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And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me

Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!"

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'Tis all that I implore;

In life and death, a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

1819-1861.

[BORN at Liverpool, Jan. 1, 1819; passed some years of his childhood at Charlestown, in Virginia; was at school at Rugby from 1829 to 1837; was Scholar of Balliol and afterwards Fellow and Tutor of Oriel; resigned his offices in Oxford in 1848; was Principal of University Hall, London, for a short time afterwards; again went to America; returned in 1853 to take a post in the Education Office. He died at Florence, Nov. 13, 1861. His poems were chiefly written between 1840 and 1850, The Bothie being published in 1848, and many of the shorter poems appearing in a volume called Ambarvalia in the next year.]

QUA CURSUM VENTUS.

As ships, becalined at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail at dawn of day

Arescarce longleagues apart descried;

When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving, side by side:

E'en so- but why the tale reveal

Of those, whom year by year unchanged,

Brief absence joined anew to feel,

Astounded, soul from soul estranged?

At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,

Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!

To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, Brave barks! In light, in darkness too, Through winds and tides one compass guides

To that, and your own selves, be true.

But O blithe breeze! and O great seas, Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,

On your wide plain they join again,

Together lead them home at last.

One port, methought, alike they sought,

One purpose hold where'er they fare,O bounding breeze, O rushing seas! At last, at last, unite them there!

QUI LABORAT, ORAT. O ONLY Source of all our light and life, Whom as our truth, our strength, we see and feel,

But whom the hours of mortal moral strife

Alone aright reveal!

Mine inmost soul, before Thee inly brought,

Thy presence owns ineffable, divine; Chastised each rebel self-encentered thought,

My will adoreth Thine. With eye down-dropt, if then this earthly mind

Speechless remain, or speechless e'en depart;

Nor seek to see - for what of earthly kind

Can see Thee as Thou art? — If well-assured 'tis but profanely bold In thought's abstractest forms to seem to see,

It dare not dare the dread communion hold

In ways unworthy Thee,

O not unowned, thou shalt unnamed forgive,

In wordly walks the prayerless heart
prepare;

And if in work its life it seem to live,
Shalt make that work be prayer.

Nor times shall lack, when while the
work it plies,

Unsummoned powers the blinding film shall part,

And scarce by happy tears made dim, the eyes

In recognition start,

But, as thou willest, give or e'en forbear
The beatific supersensual sight,
So, with Thy blessing blest, that humbler
prayer

Approach Thee morn and night.

"WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLE-
NESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF
TURNING."

IT fortifies my soul to know
That, though I perish, Truth is so:
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.

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CHARLES KINGSLEY.

1819-1875.

[BORN at Holne Vicarage, Devonshire, in 1819, and educated, partly at Helston Grammar School, and partly at King's College, London, and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was Rector of Eversley in Hampshire; Professor of Modern History at his old university from 1860 to 1869; and Canon of Westminster in 1872. Chief amor.g his thirty-five publications are The Saint's Tragedy (1848), Alton Locke and Yeast (1849), Hypatia (1853), The Heroes (1856), Andromeda (1858), The Water-Babies (1863), and Prose-Idylls (1873). He died in 1875.]

THE SANDS OF DEE.

"OH, Mary, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee."

The western wind was wild and dark with foam,

And all alone went she.

The western tide crept up along the

sand,

And o'er and o'er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see.

The rolling mist came down and hid the land:

And never home came she.

They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,

And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown;

But men must work, and women must weep,

"Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating Though storms be sudden, and waters

hair

A tress of golden hair,

A drowned maiden's hair, Above the nets at sea?"

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes of Dee.

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,

The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea.

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,

Across the sands of Dee.

deep,

And the harbor-bar be moaning.

Three corpses lie out in the shining sands,

In the morning gleam, as the tide goes down,

And the women are weeping and wringing their hands,

For those who will never come home

to the town.

For men must work, and women must weep,

And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep,

And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

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GEORGE ELIOT

(MARIAN EVANS LEWES CROSS).

1819-1880.

[BORN at South Farm, Colton, Warwickshire, Nov. 22, 1819. Was the daughter of a poor curate, but was adopted by a wealthy clergyman, who gave her a careful education. She became a pupil of Herbert Spencer, and under his training acquired great breadth of mental development, learning Greek, French, and Italian, studying music and art as well as metaphysics and logic. In 1851, she went to London to join the staff of the Westminster Review. One of the chief writers for this quarterly was George H. Lewes, whose wife she subsequently became, and after his death (1878) she married Mr. J. N. Cross, May 6, 1880. Her death took place Dec. 22, 1880, and her biography, prepared by Mr. Cross, will, it is anticipated, be published during the year (1884). Her first novel was Scenes of Clerical Life (1858), and was rapidly followed by others which proved marvellously successful, and gave her an enduring position among the writers of fiction. Her poems, The Spanish Gipsy (1868), and Jubal and other Poems (1870), though conBaining many beautiful passages, do not, in popular estimation, rank with her prose works.]

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Till of thy countenance the alluring | My lowly love, that soaring seeks to

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Tell him, for that he hath such royal power

'Twere hard for him to think how small a thing,

How slight a sign, would make a wealthy dower

For one like me, the bride of that pale king

Whose bed is mine at some swift-nearing hour.

Go to my lord, and to his memory bring That happy birthday of my sorrowing When his large glance made meaner gazers glad,

Entering the bannered lists: 'twas then I had

The wound that laid me in the arms of Death.

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O patient life! O tender strife!

The two still sat together there,
The red light shone about their knees;
But all the heads by slow degrees
Had gone and left that lonely pair.
O voyage fast!

O vanished past!

The red light shone upon the floor

And made the space between them wide;

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