O, how happy here's our leisure!

O, how innocent our pleasure!
O ye valleys! O ye mountains!
O ye groves and crystal fountains!
How I love, at liberty,

By turns to come and visit ye!

Dear solitude, the soul's best friend,

That man acquainted with himself dost make, And all his Maker's wonders to intend,

With thee I here converse at will,

And would be glad to do so still,

For is it thou alone that keep'st the soul awake.

How calm and quiet a delight

Is it, alone

To read and meditate and write,

By none offended, and offending none! To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease; And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease.

O my beloved nymph, fair Dove,
Princess of rivers, how I love

Upon thy flowery banks to lie,
And view thy silver stream,
When gilded by a summer's beam!
And in it all thy wanton fry
Playing at liberty,

And with my angle upon them
The all of treachery

I ever learned industriously to try!

Such streains Rome's yellow Tiber cannot show,
The Iberian Tagus, or Ligurian Po;
The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine,

Are puddle-water, all, compared with thine;
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are
With thine, much purer, to compare ;
The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine
Are both too mean,

Beloved Dove, with thee

To vie priority;

Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoined, submit, And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.

O my beloved rocks, that rise

To awe the earth and brave the skies!
From some aspiring mountain's crown

How dearly do I love,

Giddy with pleasure, to look down,

And from the vales to view the noble heights

above!

O my beloved caves! from dog-star's heat,
And all anxieties, my safe retreat;
What safety, privacy, what true delight,
In the artificial night

Your gloomy entrails make,
Have I taken, do I take !

How oft, when grief has made me fly,
To hide me from society

THE quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath it is twice blessed,
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
"T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings:
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthronéd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice.

SHAKESPEARE

THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.

KING FRANCIS was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,

With shield of proof shield' me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;
O, make in me those civil wars to cease:
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed;
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see.

SLEEP.

1

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

O earth, so full of dreary noise!
O men, with wailing in your voice!
O delvéd gold the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And "giveth his beloved sleep."

His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap;
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
"He giveth his beloved sleep."

For me, my heart, that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,

Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,

And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody?

O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile,

In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch,
A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,

And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafening clamors in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down,
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

How wonderful is Death! Death and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon, With lips of lurid blue; The other, rosy as the morn When, throned on ocean's wave, It blushes o'er the world: Yet both so passing wonderful!

Hath then the gloomy Power

Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres
Seized on her sinless soul?

Must then that peerless form

Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, those azure veins Which steal like streams along a field of snow, That lovely outline which is fair

As breathing marble, perish?
Must putrefaction's breath
Leave nothing of this heavenly sight
But loathsomeness and ruin?
Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it only a sweet slumber
Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning
Chaseth into darkness?

Will Ianthe wake again,

And give that faithful bosom joy, Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch Light, life, and rapture from her smile?

Yes! she will wake again,

Although her glowing limbs are motionless,
And silent those sweet lips,
Once breathing eloquence
That might have soothed a tiger's rage,
Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.
Her dewy eyes are closed,

And on their lids, whose texture fine

SLEEPLESSNESS.

A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky;

I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless; and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees,
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.

Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away:
Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blesséd barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,

CARILLON.

IN the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.

Then, with deep sonorous clangor
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck the clock eleven,
And, from out the silent heaven,
Silence on the town descended.
Silence, silence everywhere,