THE PANTHEON.-BYRON.
Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime-
Shrine of all saints, and temple of all gods,
From Jove to Jesus-spared and blest by time;
Looking tranquility, while falls or nods
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods
His way through thorns to ashes-glorious dome!
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrant's rods
Shiver
upon thee-sanctuary and home
Of art and piety-Pantheon-pride of Rome!
EVE'S LOVE FOR ADAM.-MILTON.
To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorned: "My author and disposer, what thou bid'st Unargued I obey: so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise.
With thee conversing I forget all time;
All seasons and their change, all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun,
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile earth.
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild; then silent night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn, when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night,
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon,
Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.
THE CORAL INSECT.-MRS, SIGOURNEY,
Toil on! toil on! ye ephemeral train,
Who build in the tossing and treacherous main ;
Toil on-for the wisdom of man ye mock,
With your sand-based structures and domes of rock;
Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,
And your arches spring up to the crested wave;
Ye 're a puny race, thus to boldly rear
A fabric so vast, in a realm so drear.
Ye bind the deep with your secret zone,
The ocean is sealed, and the surge a stone;
Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring,
Like the terraced pride of Assyria's king;
The turf looks green where the breakers rolled;
O'er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold;
The sea-snatched isle is the home of men,
And the mountains exult where the wave hath been.
But why do ye plant 'neath the billows dark
The wrecking reef for the gallant bark?
There are snares enough on the tented field,
'Mid the blossomed sweets that the valleys yield;
There are serpents to coil, ere the flowers are up;
There's a poison drop in man's purest cup;
There are foes that watch for his cradle breath,
And why need ye sow the floods with death?
With moldering bones the deeps are white,
From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;-
The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold,
With the mesh of the sea-boy's curls of gold,
And the gods of ocean have frowned to see
The mariner's bed in their halls of glee ;-
Hath earth no graves, that ye thus must spread
The boundless sea for the thronging dead?
Ye build-ye build-but ye enter not in,
Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in their sin;
From the land of promise ye fade and die,
Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye;—
As the kings of the cloud-crowned pyramid,
Their noteless bones in oblivion hid,
Ye slumber unmarked 'mid the desolate main,
While the wonder and pride of your works remain.
FAREWELL TO THE VANITIES OF THE WORLD,-I. WALTON,
Farewell, ye gilded follies, pleasing troubles;
Farewell, ye honored rags, ye glorious bubbles;
Fame 's but a hollow echo, gold, pure clay!
Honor, the darling but of one short day;
Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damasked skin;
State but a golden prison, to live in
And torture free born minds: embroidered trains,
Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins;
And blood allied to greatness, is alone
Inherited, not purchased, nor our own.
Fame, honor, beauty, state, train, blood, and birth,
Are but the fading blossoms of the earth.
I would be great, but that the sun doth still
Level his rays against the rising hill:
I would be high, but see the proudest oak
Most subject to the rending thunder stroke:
I would be rich, but see men too unkind,
Dig in the bowels of the richest mind:
I would be wise, but that I often see
The fox suspected while the ass goes free:
I would be fair, but see the fair and proud,
Like the bright sun, oft setting in a cloud :
I would be poor, but know the humble grass
Still trampled on by each unworthy ass:
Rich, hated; wise, suspected: scorned if poor:
Great, feared: fair, tempted: high, still envied more:
I have wished all; but now I wish for neither;
Great, high, rich, wise, nor fair; poor I'll be rather.
GERTRUDE OF WYOMING,-CAMPBELL,
The rose of England bloomed on Gertrude's cheek
What though these shades had seen her birth, her sire
A Briton's independence taught to seek
Far western worlds; and there his household fire
The light of social love did long inspire,
And many a halcyon day he lived to see
Unbroken, but by one misfortune dire,
When fate had 'reft his mutual heart-but she
Was gone-and Gertrude climbed a widowed father's knee.
A loved bequest,-and I may half impart
To them that feel the strong paternal tie,
How like a new existence to his heart
Uprose that living flower beneath his eye,
Dear as she was, from cherub infancy,
From hours when she would round his garden play,
To time when as the rip'ning years went by,
Her lovely mind could culture well repay,
And more engaging grew, from pleasing day to day.
I may not paint those thousand infant charms;
Unconscious fascination, undesigned !
The orison repeated in his arms,
For God to bless her sire and all mankind;
The book, the bosom on his knee reclined,
Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con,
(The playmate ere the teacher of her mind :)
All uncompanioned else her years had gone
Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone.
THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS,-Bryant.
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy
day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie; but cold November rain
Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.
The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the wild-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.
And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home, When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side:
In the cold moist earth we laid her when the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;
Yet not unmeet it was, that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.
She was a phantom of delight,
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair,
Like twilight, too, her dusky hair;
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