Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide;
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need

Either man's work or His own gifts; who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state
Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.'

Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank

Of nature's works, to me expunged and razed,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather Thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her pow'rs
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.—Milton.

OFT when blind mortals think themselves secure, In height of bliss, they touch the brink of ruin. Thomson.

338. BLISS. Sublunary

THE spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.
O ye
bless'd scenes of permanent delight!
Full, above measure! lasting, beyond bound!
A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.

Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end;
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light.

Bliss! sublunary bliss !-proud words and vain; Implicit treason to Divine decree !

A bold invasion of the rights of heaven!
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air.
Oh had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace,
What darts of agony had miss'd my heart !— Young.

342. BODY. The glorified

'TIS night behold, as if by death opprest,
The sun his rays in gloom sepulchral hide!
'Tis day: behold, with renovated pride,
In the magnificence of morning drest,
The sun, rejoicing, lifts his orient crest;

A bridegroom issuing forth to meet his bride!
Thus, like the sun beneath the ocean tide,
The Christian seeks the chamber of his rest;
Thus, like the sun, to rise !-But not the same
Shall rise, as when his mortal course was run:
To that unearthly, pure, ethereal flame,

That robe of amaranthine radiance spun, No nearer likeness this vile form may claim, Than glimmering starlight to yon glorious sun.

Majestic and indissolubly firm,

As ranks of veteran warriors in the field;
Each by himself alone, and singly seen-
A sea of valour, dread! invincible!

Books of this sort, or sacred, or profane,
Which virtue help'd, were titled not amiss,
The medicine of the mind: who read them, read
Wisdom, and was refresh'd; and on his path
Of pilgrimage with healthier step advanced.-Pollok.

348. BOOKS. Good

LEARNING is more profound

When in few solid authors 't may be found.
A few good books, digested well, do feed
The mind; much cloys, or doth ill humours breed.
Heath.

349. BOOKS. Immortal

THE Wise

(Minstrel or Sage), out of their books are clay;
But in their books, as from their graves, they rise,
Angels, that side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us!

We call some books immortal! Do they live?
If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure.
In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace-
God wills that nothing evil should endure;
The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole,
As the dust leaves the disembodied soul!

Bulwer Lytton.

350. BOOKS: men of higher stature. Books are men of higher stature, And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear! Mrs Browning.

351. BOOKS. Multiplicity of

PRODUCTIVE was the world In many things, but most in books: like swarms Of locusts which God sent to vex a land Rebellious long, admonish'd long in vain, Their numbers they pour'd annually on man, From heads conceiving still; perpetual birth! Thou wonderest how the world contain'd them all! Thy wonder stay: like men, this was their doom: That dust they were, and should to dust return. And oft their fathers, childless and bereaved, Wept o'er their graves, when they themselves were

green,

And on them fell, as fell on every age,

As on their authors fell, oblivious Night.-Pollok.

352. BOOKS: never-failing friends.

My days among the dead are pass'd;
Around me I behold,

Leave to enjoy myself. That place that does
Contain my books, the best companions, is
To me a glorious court, where hourly I
Converse with the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes for variety I confer

With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,
Unto a strict account; and in my fancy
Deface their ill-placed statues. Can I then
Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace
Uncertain vanities? No: be it your care
To augment a heap of wealth: it shall be mine
To increase in knowledge.—Fletcher.

354. BOOKS: recall the past.

IN them, we

Who, but for them, upon that inch of ground
We call THE PRESENT,' from the cell could see
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar;
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round,
Traverse all space, and number every star,
And feel the Near less household than the Far!
There is no Past, so long as Books shall live!
A disinterr'd Pompeii wakes again
For him who seeks you well; lost cities give
Up their untarnish'd wonders, and the reign
Of Jove revives and Saturn: at our will
Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill;
Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe; along
Leucadia's headland sighs the Lesbian's song;
With Egypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile,
And learn how worlds are barter'd for a smile;
Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er,
Ope but that page-lo, Babylon once more!

Bulwer Lytton.

The past but lives in words: a thousand ages Were blank, if books had not evoked their ghosts, And kept the pale, unbodied shades to warn us From fleshless lips.-Bulwer Lytton.

355 BOOKS: their chief perfections.

'Tis in books the chief

Of all perfections to be plain and brief.

Butler.

Books are not seldom talismans and spells.

358. BOOKS: their ministry.

Cowper.

DREAMS, books, are each a world; and books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good; Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

Wordsworth.

We never speak our deepest feelings;
Our holiest hopes have no revealings,
Save in the gleams that light the face,
Or fancies that the pen may trace.
And hence to books the heart must turn
When with unspoken thoughts we yearn,
And gather from the silent page
The just reproof, the counsel sage,
The consolation kind and true

That soothes and heals the wounded heart.
Mrs Hale.

359. BOOKS: treasure-houses.

Books are yours,

Within whose silent chambers treasure lies
Preserved from age to age; more precious far
Than that accumulated store of gold
And orient gems which, for a day of need,
The Sultan hides deep in ancestral tombs.
These hoards of truth you can unlock at will.
Wordsworth.

360. BOOKWORM. The

UNCERTAIN and unsettled he remains,
Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself.
Milton.

361. BLUNTNESS.

THIS is some fellow

Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb,
Quite from his nature; he can't flatter, he!-
An honest mind and plain, - he must speak truth;
An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plain-

ness

Harbour more craft, and far corrupter ends, Than twenty silly ducking observants,

That stretch their duty nicely.-Shakespeare.

363. BRAVE MEN.

No, there is a necessity in fate

Why still the brave bold man is fortunate;

He keeps his object ever full in sight,

And that assurance holds him firm and right:

True, 'tis a narrow path that leads to bliss,

But right before there is no precipice;

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,

Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,

But while hope lives

Let not the generous die. 'Tis late before The brave despair.—Thomson.

364. BREVITY.

SINCE brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.-Shakespeare.

365. BROODING OVER TROUBLE: forbidden.

IMPRISON not

Within thy breast

Needless germs of sorrow;

thies with God

In hot teardrops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod.

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame

Through its ocean-sunder'd fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.-Lowell.

367. BROTHERHOOD. Disbelief of man's
EARLY from heaven it was reveal'd, and oft
Repeated in the world, from pulpits preach'd,
And penn'd and read in holy books, that God
Respected not the persons of mankind.
Had this been truly credited and felt,

The king, in purple robe, had own'd, indeed,
The beggar for his brother; pride of rank
And office thaw'd into paternal love;
Oppression fear'd the day of equal rights
Predicted; covetous extortion kept

In mind the hour of reck'ning, soon to come;
And bribed injustice thought of being judged,
When he should stand on equal foot beside
The man he wrong'd. And surely-nay, 'tis true,
Most true, beyond all whispering of doubt,
That he, who lifted up the reeking scourge,
Dripping with gore from the slave's back, before
He struck again, had paused, and seriously
Of that tribunal thought, where God Himself
Should look him in the face, and ask in wrath,
'Why didst thou this? Man! was he not thy brother?
Bone of thy bone, and flesh and blood of thine?'
But ah! this truth, by heaven and reason taught,
Was never fully credited on earth.

The titled, flatter'd, lofty men of power,

Whose wealth bought verdicts of applause for deeds
Of wickedness, could ne'er believe the time
Should truly come, when judgment should proceed
Impartially against them, and they, too,
Have no good speaker at the Judge's ear,
No witnesses to bring them off for gold,
No power to turn the sentence from its course;
And they of low estate, who saw themselves

Day after day, despised, and wrong'd, and mock'd,
Without redress, could scarcely think the day
Should e'er arrive, when they in truth should stand
On perfect level with the potentates
And princes of the earth, and have their cause
Examined fairly, and their rights allow'd.
But now this truth was felt, believed and felt,
That men were really of a common stock;
That no man ever had been more than man.

Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,

Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer

Than that of all his brethren, low or high;

Who to the Right can feel himself the truer
For being gently patient with the wrong,
Who sees a brother in the evil-doer,

And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his song-
This, this is he for whom the world is waiting
To sing the beatings of its mighty heart;
Too long hath it been patient with the grating
Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it mis-named Art.
To him the smiling soul of man shall listen,
Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside,
And once again in every eye shall glisten
The glory of a nature satisfied.-Lowell.

Truly shape and fashion these ;

Leave no yawning gaps between ; Think not, because no man sees,

Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean;

Else our lives are incomplete,

Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet

Stumble as they seek to climb.
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.