Do not look at life's long sorrow,
See how small each moment's pain ;
God will help thee for to-morrow,
So each day begin again.

Every hour that fleets so slowly
Has its task to do, or bear;
Luminous the crown, and holy,
When each gem is set with care.

Do not linger with regretting,
Or for passing hours despond;
Nor, the daily toil forgetting,
Look too eagerly beyond.

Hours are golden links, God's token
Reaching Heaven; but One by One
Take them, lest the chain be broken

Ere the pilgrimage be done.

A. A. Proctor.

,CLXIV.

ANNABEL LEE.

T was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of ANNABEL LEE ;

And this maiden lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love,

I and my ANNABEL LEE;

With a love that the wingéd seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me;

Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-

Of many far wiser than we;

And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

E. A. Poe.

T

CLXV.

LOVE.

HEY sin who tell us Love can die.
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.

In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell;
Earthly, these passions are of earth,
They perish where they have their birth :
But love is indestructible.

Its holy flame for ever burneth;
From Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth ;
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
At times deceived, at times opprest,
It here is tried and purified,

Then hath in Heaven its perfect rest :
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest time of Love is there.

R. Southey.

CLXVI.

MOUNTAIN SOLITUDE.

(FROM THE 'Lord of the isles.')

TRANGER! If e'er thy ardent step hath traced
The northern realms of ancient Caledon,
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath

By lake and cataract, her lonely throne ;

Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known,

Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high,

[placed,

Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry,

And with the sounding lake, and with the moaning sky.

Yes! 't was sublime, but sad. The loneliness
Loaded thy heart; the desert tired thine eye;
And strange and awful fears began to press
Thy bosom with a stern solemnity.

Then hast thou wished some woodman's cottage nigh, Something that showed of life, though low and mean. Glad sight, its curling wreath of smoke to spy, Glad sound, its cock's blithe carol would have been. Or children whooping wild beneath the willows green.

Such are the scenes, where savage grandeur wakes
An awful thrill that softens into sighs.

Such feelings rouse them by dim Rannoch's lakes ;
In dark Glencoe such gloomy raptures rise :
Or farther, where beneath the northern skies
Chides wild Loch Eribol his caverns hoar.

But, be the minstrel judge, they yield the prize
Of desert dignity to that dread shore,

That sees grim Coolin rise, and hears Coriskin roar.
W. Scott.

CLXVII.

ARETHUSA.

RETHUSA* arose from her couch of snows
In the Akrokeraunian mountains ;—

From cloud and from crag with many a jag
Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks, with her rainbow-locks
Streaming among the streams :

Her steps paved with green the downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams.

And gliding and springing she went ever singing

In murmurs as soft as sleep:

[her,

The Earth seemed to love her, and Heaven smiled above As she lingered towards the deep.

* Arethusa, a nymph of Elis, daughter of Oceanus.

*

Then Alpheus* bold on his glacier cold

With his trident the mountains strook,

And opened a chasm in the rocks :—with the spasm All Erymanthus shook.

And the black South wind it concealed behind

The urns of the silent snow:

And earthquake and thunder did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below.

The beard and the hair of the river-god were
Seen through the torrents sweep,

As he followed the light of the fleet nymph's flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

O save me, O guide me, and bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair!—

The loud Ocean heard, to its blue depths stirred,
And divided at her prayer :

And under the water the Earth's white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam;

Behind her descended her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian steam.

Like a gloomy stain on the emerald main
Alpheus rushed behind,

As an eagle pursuing a dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers where the Ocean powers
Sit on their pearléd thrones,-

Through the coral woods of the weltering floods
Over heaps of unvalued stones,—

Through the dim beams which amid the streams
Weave a network of coloured light,—

And under the caves where the shadowy waves
Are as green as the forest's night;—

Alpheus, the river god. The Alpheus rises in Arcadia, and, passing through Elis and Achaia, falls into the sea.