There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Byron's Childe Harold.
Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion? should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these? and stem
A tide of sufferings, rather than forego
Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below,
Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which
dare not glow?

Byron's Childe Harold.
To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen;
With the wild flock that never heeds a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with nature's charms, and see her stores unroll'd.

But, 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam along, the world's tir'd denizen,
With none to bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
Jone that with kindred consciousness endued,
ff we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought, and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

Byron's Childe Harold.

No, 't is not here that solitude is known. Through the wide world he only is alone Who lives not for another.

Rogers's Human Life. A child, 'midst ancient mountains have I stood, Where the wild falcons make their lordly nest On high. The spirit of the solitude

Fell solemnly upon my infant breast,

I am alone; and yet

In the still solitude there is a rush

Around me, as were met

A crowd of viewless wings; I hear a gush Of utter'd harmonies.

George W. Bethuns.

Leave if thou would'st be lonely

Leave Nature for the crowd;

press'd

Into my being since I breath'd that air,

Nor could I now one moment live the guest

With kindred mind endow'd! Thereas with Nature erst Closely thou would'st commune

prayer

O'erflowing all my soul.

Mrs. Hemans's Poems.

Oh! to lie down in wilds apart,

Where man is seldom seen or heard,
In still and ancient forests, where

Mows not his scythe, ploughs not his share,
With the shy deer and cooing bird!
To go in dreariness of mood,

O'er a lone heath, that spreads around,
A solitude like a silent sea,
Where rises not a hut or tree,

The wide-embracing sky its bound!
Oh! beautiful those wastes of heath,

Stretching for miles to lure the bee, Where the wild bird, on pinions strong, Wheels round and pours its piping song, And timid creatures wander free.

Mary Howitt. Yon gentle hills,

Rob'd in a garment of untrodden snow;
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless that their white glittering spires
'Tinge not the moon's pure beams; yon castled
steep,

Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace; all form a scene
Where musing solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness.

He goes to the river side,

Nor hook nor line hath he: He stands in the meadows wide,Nor gun nor scythe to see; With none has he to d.,

And none to seek him,

Nor men below

Shelley.

Nor spirits dim,

What he knows nobody wants;

What he knows he hides, not vaunts.

Ralph W. Emerson.

In either heart, attune! Heart-wearied thou wilt own,

Vainly that phantom woo'd, That thou at least hast known What is true Solitude!

Hoffman's Poems.

These are the gardens of the desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name—
The prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch
In airy undulations, far away,

As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,

Stood still, with all his rounded billows, fix'd

And motionless for ever. Did the dust

Of these fair solitudes once stir with life
And burn with passion?

He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears;
But he bears both the sentence, and the sorrow,
That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.
Shaks. Othello.
Amaz'd he stands, nor voice nor body stirs ;
Words had no passage, tears no issue found;
For sorrow shut up words, wrath kept in tears;
Confus'd effects each other do confound:
Oppress'd with grief, his passions had no bound.
Striving to tell his woes, words would not come;
For light cares speak, when mighty griefs are
dumb.
Daniel's Rosamond.

I drink

So deep of grief, that he must only think,
Not dare to speak, that would express my woe:
Small rivers murmur, deep gulfs silent flow.
Marston's Sophonisba.

Oh, be of comfort!

Make patience a noble fortitude,

And think not how unkindly we are us'd:
Man, like a cassia, is prov'd best being bruis'd.
My heart's turn'd to a heavy lump of lead,
With which I sound my danger.

Webster's Duchess of Malfy.
Past sorrows, let us mod'rately lament them,
For those to come, seek wisely to prevent them.
Webster's Duchess of Malfy.

Unkindness do thy office; poor heart break:
Those are the killing griefs which dare not speak.
Webster's White Devil.

Be of comfort, and your heavy sorrow
Part equally among us; storms divided,
Abate their force, and with less rage are guided.
Heywood's Woman Kill'd with Kindness.

Great sorrows have no leisure to complain:
Least ills vent forth, great griefs within remain.
Goffe's Raging Turk.
There's no way to make sorrow light
But in the noble bearing; be content;

Blows given from heaven are our due punishment; All shipwrecks are not drownings; you see buildings

Made fairer from their ruins.

W. Rowley's New Wonder.
He, sad heart, being robb'd
comfort, having lost the beauty

Of all
Which gave him life and motion, seeing Claius
Enjoy those lips, whose cherries were the food
That aurs'd his soul, spent all his time in sorrow,
In melancholy sighs and discontents:

Sorrow lives with those whose pleasures add unte their sins.

Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy Sorrow treads heavily, and leaves behind

A deep impression, e'en when she departs:
While joy trips by with steps light as the wind,
And scarcely leaves a trace upon our hearts
Of her faint foot-falls: only this is sure,
In this world nought, save misery, can endure.
Mrs. Embury.

When the cold breath of sorrow is sweeping
O'er the chords of the youthful heart,
And the earnest eye, dimm'd with strange weep
ing,

Sees the visions of fancy depart;
When the bloom of young feeling is dying,

And the heart throbs with passion's fierce strife,
When our sad days are wasted in sighing,
Who then can find sweetness in life?

He gives no useless pain.

Randolph's Amyntas.

Thomas Wa

Wouldst thou from sorrow find a sweet relief, Or is thy heart oppress'd with woes untold? Balm wouldst thou gather for corroding grief;

Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold! "Tis when the rose is wrapp'd in many a fold

Close to its heart, the worm is wasting there Its life and beauty; not when, all unroll'd, Leaf after leaf, its bosom, rich and fair,

bient air.

Rouse to some work of high and holy love,
And thou an angel's happiness shalt know.
Carlos Wilcox.
Alas, for my weary and care-haunted bosom !
The spells of the spring-time arouse it no more;
The song in the wild-wood, the sheen in the blos-

som,

o'er!

flowers,

They tell of the Past, with so mournful a tone, That I call up the throngs of my long-vanish'd hours,

And sigh that their transports are over and gone. Willis Gaylord Clark.

SOUL.

Why should we the busy soul believe,
When boldly she concludes of that and this;
When of herself she can no judgment give,
Nor how, nor whence, nor where, nor what she is.
Sir John Davis.

Some her chair up to the brain do carry;

Some sink it down into the stomach's heat;
Some place it in the root of life, the heart;
Some in the liver, fountain of the veins;
Some say, she's all in all, and all in every part;
Some say, she's not contain'd, but all contains.
Thus these great clerks their little wisdom show,
While with their doctrines they at hazard play,
l'ossing their light opinions to and fro,
To mock the learn'd, as learn'd in this as they.
Sir John Davis.

To the soul time doth perfection give,
And adds fresh lustre to her beauty still,
And make her in eternal youth to live;
Like her which nectar to the gods doth fill.
The more she lives, the more she feeds on truth;
The more sne feeds, the strength doth more in-

crease;

And what is strength but an effect in youth,
Which if time nurse, how can it ever cease.
Sir John Davis.

The storms of fortune.

'Tis true that the souls

May's Cleopatra

Of all men are alike; of the same substance,
By the same maker into all infus'd;
But yet the sev'ral matters which they work on,
How different they are, I need not tell you;
And as these outward organs give our souls
Or more or less room as they are contriv'd
To show their lustre; so again comes fortune
And darkens them to whom the gods have given
A soul divine, and body capable
Of that divinity and excellence.

Rutter's Shepherd's Holiday.
Our souls but like unhappy strangers come
From heav'n, their country, to this world's bad
coast;

They land, then straight are backward bound for home,

And many are in storms of passion lost!
They long with danger sail through life's vext seas,
In bodies as in vessels full of leaks;
Walking in veins, their narrow galleries,
Shorter than walks of seamen on their decks.
Sir W. Davenant's Philosopher to the Christian.
Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best,
For truth must be thy warrant;
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

William Davison's Rhapsody. Life is the triumph of our mould'ring clay; Death, of the spirit infinite! divine!

Young's Night Thoughts,

Is not the mighty mind, that son of heaven!
By tyrant life dethroned, imprison'd, pain'd?
By death enlarg'd, ennobled, deify'd?
Death but entombs the body; life the soul.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Tell wit how much it wrangles,
In treble points of niceness,
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness;

And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

'T would take an angel from above To paint th' immortal soul.

Mrs. Welby's Poems.

The soul once sav'd shall never cease from bliss, Nor God lose that He buyeth with His blood! Bailey's Festus.

The soul,

Advancing ever to the source of light

And all perfection, lives, adores, and reigns In cloudless knowledge, purity, and bliss.

Henry Ware, Jr.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like season'd timber never gives;
But when the whole world turns to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

George Herbert.

There is, they say, (and I believe there is,)
A spark within us of th' immortal fire,
That animates and moulds the grosser frame;
And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven;
Its native seat, and mixes with the gods.

Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.

The soul on earth is an immortal guest,
Compell'd to starve at an unreal feast:

A spark, which upward tends by nature's force:
A stream diverted from its parent source;
A drop dissever'd from the boundless sea;
A moment, parted from eternity;
A pilgrim panting for the rest to come;
An exile, anxious for his native home.

The soul, of origin divine,

frail,

Our souls immortal, though our limbs decay; Though darken'd in this poor life by a veil Of suffering, dying matter, we shall play In truth's eternal sunbeams; on the way To Heaven's high capitol our cars shall roll; The temple of the Power whom all obey, That is the mark we tend to, for the soul Can take no lower flight, and seek no meaner goal. Percival's Prometheus. What, my soul, was thy errand here? Was it mirth or ease,

Or heaping up dust from year to year?
"Nay, none of these!"

Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight,
Whose eye looks still

And steadily on thee through the night;
"To do His will!"

Whittier's Poems.

Of joy ideal waste thyself:

Awake, and soar aloft!

Unfurl this hour those falcon wings

Which thou dost fold too long; Raise to the skies thy lightning gaze, And sing thy loftiest song!

Mrs. Osgood's Poems. Inward turn

The soul, the mother of deep fears,

Of high hopes infinite, Of glorious dreams, mysterious tears, Of sleepless inner sight; Lovely, but solemn, it arose, Unfolding what no more might close.

Mrs. Hemans's Poems.

Though sorrow bind thee as a funeral pall, Thy Father's hand is guiding thee through all, His love will bring a true and perfect peace. Look upward once again; though drear the night,

Earth may be darkness, Heaven will give thee light!" Mrs. Neal.