To you the beauties of the autumnal year
Make mournful emblems, and you think of man
Doom'd to the grave's long winter, spirit broke,
Bending beneath the burden of his years,
Sense dull'd and fretful, full of aches and pains,
Yet clinging still to life. To me they show
The calm decay of nature, when the mind
Retains its strength, and in the languid eye,
Religion's holy hopes kindle a joy

That makes old age look lovely. All to you
Is dark and cheerless; you, in this fair world,
See some destroying principle abroad,
Air, earth, and water, full of living things,
Each on the other preying; and the ways
Of man a strange, perplexing labyrinth,
Where crimes and miseries, each producing each,
Render life loathsome, and destroy the hope
That should in death bring comfort. Oh! my friend,
That thy faith were as mine! that thou couldst see
Death still producing life, and evil still
Working its own destruction; couldst behold
The strifes and tumults of this troubled world,
With the strong eye that sees the promised day
Dawn through this night of tempest! All things then
Would minister to joy; then should thine heart

Nothing but leaves; no garner'd sheaves
Of life's fair ripen'd grain;

Words, idle words, for earnest deeds;
We sow our seeds,-lo! tares and weeds;
We reap, with toil and pain,
Nothing but leaves !

Nothing but leaves; memory weaves
No veil to screen the past:

As we retrace our weary way,
Counting each lost and misspent day,
We find, sadly, at last,
Nothing but leaves !

And shall we meet the Master so,

Bearing our wither'd leaves?
The Saviour looks for perfect fruit;
We stand before him, humbled, mute;
Waiting the words he breathes,-
'Nothing but leaves ?'

2257. LIFE. Measuring

To measure life learn thou betimes, and know, Toward solid good what leads the nearest way. Milton.

They err who measure life by years,

With false or thoughtless tongue; Some hearts grow old before their time; Others are always young.

'Tis not the number of the lines

On life's fast-filling page,

'Tis not the pulse's added throbs, Which constitute their age.

Some souls are serfs among the free,

While others nobly thrive;

They stand just where their fathers stood;

Dead, even while they live.

Others, all spirit, heart, and sense,
Theirs the mysterious power
To live in thrills of joy or woe,
A twelvemonth in an hour!

Seize, then, the minutes as they pass;
The woof of life is thought!
Warm up the colours; let them glow
With fire of fancy fraught.

Live to some purpose; make thy life A gift of use to thee:

A joy, a good, a golden hope,

A heavenly argosy.-Procter.

2258. LIFE. Mental

THE earth is full of life; the living Hand
Touch'd it with life; and all its forms expand
With principles of being made to suit

Man's varied powers and raise him from the brute.
And shall the earth of higher ends be full-
Earth which thou tread'st-and thy poor mind be
dull?

Thou talk of life, with half thy soul asleep?
Thou 'living dead man,' let thy spirit leap
Forth to the day, and let the fresh air blow
Through thy soul's shut-up mansion. Would'st thou
know

Something of what is life, shake off this death;
Have thy soul feel the universal breath
With which all nature's quick, and learn to be
Sharer in all that thou dost touch or see;
Break from thy body's grasp, thy spirit's trance;
Give thy soul air, thy faculties expanse;
Love, joy, even sorrow-yield thyself to all!
They make thy freedom, groveller, not thy thrall!
Knock off the shackles which thy spirit bind
To dust and sense, and set at large the mind!
Then move in sympathy with God's great whole,
And be like man at first, a LIVING SOUL.-Dana.

2259. LIFE. Mockery of

OH, life and all its charms decay!
Alluring, cheating, on they go;
The stream for ever steals away

In one irrevocable flow;

Its dearest charms, the charms of love,
Are fairest in their bud, and die
Whene'er their tender bloom we move;

We touch the leaves, they wither'd lie.
At distance all how gay, how sweet,

A very land of fairy blisses,

Where smiles, and tears, and soft words meet,
And willing lips unite in kisses;
But when we touch the magic shore,
The glow is gone, the charm is fled;
We find the dearest hues it wore

Are but the light around the dead,
And cold the hymeneal chain

That binds their cheated hearts in one,
And on, with many a step of pain,
Their weary race is sadly run;

And still as on they plod their way,

They find, as life's gay dreams depart, To close their being's toilsome day, Nought left them but a broken heart.

Percival.

2260. LIFE or Death: alike to the believer.

LORD, it belongs not to my care,

Whether I die or live;

To love and serve Thee is my share, And this Thy grace must give.

If life be long, I will be glad,
That I may long obey;

If short, yet why should I be sad
To soar to endless day?

Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than He went through before;

He that unto God's kingdom comes,
Must enter by His door.

Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet

Thy blessed face to see;

For if Thy work on earth be sweet,
What will Thy glory be?

Then shall I end my sad complaints,

And weary sinful days,

And join with the triumphant saints, Who sing Jehovah's praise.

My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim,

But 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.-Baxter.

2261. LIFE. Parable of

A MAN through Syria's deserts speeding,
His camel by the halter leading,
The beast grew shy, began to rear,
With gestures wild to plunge and tear;
So fearful was his snort and cry,
The driver was obliged to fly.
He ran, and saw a well which lay
By chance before him in the way.
He hears the snorting camel near,
And lost all consciousness in fear.
He plunged not in the shaft, but crept,
And hanging 'neath the brink he kept.
A blackberry bush its bed had found
Within the gaping fissures round;
Hereto the driver firmly clung,
While loud his doleful wailings rung.
He look'd on high, and lo! he saw

Above his head the camel's jaw,
About to seize him as his prize.
Then in the well he cast his eyes;
A dragon on the ground he saw,
That gaped with fearful, yawning jaw,
His prey there ready to devour,
When it should fall into his power.
Thus hovering between the two,
Another evil met his view.

Where in the stony fracture hung

The bush's roots, to which he clung,
He saw two mice within the crack,
The one was white, the other black.
He saw the black one and the white,
How they the roots alternate bite.
They gnaw'd, and pull'd, and dug around,
And tore from off the roots the ground;
When he the crumbling earth espies,
On high the dragon casts his eyes,
To see how soon, with load and all,
The bush, torn by the roots, would fall.
The man with anxious terror quail'd,
Besieged, surrounded, and assail'd,
While on this doleful situation,
Look'd round in vain for his salvation.
And as around he cast his eyes,
A little nodding branch he spies,
With berries ripe, nor did he feign
His lustful longing to restrain.
No more the camel's rage he saw,
Nor in the gulf the dragon's jaw,
No more the mice that gnaw'd the root,
When he beheld the luscious fruit.
He let the camel rage on high,
The dragon watch with lustful eye,
The mice gnaw at the bush's root,
While greedily he seized the fruit.
Right good he deem'd them to appease
His cravings, and he pluck'd at ease,
And thus his fear, his doleful lot,
Were in the juicy sweets forgot.
'Who is the fool,' methinks I hear
Thee ask, 'who thus forgets his fear?'
Know, then, O friend, that man art thou!
But take the explanation now :
The dragon lurking on the ground,
Is death's grim yawning gulf profound;
The threat'ning camel standing there,
Is life's anxiety and care.

'Tis you who gasp, 'twixt life and death,
Upon the world's green bush for breath.
The two that, gnawing at the tree,
Shall soon the bush, as well as thee,
Deliver to the dragon's might,

The mice, their names are day and night.

2264. LIFE. Periods of

OUR youth is like the opening day—
As swiftly pass the hours away;
While like the birds on active wing,
Unthinkingly we sport and sing.
Our manhood is the fervid noon-
Its sunny moments pass as soon ;
Its brightest hour will soon be o'er,
And time once past returns no more.
Old age is like the evening grey,
Closing around the traveller's way,
Who faint and weary seeks the road
Which leads him to a safe abode.

Morn, noon, and eve will soon be past,
And death's dark night approaches fast;
No light can cheer the midnight gloom,
Which reigns within the silent tomb.
Let us improve our life's short day,
That when its hours have pass'd away,

SHALL I be slave to every noble soul;

Study the dead, and to their spirits bend;
Or learn to read my own heart's folded scroll,
And make self-rule my end?

Thought from without-oh shall I take on trust,
And life from others modell'd steal or win;
Or shall I heave to light and clear of rust
My true life from within?

Oh, let me be myself! But where, oh, where,
Under this heap of precedent, this mound
Of customs, modes, and maxims, cumbrance rare,
Shall the Myself be found?

O thou Myself, thy fathers thee debarr'd

None of their wisdom, but their folly came Therewith; they smoothed the path, but made it hard

For thee to quit the same.

What aileth thee, myself? Alas! thy hands
Are tied with old opinions-heir and son,
Thou hast inherited thy father's lands

And all his debts thereon.-Jean Ingelow.

2266. LIFE. Play of

ALL the world's a stage; And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man, in his time, plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.

At first, the infant; Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy; with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail, Unwillingly, to school. And then, the lover; Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then, a soldier; Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard; Jealous in honour; sudden and quick in quarrel; Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth.

And then, the justice; With fair round belly, with good capon lined; With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut; Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon;
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Shakespeare.

2267. LIFE. Protracted

'ENLARGE my life with multitude of days!'
In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays!
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know
That life protracted is protracted woe.-Johnson.

LIVE to do good; but not with thought to win
From man return of any kindness done;
Remember Him who died on cross for sin,

The merciful, the meek, rejected One:
When He was slain for crime of doing good,
Canst thou expect return of gratitude?

Do good to all; but while thou servest best,
And at thy greatest cost, nerve thee to bear,
When thine own heart with anguish is opprest,
The cruel taunt, the cold averted air,

From lips which thou hast taught in hope to pray,
And eyes whose sorrows thou hast wiped away.

Still do thou good; but for His holy sake

Who died for thine; fixing thy purpose ever

I LIVE for those who love me,
For those I know are true,
For the heaven that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit too;
For all human ties that bind me,
For the task by God assign'd me,
For the bright hopes left behind me,
And the good that I can do.

I live to learn their story
Who've suffer'd for my sake,
To emulate their glory,

And follow in their wake;
Bards, martyrs, patriots, sages,
The noble of all ages,

Whose deeds crowd history's pages
And Time's great volume make.

I live to hail that season,

By gifted minds foretold,
When men shall live by reason
And not alone by gold-
When man to man united,
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted
As Eden was of old.

I live to hold communion
With all that is divine,
To feel there is a union

'Twixt nature's heart and mine; To profit by affliction,

Reap truths from fields of fiction,
Grow wiser from conviction,
And fulfil each great design.

I live for those who love me,
For those who know me true,
For the heaven that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit too;
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the future in the distance,

And the good that I can do.-Banks.