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RABBI BEN EZRA.

GROW old along with me!
The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see
all, nor be afraid!"

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars,

It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends.
transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears,
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate, folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by
a spark.

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt
the maw-crammed beast?

Rejoice we are allied

To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of his tribes that take,
I must believe.

Then, welcome each rebuff

ROBERT BROWNING.

That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!

Be our joys three parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never
grudge the throe!

For thence a paradox

Which comforts while it mocks

Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me:

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Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

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Thence shall I pass, approved

A man, for aye removed

From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon

A brute I might have been, but would Take rest, ere I be gone

not sink i' the scale.

What is he but a brute

Whose flesh hath soul to suit,

Once more on my adventure brave and

new:

Fearless and unperplexed,

When I wage battle next,

Whose spirit works lest arms and legs What weapons to select, what armor to

want play?

To man, propose this test,

Thy body at its best,

indue.

Youth ended, I shall try

How far can that project thy soul on its My gain or loss thereby;

lone way?

Yet gifts should prove their use:

I own the Past profuse

Of power each side, perfection every turn :

Eyes, ears took in their dole,

Brain treasured up the whole;

Be the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same,

Give life its praise or blame:

Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.

For note, when evening shuts.

Should not the heart beat once, "How A certain moment cuts

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Maker, remake, complete, — I trust what Let me discern, compare, pronounce at

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For more is not reserved

To man, with soul just nerved

gain most, as To act to-morrow what he learns to-day

I strove, made head, gained ground upon

the whole!"

As the bird wings and sings,

Here, work enough to watch

The Master work, and catch

Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

As it was better, youth

Should strive, through acts uncouth,

Toward making, than repose on aught All men ignored in me,

found made;

So, better, age, exempt

From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right

And Good and Infinite

This I was worth to God, whose wheel
the pitcher shaped.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
That metaphor! and feel

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our
clay,

Thou, to whom fools propound,

Be named here, as thou callest thy hand When the wine makes its round,

thine own,

With knowledge absolute,

Subject to no dispute

"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

From fools that crowded youth, nor let Fool! All that is, at all,

thee feel alone.

Be there, for once and all,

Severed great minds from small,

Lasts ever, past recall;

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:

What entered into thee,

Announced to each his station in the That was, is, and shall be:

Past!

Was I, the world arraigned,

Were they, my soul disdained,

Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

Right? Let age speak the truth and He fixed thee mid this dance

give us peace at last!

Now, who shall arbitrate?

Ten men love what I hate,

Of plastic circumstance,

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain

arrest:

Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent,

Shun what I follow, slight what I re- Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently

ceive;

Ten, who in ears and eyes

Match me: we all surmise,

impressed.

What though the earlier grooves

They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall Which ran the laughing loves

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Look not thou down, but up!

Found straightway to its mind, could To uses of a cup,

value in a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb,

The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal,

The new wine's foaming flow,

The Master's lips aglow!

So passed in making up the main account; Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

needst thou with earth's wheel?

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled But I need, now as then,

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Fancies that broke through language and With shapes and colors rife,

escaped;

All I could never be,

Bound dizzily - mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

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Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,

Made him our pattern to live and to die!

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There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain,

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Forced praise on our part, the glimmer of twilight,

Never glad, confident morning again! Best fight on well, for we taught him, strike gallantly,

Aim at our heart ere we pierce through his own;

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,

Pardoned in Heaven, the first by the throne!

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

[U. S. A.]

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

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 Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Of the North Church tower as a signal Burns, Shelley, were with us, they light, watch from their graves! He alone breaks from the van and the freemen;

He alone sinks to the rear and the

slaves!

Weshall march prospering,

not through

not from his

his presence; Songs may inspirit us, lyre; Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his

quiescence,

Still bidding crouch whom the

Blot out his name, then,

bade aspire.

lost soul more,

rest

record one

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

One task more declined, one more foot-Across the moon like a prison bar,

path untrod,

One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels,

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!

Life's night begins; let him never come back to us!

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and
street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,

Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old
North Church,

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him
made

Masses and moving shapes of shade,
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the
dark,

And beneath, from the pebbles, in pass-
ing, a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and
deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,

ledge,

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret

dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, -
A line of black that bends and floats

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Re-

vere.

Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-
girth;

But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he
turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford

town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

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