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This was the bravest warrior

That ever buckled sword; This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word; And never earth's philosopher Traced with his golden pen,

On the deathless page truths half so sage,
As he wrote down for men.

And had he not high honour?
The hill-side for his pall,
To lie in state while angels wait,

With stars for tapers tall;

And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave,

And God's own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave.

In that deep grave without a name,

Whence his uncoffined clay

Shall break again, most wondrous thought!

Before the judgment day;

And stand, with glory wrapped around,

On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife that won our life
With th' incarnate Son of God.

O lonely tomb in Moab's land!
O dark Bethpeor's hill!

Speak to these curious hearts of ours,

And teach them to be still. God hath His mysteries of grace,

Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the secret sleep

Of him He loved so well.-Dublin Univ. Mag.

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That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows-
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field, and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon flower!

R. Browning.

LESSON XCII. THE LOST EXPEDITION.

Lift-lift, ye mists, from off the silent coast,
Folded in endless winter's chill embraces;
Unshroud for us awhile our brave ones lost!
Let us behold their faces!

In vain the North has hid them from our sight:
The snow their winding-sheet-their only dirges
The groan of icebergs in the polar night,

Racked by the savage surges.

No funeral torches, with a smoky glare,

Shone a farewell upon their shrouded faces ; No monumental pillar, tall and fair,

Towers o'er their resting places.

But northern streamers flare the long night through
Over the cliffs stupendous, fraught with peril
Of icebergs, tinted with a ghostly hue
Of amethyst and beryl.

No human tears upon their graves are shed—
Tears of domestic love or pity holy;

But snow-flakes from the gloomy sky o'erhead,
Down shuddering, settle slowly.

Yet history shrines them with her mighty dead,
The hero seamen of this isle of Britain;
And, when the brighter scroll of heaven is read,
There will their names be written.

LESSON XCIII.-THE RAINBOW.

A fragment of a rainbow bright
Through the moist air I see,
All dark and damp on yonder height,
All bright and clear to me.

An hour ago the storm was here,
The gleam was far behind;
So will our joys and griefs appear,
When earth has ceased to blind.

Grief will be joy, if on its edge
Fall soft that holiest ray;

Joy will be grief, if no faint pledge

Be there of heavenly day.-Keble.

Hood.

LESSON XCIV.-ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.

This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal king,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,

That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

He laid aside; and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Say, heavenly muse, shall not thy sacred vein,
Afford a present to the Infant God!

Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome Him to this His new abode,

Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,

Hath took no print of the approaching light,

And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons. bright.

See how from far, upon the eastern road,

The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:

O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,

And lay it lowly at His blessed feet;

Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,

And join thy voice unto the angel quire,

From out His secret altar touch'd with hallow'd fire.

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It was the winter wild,

While the heaven-born child

All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to him

Had doffed her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize.

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

Only with speeches fair

She woos the gentle air

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
And on her naked shame,

Pollute with sinful blame,

The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

But He, her fears to cease,

Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:

She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere,

His ready harbinger,

With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;

And waving wide her myrtle wand,

She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

No war, or battle's sound,

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked chariot stood

Unstain'd with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

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