THE CIRCLE OF LIFE. (From "Romola."') HE great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history, hunger and labor, seed time and harvest, love and death. Even if, instead of following the dim daybreak, our imagination pauses on a certain historical spot, and awaits the fuller morning, we may see a world-famous city, which has hardly changed its outline since the days of Columbus, seeming to stand as an almost unviolated symbol, amidst the flux of human things, to remind us that we still resemble the men of the past more than we differ from them, as the great mechanical principles on which those domes and towers were raised must make a likeness in human building that will be broader and deeper than all possible change. DEATH'S FINAL CONQUEST. THE glories of our blood and state, Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armor against fate; Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made Some men with swords may reap the field, They stoop to fate, And must give up their murmuring breath, The garlands wither on your brow; Then boast no more your mighty deeds; See where the victor-victim bleeds; To the cold tomb; Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their dus* ELEGY, WRITTEN IN A COUN TRY CHURCHYARD. HE curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea, MARIAN EVANS CROSS. (George Eliot.") The plowman 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. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a moulder- Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall Or busy house-wife ply her evening care; Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 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, Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. Their names, their years, spelled 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; E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. For thee, who, mindful of the unhonored dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate, E'en 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 peep of dawn, Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. "There at the foot of yonder nodding Approach and read (for thou canst read) the 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, woful-wan, like one forlorn, love. lay, Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." THE EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, "One morn, I missed him on the customed He gave to misery, all he had, a tear; 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, He gained from Heaven, 'twas all he wished, a friend. No further seek his merits to disclose, The Curfere colls the Knell of parting Day, farther week his Merits to disclose Your humble Serv Look on its broken arch, its ruined wall, The gay recess of Wisdom and of Wit, And Passion's host, that never brooked con- Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, THANATOPSIS. who the love of Nature holds The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good, Stretching in pensive quietness between ; Communion with her visible forms, she Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart, To Nature's teachings, while from all around, The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, To be a brother to the insensible rock, Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The globe are but a handful to the tribes there, And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep; the dead reign there So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, |