The worthless prey but only shows

The joy consisted in the strife ; Whate'er we take, as soon we lose

In Homer's riddle and in life.

So, whilst in feverish sleeps we think

We taste what waking we desire, The dream is better than the drink,

Which only feeds the sickly fire.

'T is much immortal beauty to admire,
But more immortal beauty to withstand;
The perfect soul can overcome desire,
If beauty with divine delight be scanned.
For what is beauty but the blooming child
Of fair Olympus, that in night must end,
And be forever from that bliss exiled,
If admiration stand too much its friend !
The wind may be enamored of a flower,
The ocean of the green and laughing shore,
The silver lightning of a lofty tower,
| But must not with too near a love adore ;
Or flower and margin and cloud-capped tower
Love and delight shall with delight devour !

To the mind's eye things well appear,

At distance through an artful glass ; Bring but the flattering objects near,

They're all a senseless gloomy mass.

LORD EDWARD THURLOW.

Seeing aright, we see our woes :

Then what avails it to have eyes ? From ignorance our comfort flows,

The only wretched are the wise.

BEAUTY.

MATTHEW PRIOR.

FROM "HYMN IN HONOR OF BEAUTY."

So every spirit, as it is most pure,

And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
OF MYSELF.

So it the fairer body doth procure
This only grant me, that my means may lie To habit in, and it more fairly dight
Too low for envy, for contempt too high. With cheerful grace and amiable sight ;
Some honor I would have,

For of the soul the body form doth take ; Not from great deeds, but good alone ;

For soul is form, and doth the body make. The unknown are better than ill known : Rumor can ope the grave.

Therefore wherever that thou dost behold Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends A comely corpse, with beauty fair enduel, Not on the number, but the choice, of friends.

Know this for certain, that the same doth holu

A beauteous soul, with fair conditions thewed, Books should, not business, entertain the light,

Fit to receive the seed of virtue strewed ; And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night.

For all that fair is, is by nature good ;
My house a cottage more

That is a sign to know the gentle blood.
Than palace; and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.
My garden painted o'er

Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pieasures Dwells in deformed tabernacle drowned, yield,

Either by chance, against the course of kind, Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

Or through unaptnesse in the substance found,

Which it assumed of some stubborne ground, This is frequently attributed to William Byrd. Bartlett, how. That will not yield unto her form's direction, ever, gives it to Sir Edward Dyer, referring to Hannah's Courtly Poets as authority. so, also, Ward, in his English Poets, Vol. 1 , 1880. | But is performed with some foul imperfection.

A FANCY FROM FONTENELLE. “De mémoires de Roses on n'a point vu mourir le Jardinier.” The Rose in the garden slipped her bud, And she laughed in the pride of her youthful blood, As she thought of the Gardener standing by “He is old—so old! And he soon must die!”

The full Rose waxed in the warm June air,
And she spread and spread till her heart lay bare:
And she laughed once more as she heard his tread-
“ He is older now! He will soon be dead !”

But the breeze of the morning blew, and found
That the leaves of the blown Rose strewed the ground;
And he came at noon, that Gardener old,
And he raked them gently under the mould.

And I wove the thing to a random rhyme :
For the Rose is Beauty; the Gardener, Time.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses,
All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing

Cowards and laggards fall back; but alert to the saddle,
Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn, galloping legion,
With stirrup-cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him.

The road is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:
What odds? We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding

Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,
And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam :
Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world, and her pitiful beauty!
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, the commotion of sinewy mane-tossing horses,
All night, from their cells, the importunate tramping and neighing.

We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind;
We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, o God! All 's well with Thy troopers that follow !

LOUISE I MOGEN GUINEY.