ON THE TOMBS IN WESTMINSTER.
MORTALITY, behold and fear
What a charge of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones

Sleep within these heaps of stones :

Here they lie, had realms and lands,

Who now want strength to stir their hands;
Where from their pulpits, sealed with dust,
They preach-in greatness is no trust.
Here's an acre sown indeed

With the richest, royal'st seed
That the earth did e'er suck in,

Since the first man died for sin :

Here the bones of birth have cried,
Though gods they were, as men they died:
Here are wands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruined sides of kings.
Here's a world of pomp and state,

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

Francis Beaumont, 1585-1616.

TO THE GRASSHOPPER.

HAPPY insect, what can be
In happiness compared to thee?
Fed with nourishment divine,
The dewy morning's gentle wine!
Nature waits upon thee still,
And thy verdant cup doth fill;
'Tis filled wherever thou dost tread,
Nature's self thy Ganymede;

Thou dost drink and dance and sing,
Happier than the happiest king!
All the fields which thou dost see,

All the plants belong to thee;
All that summer hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice.
Man for thee does sow and plough,
Farmer he, and landlord thou!
Thou dost innocently joy,

Nor does thy luxury destroy;

The shepherd gladly heareth thee,

More harmonious than he.

Thee country hinds with gladness hear,

Prophet of the ripened year;

Thee Phoebus loves and does inspire,

Phoebus is himself thy sire.

To thee, of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth.
Happy insect, happy thou!

Dost neither age nor winter know;

But when thou'st drunk and danced and sung

Thy fill, the flowery leaves among,

(Voluptuous and wise withal,

Epicurean animal!)

Sated with thy summer's feast

Thou retir❜st to endless rest!-Cowley's Anacreontics.

POETASTERS.

THESE equal syllables alone require,

Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;

While expletives their feeble aid do join,

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line;
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes :
Where'er you find the cooling western breeze,
In the next line it "whispers through the trees ;"
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep ;"
Then at the last, and only couplet, fraught

With some unmeaning thing they call a thought;

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.-Pope.

MODERATION.

THINGS which are in themselves fair and good, are liable to be spoiled by our handling, as if there was something infectious in our very touch. Virtue itself will become vice, if we clasp it with a desire too eager and violent. As for saying that there is never any excess of virtue, because it is no longer virtue if there be excess in it, it is mere playing upon words.

The wise for mad, the just for unjust pass,

If more than need, e'en virtue they embrace.-Horace.

This is a subtle consideration in philosophy. A man may both be too much in love with virtue, and carry himself to excess in a just action. Holy Writ agrees with this way of thinking. St. Paul says, "No man should think of himself more highly than he ought, but think soberly." I knew a great man who blemished his reputation for religion by making a show of greater devotion than all men of his condition. I love natures that are temperate and between the extremes.

An immoderate zeal, even for that which is good, though it does not offend me, astonishes me; and I really am at a loss what name to give it. Neither the mother of Pausanias, who first pointed out the way,

and laid the first stone for the destruction of her son; nor the dictator Posthumius, who put his son to death, whom the heat of youthful blood had pushed with success upon the enemy a little before the other soldiers of his rank: neither of these instances, I say, seem to me so just as they are strange, and I should not like either to advise or imitate a virtue so savage and so expensive. The archer that shoots beyond the mark, misses it as much as he that comes short of it. And it offends my sight as much to lift up my eyes on a sudden to a great light, as to cast them down to a dark cavern. Callicles, in Plato, says that, "the extremity of philosophy is hurtful," and advises "not to dive deeper into it than what may turn to good account; taken with moderation, it is pleasant and profitable, but in the extreme it renders a man brutish and vicious, a contemner of religion and the common laws, an enemy to civil conversation and all human pleasures, incapable of all political administration, and of assisting others, or even himself, and a fit object to be buffeted with impunity." And he says true, for in its excess it enslaves our natural liberty, and, by an impertinent curiosity, leads us out of the fair and smooth path which has been planned out for us by nature.-Montaigne's Essays.

WITHOUT GLADNESS AVAILS NO TREASURE.

BE merry, man, and tak not sair in mind

The wavering of this wretched warld of sorrow;
To God be humble, to thy friend be kind,

And, with thy neighbours, gladly lend and borrow;
His chance to-night, it may be thine to-morrow;
Be blythe in heart for my aventure,

For oft with wise men it hath been said aforrow,
Without Gladness avails no Treasure.

Make thee gude cheer of all that God thee sends,
For warld's wrak but welfare nought avails;
Na gude is thine save only that thou spends,
Remainent all thou bruikis but with bails;
Seek to solace when sadness thee assails;
In dolour lang thy life may not endure,
Wherefore of comfort set up all thy sails :
Without Gladness avails no Trèasure.

Follow on pity, flee trouble and debate,
With famous folkès hold thy company;
Be charitable and hum'le in thy estate,
For warldly honour lashes but a cry,
For trouble in earth tak no melancholy;
Be rich in patience, if thou in gudes be poor;
Who lives merrily he lives mightily :
Without Gladness avails no Treasure.

Dunbar, Ob. 1520.

THE HOUSE OF SLEEP.

HE making speedy way through spersèd air,
And through the world of waters wide and deep,
To Morpheus' house doth hastily repair.
Amid the bowels of the earth full steep,
And lo! where dawning day doth never peep
His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed
Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steep
In silver dew his ever-drooping head,

While sad Night over him her mantle black doth spread.

Whose double gates he findeth locked fast,

The one fair framed of burnisht ivory,
The other all with silver overcast ;
And wakeful dogs before them far do lie,
Watching to banish Care, their enemy,
Who oft is wont to trouble gentle Sleep.
By them the sprite doth pass in quietly,

And unto Morpheus comes, whom drownèd deep

In drowsy fit he finds; of nothing he takes keep [heed].

And more to lull him in his slumber soft,

A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down,
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring wind, much like to soune
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoune.
No other noise, nor people's troublous cries,
As still are wont t' annoy the wallèd town,
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies
Wrapt in eternal silence far from her enemies.

Spenser, 1553-1599.

ON A CONTENTED MIND.

WHEN all is done and said,
In the end thus shall you find,
He most of all doth bathe in bliss,
That hath a quiet mind:
And, clear from worldly cares,
To deem can be content
The sweetest time in all his life
In thinking to be spent.

The body subject is

To fickle Fortune's power,
And to a million of mishaps

Is casual every hour:

And Death in time doth change

It to a clod of clay;

Whenas the mind, which is divine,
Runs never to decay.

Companion none is like
Unto the mind alone :

For many have been harmed by speech;
Through thinking, few, or none.
Fear oftentimes restraineth words,
But makes not thought to cease;
And he speaks best that hath the skill
When for to hold his peace.
Our wealth leaves us at death,
Our kinsmen at the grave;
But virtue of the mind unto
The heavens with us we have.
Wherefore, for virtue's sake,
I can be well content,

The sweetest time of all my life
To deem in thinking spent.

By Lord Vaux, from "The Paradise of Dainty Devices," 1576.

YOUTH AND AGE.

VERSE, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—
Both were mine! Life went a Maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young!

When I was young? Ah, woeful When !
Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then !
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,

O'er airy cliffs and glittering sands,
How lightly then it flashed along :-
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

On winding lakes and rivers wide,

That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Nought cared this body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in't together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like,
Friendship is a sheltering tree;

Oh, the joys, that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah, woeful Ere,

Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
O Youth for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known that thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit-
It cannot be, that thou art gone!

N