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down yon sentinel, and gain the mountain passes; and then do bloody work, as did your sires at old Thermopylæ! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins? that you do crouch and cower, like a belabored hound beneath his master's lash? O comrades! warriors! Thracians! If we must fight, let us fight for ourselves; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors; if we must die, let us die under a free sky, by the bright waters, in NOBLE, HONORABLE BATTLE!"

Ex. CXLIV.-ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCH-YARD.

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day;-
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds;
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign.

GRAY.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow, twittering from the straw-built shed The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield;

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke: How jocund did they drive their team a-field!

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await, alike, the inevitable hour;-.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,

If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where, through the long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn, or animated bust,

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

Perhaps, in this neglected spot, is laid

Some heart, once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;

Chill penury repressed their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast.
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest;
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ;-~
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame;
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride

With incense kindled at the muse's flame.

Far from the maddening crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray:
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet even these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial, still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelled by the unlettered muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply;

And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,-
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,—
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies;
Some pious drops the closing eye requires:
Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate,
If, chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply, some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him, at the реер of dawn,
Brushing, with hasty steps, the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old, fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling, as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove: Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. "One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill, Along the heath, and near his favorite tree: Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he:

"The next, with dirges due, in sad array,

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay, Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH.

HERE rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown:
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere:
Heaven did a recompense as largely send :-
He gave to misery all he had,—a tear;

He gained from heaven,-'twas all he wished,-a friend.

No further seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,(There they, alike, in trembling hope, repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.

Ex. CXLV.-CHAMOUNY.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course ?-so long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful front, O sovereign Blanc;
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base

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Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air, and dark; substantial black,
An ebon mass methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But, when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshiped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,—
Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy,-
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!

Awake, my soul! Not only passive praise
Thou owest; not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and silent ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake,
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou, first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
O! struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink—
Companion of the morning star at dawn,

Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald, wake! O wake! and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jaggéd rocks,
For ever shattered, and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

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