She is heard in the beetle's evening hymn, and shouteth in the matins of the sun;

The cheek of the peach is glowing with her smile, her splendor blazeth in the lightning,

She is the dryad of the woods, the naiad of the streams;

Her golden hair hath tapestried the silkworm's silent chamber,
And to her measured harmonies the wild waves beat in time:
With tinkling feet at eventide she danceth in the meadow,
Or, like a Titan, lieth stretched athwart the ridgy Alps;
She is rising, in her veil of mist, a Venus from the waters,
Men gaze upon the loveliness, and lo, it is beautiful exceedingly;
She, with the might of a Briareus, is dragging down the clouds upon
the mountain,

Men look upon the grandeur, — and lo, it is excellent in glory.

For I judge that beauty and sublimity be but the lesser and the

great,

Sublime, as magnified to giants, and beautiful, diminished into fairies.

It were a false fancy to solve all beauty by desire,

It were a lowering thought to expound sublimity by dread.
Cowardly men with trembling hearts have feared the furious storm,
Nor felt its thrilling beauty: but is it then not beautiful?

And careless men, at summer's eve, have loved the dimpled waves;
O that smile upon the seas, hath it no sublimity ?
Dost thou nothing know of this, - -to be awed at woman's beauty?
Nor, with exhilarated heart, to hail the crashing thunder?

Thou hast much to learn, that never found a fearfulness in flowers; Thou hast missed of joy, that never basked in beauties of the terrible.

SHOW me an enthusiast in aught; he hath noted one thing narrowly.

And lo, his keenness hath detected the one dear hiding-place of

beauty.

Then he boasteth, simple soul, flattered by discovery,

Fancying that no science else can show so fair and precious:

He hath found a ray of light, and cherisheth the treasure in his

closet,

Mocking at those larger minds, that bathe in floods of noon;

Lo, what a jewel hath he gotten, - this is the monopolist of

And lightly heeding all beside, he poured his yearnings thither

ward:

Be it for love, or for learning, habit, art, or nature,
Exclusive thought is all the cause of this particular zeal.
But the like intensity of fitness, kind and skilful beauty,
So pleasant to his mind in one thing, filleth all beside :
From the waking minute of a chrysalis to the perfect cycle of
chronology,

From the centipede's jointed armor to the mammoth's fossil ribs,
From the kingfisher's shrill note to the cataract's thundering bass,
From the greensward's grateful hues to the fascinating eye of

woman,

Beauty, various in all things, setteth up her home in each,
Shedding graciously around an omnipresent smile.

THERE is beauty in the rolling clouds, and placid shingle beach,
In feathery snows, and whistling winds, and dun, electric skies;
There is beauty in the rounded woods, dank with heavy foliage,
In laughing fields, and dinted hills, the valley and its lake;
There is beauty in the gullies, beauty on the cliffs, beauty in sun
and shade,

In rocks and rivers, seas and plains, - the earth is drowned in

beauty.

BEAUTY coileth with the watersnake, and is cradled in the shrewmouse's nest,

She flitteth out with evening bats, and the soft mole hid her in his tunnel;

The limpet is encamped upon the shore, and beauty not a stranger to his tent:

The silvery dace and golden carp thread the rushes with her :

She saileth into clouds with an eagle, she fluttereth into tulips

with a humming-bird;

The pasturing kine are of her company, and she prowleth with the leopard in his jungle.

MOREOVER, for the reasonable world, its words, and acts, and speculation,

For frail and fallen manhood, in his every work and way,

Beauty, wrecked and stricken, lingereth still among us,

And morsels of that shattered sun are dropped upon the darkness. Yea, with savages and boors, the mean, the cruel, and besotted, Ever in extenuating grace hide some relics of the beautiful.

Gleams of kindness, deeds of courage, patience, justice, generos

ity,

Truth welcomed, knowledge prized, rebukes taken with contrition, All, in various measure, have been blest with some of these,

And never yet hath lived the man utterly beggared of the beautiful.

BEAUTY is as crystal in the torchlight, sparkling on the poet's page;

Virgin honey of Hymettus, distilled from the lips of the orator;
A savor of sweet spikenard, anointing the hands of liberality;
A feast of angels' food set upon the tables of religion.

She is seen in the tear of sorrow, and heard in the exuberance of mirth.

She goeth out early with the huntsman, and watcheth at the pillow of disease.

Science in his secret laws hath found out latent beauty;

Sphere and square, and cone and curve, are fashioned by her rules: Mechanism met her in his forces, fancy caught her in its flittings, Day is lightened by her eyes, and her eyelids close upon the night.

BEAUTY is dependence in the babe, a toothless, tender nursling;
Beauty is boldness in the boy, a curly, rosy truant;
Beauty is modesty and grace in fair, retiring girlhood;
Beauty is openness and strength in pure, high-minded youth;
Man, the noble and intelligent, gladdeneth earth in beauty,
And woman's beauty sunneth him, as with a smile from heaven.

THERE is none enchantment against beauty, Magician for all time, Whose potent spells of sympathy have charmed the passive world; Verily she reigneth a Semiramis; there is no might against her; The lords of every land are harnessed to her triumph.

Beauty is conqueror of all, nor ever yet was found among the nations

That iron-moulded mind, full proof against her power.

Beauty, like a summer's day, subdueth by sweet influences;

Who can wrestle against Sleep?-yet is that giant very gentle

ness.

AJAX may rout a phalanx, but beauty shall enslave him single

handed;

Pericles ruled Athens, yet is he the servant of Aspasia;