All thoughts of ill-all evil deeds, The action of the nobler will! All these must first be trampled down We have not wings, we cannot soar, The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs. The distant mountains that uprear Their frowning foreheads to the skies, The heights by great men reached and kept, Standing on what too long we bore, Nor deem the irrevocable past JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: 1819. Lowell, a popular American poet, is a native of Boston. He was educated at Harvard College, and devoted himself to legal studies, but does not seem ever to have practised. He afterwards became one of the editors of The North American Review. His works consist of three volumes of miscellaneous poems and The Biglow Papers, a series of satirical political poems, racy with Yankee humour and dialect. A DAY IN JUNE. 1 Oh! what is so rare as a day in June? An instinct within it that reaches and towers, The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, The little bird sits at his door in the sun, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; Now is the high-tide of the year, And whatever of life hath ebbed away Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing That the breeze comes whispering in our ear, That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, That the robin is plastering his house hard by. And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers we should not lack; We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing- Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how: Everything is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe SYDNEY DOBELL: 1824—. Sydney Dobell spent the greater part of his youth in the neighbourhood of Cheltenham, where his father was engaged in business as a wine-merchant. In his intervals of leisure from his duties in his father's counting-house, Dobell wrote The Roman, a dramatic poem, published in 1850. His subsequent poems are, Balder, Sonnets on the War (1855), written in conjunction with Mr Alexander Smith, and England in Time of War. THE RUINS OF ANCIENT ROME. From The Roman.1 My wondering eyes O'ercharged with sense, in shuddering unbelief Of summer turf, from which the mouldering walls Round the tremendous circle, arch on arch, Of buried empire. And the sun shone through them And pleasured him with some small daisy's face Grass-grown. As though even from the carrion of gods, Held heaven and earth aloof. All through the lorn Only the flowers of yesterday. Upstood The hoar unconscious walls, bisson and bare, Imperial, where the ever-passing fates Wore out the stone, strange hermit birds croaked forth 1 By permission of Mr Dobell, Sorrowful sounds, like watchers on the height And lying, through the chant of Psalm and Creed Rank weeds and grasses, Careless and nodding, grew, and asked no leave, Where Romans trembled. Where the wreck was saddest With conscious mien of place rose tall and still, HOW'S MY BOY? From England in Time of War.1 'Ho, Sailor of the sea! How's my boy-my boy?' 'What's your boy's name, good wife, And in what good ship sailed he?' 'My boy John— He that went to sea What care I for the ship, sailor? My boy's my boy to me. 1 By permission of Messrs Smith, Elder, & Co. |