How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
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How passing wonder He who made him such! Who centred in our make such strange extremes, From different natures marvellously mixed, Connection exquisite of distant worlds! Distinguished link in being's endless chain ! Midway from nothing to the Deity! A beam ethereal, sullied and absorpt! Though sullied and dishonored, still divine! Dim miniature of greatness absolute! An heir of glory! a frail child of dust! Helpless immortal! insect infinite! A worm! a god! - I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost! at home a stranger, Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, And wondering at her own. How reason reels! Oh! what a miracle to man is man! Triumphantly distressed! what joy, what dread! Alternately transported and alarmed! What can preserve my life, or what destroy? An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.
'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof: While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread, What though my soul fantastic measures trod O'er fairy fields, or mourned along the gloom Of pathless woods, or down the craggy steep Hurled headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool, Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds, With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain? Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature Of subtler essence than the trodden clod; Active, aërial, towering, unconfined, Unfettered with her gross companion's fall. Even silent night proclaims my soul immortal;
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Even silent night proclaims eternal day! For human weal Heaven husbands all events: Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.
Why, then, their loss deplore, that are not lost? Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around In infidel distress? Are angels there? Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire ?
They live! they greatly live a life on earth Unkindled, unconceived, and from an eye Of tenderness let heavenly pity fall On me, more justly numbered with the dead. This is the desert, this the solitude: How populous, how vital is the grave! This is Creation's melancholy vault, The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom; The land of apparitions, empty shades! All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond Is substance; the reverse is Folly's creed. How solid all, where change shall be no more!
The Graves of the Patriots.—PERCIVAL.
Here rest the great and good-here they repose After their generous toil. A sacred band, They take their sleep together, while the year Comes with its early flowers to deck their graves, And gathers them again, as winter frowns. Theirs is no vulgar sepulchre: green sods Are all their monument, and yet it tells A nobler history than pillared piles, Or the eternal pyramids. They need
No statue nor inscription to reveal
Their greatness. It is round them; and the joy
With which their children tread the hallowed ground That holds their venerated bones, the peace
That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth That clothes the land they rescued,
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As feeling ever is when deepest, these
Are monuments more lasting than the fanes
Reared to the kings and demigods of old.
Touch not the ancient elms, that bend their shade
Over their lowly graves; beneath their boughs There is a solemn darkness, even at noon, Suited to such as visit at the shrine Of serious liberty. No factious voice Called them into the field of generous fame, But the pure, consecrated love of home. No deeper feeling sways us, when it wakes In all its greatness. It has told itself
To the astonished gaze of awe-struck kings, At Marathon, at Bannockburn, and here, Where first our patriots sent the invader back, Broken and cowed. Let these green elms be all To tell us where they fought, and where they lie. Their feelings were all nature, and they need No art to make them known. They live in us, While we are like them, simple, hardy, bold, Worshipping nothing but our own pure hearts, And the one universal Lord. They need No column, pointing to the heaven they sought, To tell us of their home. The heart itself, Left to its own free purpose, hastens there, And there alone reposes. Let these elms Bend their protecting shadow o'er their graves, And build with their green roof the only fane, Where we may gather on the hallowed day,
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That rose to them in blood, and set in glory. Here let us meet; and while our motionless lips Give not a sound, and all around is mute
In the deep sabbath of a heart too full
For words or tears-here let us strew the sod With the first flowers of spring, and make to them An offering of the plenty Nature gives,
And they have rendered ours
Satan's Address to Beelzebub.-MILTON.
If thou beest he; — but oh! how fallen! how changed From him who, in the happy realms of light,
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine Myriads though bright! If he whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope,
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin! Into what pit thou seest
From what height fallen; so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder; and till then who knew The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those, Nor what the potent Victor in his
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind, And high disdain from sense of injured merit, That with the Mightiest raised me to contend, And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of heaven,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost: the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield, And what is else not, to be overcome; That glory never shall his wrath or might Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deify his power, Who from the terror of this arm so late Doubted his empire; that were low indeed, That were an ignominy, and shame beneath This downfall: since by fate the strength of gods And this empyreal substance cannot fail; Since through experience of this great event In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, We may with more successful hope resolve To wage by force or guile eternal war, Irreconcilable to our grand foe,
Who now triumphs, and, in the excess of joy Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of heaven.
The Coliseum by Moonlight.-BYRON.
The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains.
I linger yet with Nature, for the night Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness,
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