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All thoughts of ill-all evil deeds,
That have their root in thoughts of ill,
Whatever hinders or impedes

The action of the nobler will!

All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright field of fair renown
The right of eminent domain !

We have not wings, we cannot soar,
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees-by more and more—
The cloudy summits of our time.

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,
Are crossed by pathways that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore,
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern, unseen before,
A path to higher destinies.

Nor deem the irrevocable past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If rising on its wrecks at last,
To something nobler we attain.

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?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays :
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;

The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf or blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace.

The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,

And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the egg beneath her wings,

And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest-
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year,

And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God so wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell.

We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;

That the breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,

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-
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how:
Everything is happy now,

Everything is upward striving;

'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue—
"Tis the natural way of living:

Who knows whither the clouds have fled?

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake;
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache:
The soul partakes the season's youth,

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

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
Unclose upon the lone inane expanse

Of summer turf, from which the mouldering walls
Shut not the sunshine; like a green still lake
Girt by decaying hills. Urging my gaze

Round the tremendous circle, arch on arch,
And pile on pile, that tired the travelled eye,
I saw the yawning jaws and sightless sockets
Gape to the heedless air. Like the death'shead

Of buried empire. And the sun shone through them
With calm avoidance that left them more dark,

And pleasured him with some small daisy's face

Grass-grown. As though even from the carrion of gods,
The instinct of the living universe

Held heaven and earth aloof. All through the lorn
Vacuity winds came and went, but stirred

Only the flowers of yesterday. Upstood

The hoar unconscious walls, bisson and bare,
Like an old man deaf, blind, and gray, in whom
The
years of old stand in the sun, and murmur
Of childhood and the dead. From parapets
Where the sky rests, from broken niches—each
More than Olympus-for gods dwelt in them-
Below from senatorial haunts and seats

Imperial, where the ever-passing fates

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Wore out the stone, strange hermit birds croaked forth

1 By permission of Mr Dobell,

Sorrowful sounds, like watchers on the height
Crying the hours of ruin. When the clouds
Dressed every myrtle on the walls in mourning.
With calm prerogative the eternal pile
Impassive shone with the unearthly light
Of immortality. When conquering suns
Triumphed in jubilant earth, it stood out dark
With thoughts of ages: like some mighty captive
Upon his death-bed in a Christian land,

And lying, through the chant of Psalm and Creed
Unshriven and stern, with peace upon his brow,
And on his lips strange gods.

Rank weeds and grasses,

Careless and nodding, grew, and asked no leave,

Where Romans trembled. Where the wreck was saddest
Sweet pensive herbs, that had been gay elsewhere,

With conscious mien of place rose tall and still,
And bent with duty. Like some village children
Who found a dead king on a battle-field,
And with decorous care and reverent pity
Composed the lordly ruin, and sat down
Grave without tears. At length the giant lay,
And everywhere he was begirt with years,
And everywhere the torn and mouldering Past
Hung with the ivy. For Time, smit with honour
Of what he slew, cast his own mantle on him,
That none should mock the dead.

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.

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