E'en all at once together found W. Collins. CL. SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. OUTHWARD with fleet of ice His lordly ships of ice Glistened in the sun : On each side, like pennons wide His sails of white sea-mist Dripped with silver rain; But where he passed there were cast Eastward from Campobello Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed; Three days or more seaward he bore, Then, alas! the land wind failed. Alas! the land wind failed, And ice-cold grew the night: He sat upon the deck, The Book was in his hand; 'Do not fear! Heaven is as near,' In the first watch of the night, The fleet of Death rose all around. The moon and the evening star Were hanging in the shrouds ; Seemed to rake the passing clouds. They grappled with their prize, Southward, through day and dark, With mist and rain, to the Spanish Main; Southward, for ever southward, They drift through dark and day; Sinking, vanish all away. H. W. Longfellow. CLI AUTUMN. SAW old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless, like Silence listening To Silence ;-for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn :— Where are the songs of Summer?--With the Sun, Till shade and silence waken up as one, And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. On panting wings through the inclement skies, Undazzled at noonday, And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. Where are the blooms of Summer?—In the west, Where is the pride of Summer,--the green prime,— Trembling, and one upon the old oak tree. The squirrel gloats on his accomplished hoard, The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells : The swallows all have winged across the main : But here the Autumn melancholy dwells And sighs her tearful spells Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Upon a mossy stone, She sits and reckons up the dead and gone 250 On the Grasshopper and Cricket. Like a dim picture of the drownéd past In the hushed mind's mysterious far-away, go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded Upon her forehead,—and a face of care. To frame her cloudy prison for the soul. T. Hood. CLII. ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. HE poetry of earth is never dead : When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead : On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. 7. Keats. CLIII. THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. AINT Augustine! well hast thou said, A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things-each day's events, Are rounds by which we may ascend. The low desire-the base design That makes another's virtues less: The revel of the giddy wine, And all occasions of excess, The longing for ignoble things, The strife for triumph more than truth, The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth, All thought of ill-all evil deeds That have their root in thoughts of ill, All these must first be trampled down |