M

41

y fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and

gray:

Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
For every day.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long; And so make Life, Death, and that vast Forever One grand, sweet song.

KINGSLEY (A Farewell).

W

42

HERE is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?

By the side of a spring, on the breast of Hel

vellyn,

Under the twigs of a young birch tree!

The oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year, And whistled and roared in the winter alone,

Is gone, and the birch in its stead is grown.—

The Knight's bones are dust,

And his good sword rust:

His soul is with the saints, I trust.

COLERIDGE (The Knight's Tomb).

HOW

43

ow seldom, Friend! a good great man
inherits

Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
If any man obtain that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.

For shame, dear Friend! renounce this canting strain!

What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain? Place-titles-salary-a gilded chain

Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain?

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man?-three treasures, love and light,

And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath;And three firm friends, more sure than day

and night

Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.

COLERIDGE (Complaint, and Reproof).

44

is not growing like a tree

I In bulk, doth make Man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night — It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be. BEN JONSON.

45

WEARIED pilgrim I have wandered here
Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one.

year;

Long I have lasted in this world, 'tis true,
But yet those years that I have lived, but few.
Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell,
Lives not those years, but he that lives them
well:

One man has reached his sixty years, but he
Of all those three-score has not lived half three:
He lives who lives to virtue; men who cast
Their ends for pleasure, do not live, but last.
HERRICK.