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Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness.

And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.
Tell physic of her boldness,
Tell skill it is pretension,
Tell charity of coldness,
Tell law it is contention.
And as they do reply,

So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness,
Tell nature of decay,
Tell friendship of unkindness,
Tell justice of delay.

And if they will reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming ;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.

If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it fled the city;

Tell how the country erreth;
Tell, manhood shakes off pity;
Tell, virtue least preferreth.
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing,
Although to give the lie

Deserves no less than stabbing,
Yet, stab at thee who will,
No stab the soul can kill.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

LETTERS.

EVERY day brings a ship,
Every ship brings a word;
Well for those who have no fear,
Looking seaward well assured
That the word the vessel brings
Is the word they wish to hear.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

BRAHMA.

IF the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,

And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good!

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world, in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold:
To be, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

ALEXANDER POPE.

RETRIBUTION.

THOUGH the mills of God grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, With exactness grinds he all.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

THE FUTURE.

FROM THE "ESSAY ON MAN."

HEAVEN from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits

know :

Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions

soar;

Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul, proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way;

SEVEN AGES OF MAN.

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AS YOU LIKE IT."
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.
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 woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In 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 slippered 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 toward 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

PROCRASTINATION.

BE wise to-day; 't is madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead ;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears

The palm, "That all men are about to live,"

Forever on the brink of being born.

All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel: and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise :
At least their own; their future selves applaud:
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's veils;
That lodged in Fate's to wisdom they consign;
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone:
"T is not in folly not to scorn a fool,

| Time the supreme! - Time is eternity;
Pregnant with all eternity can give ;
Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile.
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal, only not adored.

Ah! how unjust to nature and himself,
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!
Like children babbling nonsense in their sports,
We censure nature for a span too short :
That span too short, we tax as tedious too;
Torture invention, all expedients tire,
To lash the lingering moments into speed,
When young, And whirl us (happy riddance !) from ourselves.
Art, brainless art! our furious charioteer
(For nature's voice, unstifled, would recall)
Drives headlong towards the precipice of death!
Death, most our dread; death, thus more dread-
ful made:

And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage.

indeed,

In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool ;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.
And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal but themselves;
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sud-
den dread;

But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where passed the shaft no trace is
found.

As from the wing no scar the sky retains,
The parted wave no furrow from the keel,
So dies in human hearts the thought of death;
Even with the tender tears which Nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.

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THE bell strikes one: we take no note of time,
But from its loss. To give it, then, a tongue,
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,

I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours:
Where are they? with the years beyond the flood?
It is the signal that demands despatch ;
How much is to be done! my hopes and fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down on what? a fathomless abyss;
A dread eternity! how surely mine!
And can eternity belong to me,

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

O, what a riddle of absurdity!

Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot wheels:
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blessed leisure is our curse: like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groaned
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement:
The next amusement mortgages our fields ;
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful time if prisons set us free.
Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turned.
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age;
Behold him when passed by; what then is

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Ye well arrayed! ye lilies of our land!
Ye lilies male! who neither toil nor spin;
(As sister-lilies might ;) if not so wise
As Solomon, more sumptuous to the sight!
Ye delicate; who nothing can support,
Yourselves most insupportable! for whom
The winter rose must blow, the sun put on
A brighter beam in Leo; silky-soft
Favonius! breathe still softer, or be chid;
And other worlds send odors, sauce, and song,
And robes, and notions, framed in foreign looms!
O ye Lorenzos of our age! who deem
One moment unamused a misery
Not made for feeble man! who call aloud
For every bawble drivelled o'er by sense;
For rattles and conceits of every cast,
For change of follies and relays of joy,

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