Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves:

Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

William Wordsworth.

115

THE INVITATION

BEST and brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair day,
Which, like thee, to those in sorrow
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.

The brightest hour of unborn Spring
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon morn
To hoar February born;

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,

And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May

Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.

Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun;
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sandhills of the sea;
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new:
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dim and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,

And all things seem only one

In the universal sun.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

116

HUNTING SONG

WAKEN, lords and ladies gay!
On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here,

With hawk, and horse, and hunting-spear;

Hounds are in their couples yelling,

Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling,

Merrily, merrily, mingle they,

Waken, lords and ladies gay!

Waken, lords and ladies gay!

The mist has left the mountain grey;
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming;
And foresters have busy been,
To track the buck in thicket green.
Now we come to chant our lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!

Waken, lords and ladies gay!
To the green-wood haste away:
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot, and tall of size ;
We can show the marks he made
When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed.
You shall see him brought to bay;
Waken, lords and ladies gay!

Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!

Tell them youth, and mirth, and glee,
Run a course as well as we;

Time, stern huntsman, who can baulk,
Stanch as hound, and fleet as hawk?

Think of this, and rise with day,

Gentle lords and ladies gay!

Sir Walter Scott.

117

THE SEA

(Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.)

ROLL on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,―thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth-there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free,

And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:—not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sub-

lime

The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

Lord Byron.

118

THE RIVER NILE

IT flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream;
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands ;-

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd-bands
That roamed through the young earth, the glory

extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.