Hark to the winning sound! They summon thee, dearest, Saying, "We have drest for thee the ground, Nor yet thou appearest. O hasten! 't is our time, Loved of the bee, the tawny hummer. O pride of thy race! Sad in sooth it were to ours, If our brief tribe miss thy face, We poor New England flowers. Thou shalt choose the fairest members June's glories and September's Shall show our love and piety. THE RIVER. THERE is an inward voice, that in the stream Like wisdom welcome with its own respect. Which the mild heaven sheds down on it like rain. LIFE. Ir is a gay and glittering cloud, VOL. III. -NO. III. It burns again when noon is high; But now 't is fading in the west, So life is born, grows up, and dies, ΤΟ THERE is a grace upon the waving trees, And all the famous thoughts great men have told, By side of thee seem dull, dull, heavy, and most cold. If thou art lost to me, farewell, my heart! Its alone. And all thy passion's tears turned into hardest stone. THE LAWS OF MENU. [In pursuance of the design intimated in our Number for July, to give a series of ethnical scriptures, we subjoin our extracts from the Laws of Menu. We learn, from the preface of the translator, that " Vyasa, the son of Parasara, has decided that the Veda, with its Angas, or the six compositions deduced from it, the revealed system of medicine, the Puranas, or sacred histories, and the code of Menu, were four works of supreme authority, which ought never to be shaken by arguments merely human." The last, which is in blank verse, and is one of the oldest compositions extant, has been translated by Sir William Jones. It is believed by the Hindoos "to have been promulged in the beginning of time, by Menu, son or grandson of Brahma," and "first of created beings.' Brahma is said to have "taught his laws to Menu in a hundred thousand verses, which Menu explained to the primitive world in the very words of the book now translated." Others affirm that they have undergone successive abridgments for the convenience of mortals, "while the gods of the lower heaven, and the band of celestial musicians, are engaged in studying the primary code." "A number of glosses or comments on Menu were composed by the Munis, or old philosophers, whose treatises, together with that before us, constitute the Dherma Sastra, in a collective sense, or Body of Law." Culluca Bhatta* was one of the more modern of these.] CUSTOM. "Immemorial custom is transcendent law." "The roots of the law are the whole Veda, the ordinances and moral practices of such as perfectly understand it, the immemorial customs of good men, and self-satisfaction." "Immemorial custom is a tradition among the four pure classes, in a country frequented by gods, and at length is not to be distinguished from revelation." TEMPERANCE. "The resignation of all pleasures is far better than the attainment of them." "The organs, being strongly attached to sensual delights, cannot so effectually be restrained by avoiding incentives to pleasure, as by a constant pursuit of divine knowledge." "But, when one among all his [the Brahmin's] organs fails, by that single failure his knowledge of God passes away, as water flows through one hole in a leathern bottle." In the following selections his gloss is for the most part omitted, but when retained is printed in Italics. |