"That germ of kindness in the womb "Once every year, when carols wake I journey to these healing snows. "I stanch with ice my burning breast, With silence balm my whirling brain. O Brandan! to this hour of rest That Joppan leper's ease was pain." Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes; SONNET: ON FIRST LOOKING INTO JOHN KEATS. MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold, Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: ADONAIS. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. HERE pause these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become? The One remains, the many change and pass; Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? And man, and woman; and what still is dear The soft sky smiles, - the low wind whispers near: 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, No more let Life divide what Death can join together. That light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The breath whose might I have invoked in song I am borne darkly, fearfully afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. HESTER. CHARLES LAMB. WHEN maidens such as Hester die, A month or more hath she been dead, A springy motion in her gait, Of pride and joy no common rate I know not by what name beside She did inherit. Her parents held the Quaker rule But she was trained in Nature's school- A waking eye, a prying mind, A heart that stirs is hard to bind, A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blindYe could not Hester. My sprightly neighbor gone before When from thy cheerful eyes, a ray LUCY. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. THREE years she grew in sun and shower; On earth was never sown ; "Myself will to my darling be The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain. "The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend: Nor shall she fail to see, |