This female dog-star of her little sky,

Where all beneath her influence droop or die.

Oh! wretch without a tear-without a thought,
Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought,
The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now;
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
May the strong curse of crush'd affections light
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight!
And make thee in thy leprosy of mind
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
Black- -as thy will for others would create:
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,

The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread!

Then, when thou fain wouldst weary heaven with prayer, Look on thine earthly victims and despair!

Down to the dust!-and, as thou rott'st away,

Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
To her thy malice from all ties would tear-
Thy name-thy human name-to every eye
The climax of all scorn would hang on high,
Exalted o'er thy less abhorr'd compeers-
And festering in the infamy of years.

PROMETHEUS.

BYRON.

[Few subjects have had such strong attractions for Painters, Scnlptors and Poets as the fate of this heroic embodiment of the undaunted spirit, rising above corporeal pangs, and asserting its divinity. Byron has seized the noble idea with all his wonderful quickness of conception, and has produced a poem worthy of bis theme. This piece should be declaimed with strength, of voice and dignity of manner.]

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes

The sufferings of mortality,

Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise,
What was thy pity's recompense?

A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain.
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create,
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die;
The wretched gift eternity

Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
And that the Thun erer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;

The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precept less

The sum of human wretchedness,

And strengthen man with his own mind:

But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit :

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee

His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence :
To which his spirit may oppose
Itself and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares dety,
And making Death a Victory!

WASHINGTON.

BRYANT.

[A fitting tribute to our greatest statesman, from our greatest poet. Should be delivered with a full, sonorous tone.]

GREAT were the hearts, and strong the minds,
Of those who framed, in high debate,

The immortal league of love that binds
Our fair broad empire, state with state.

And deep the gladness of the hour,
When, as the auspicious task was done,
In solemn trust, the sword of power
Was given to GLORY'S UNSPOILED SON.

That noble race is gone; the suns
Of fifty years have risen and set;
But the bright links those chosen ones
So strongly forged, are brighter yet.

Wide-as our own free race increase-
Wide shall extend the elastic chain,
And bind, in everlasting peace,

State after state, a mighty train.

A PSALM OF LIFE.

LONGFELLOW.

[This brief poem should be given in a slow, solemn manner. But the reader should carefully avoid falling into a sing-song recitation, which the swinging rhythm of the construction will be apt to lead to.]

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest !
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Finds us further than to-day.

Art is long and time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stont and brave,
Still, like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,-act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

LONGFELLOW.

[This spirited poem gives opportunity for many different styles of delivery. First-the calm, but determined, utterance of the brave man's resolve. Second-the whispering description of the churchyard and belfry. Last-in bold, rapid accents should pour out the sharp, ringing description of the impetuous ride.J

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five:
Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend,-" If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North-Church tower, as a signal-light,One, if by land, and two, if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said Good night, and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison bar,
And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.