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GRAVE THESE COUNSELS ON THY SOUL.

(WRITTEN IN FRIARS-CARSE HERMITAGE, ON NITHSIDE.)

THOU whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed,

Be thou deck'd in silken stole,

Grave these counsels on thy soul!

Life is but a day at most,
Sprung from night, in darkness lost;

Hope not sunshine every hour,

Fear not clouds will always lour.

As Youth and Love, with sprightly dance, Beneath thy morning star advance,

Pleasure with her syren air

May delude the thoughtless pair;

Let Prudence bless Enjoyment's cup,
Then raptured sip, and sip it up.

As thy day grows warm and high,

Life's meridian flaming nigh,

Dost thou spurn the humble vale?

Life's proud summits wouldst thou scale?

Check thy climbing step, elate,

Evils lurk in felon wait;

Dangers, eagle-pinion'd, bold,

Soar around each cliffy hold,

While cheerful Peace, with linnet song,

Chants the lowly dells among.

As the shades of evening close,
Beckoning thee to long repose;
As life itself becomes disease,
Seek the chimney-nook of ease.
There ruminate with sober thought

On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought;
And teach the sportive younkers round

Saws of experience, sage and sound.
Say, man's true genuine estimate,
The grand criterion of his fate,
Is not, art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow?
Did many talents gild thy span ?
Or frugal Nature grudge thee one?
Tell them, and press it on their mind,
As thou thyself must shortly find,
The smile or frown of awful Heaven
To Virtue or to Vice is given.
Say, to be just, and kind, and wise,
There solid self-enjoyment lies;
That foolish, selfish, faithless ways
Lead to be wretched, vile, and base.

Thus resign'd and quiet, creep
To the bed of lasting sleep;

Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake,
Night, where dawn shall never break,
Till future life, future no more,
To light and joy the good restore,
To light and joy unknown before.

ROBERT BURNS, 1759-1796.

HAPPINESS OF HUMBLE WORTH.

He is the happy man whose life e'en now
Shews somewhat of that happier life to come;
Who, doom'd to an obscure but humble state,
Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose,
Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content indeed to sojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o'erlooks him in her busy search
Of objects, more illustrious in her view;
And, occupied as earnestly as she,

Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain.
He cannot skim the ground like summer birds
Pursuing gilded flies; and such he deems.
Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore in Contemplation is his bliss,

Whose power is such, that whom she lifts from earth
She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,

And shews him glories yet to be reveal'd.

Not slothful he, though seeming unemploy'd,
And censured oft as useless. Stillest streams
Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird
That flutters least is longest on the wing.

Ask him, indeed, what trophies he has raised,
Or what achievements of immortal fame
He purposes, and he shall answer-None.
His warfare is within. There, unfatigued,
His fervent spirit labours. There he fights,
And there obtains fresh triumphs o'er himself,
And never-withering wreaths, compared with which
The laurels that a Cæsar reaps are weeds.
Perhaps the self-approving haughty world,

That as she sweeps him with her whistling silks
Scarce deigns to notice him, or, if she see,
Deems him a cipher in the works of God,
Receives advantage from his noiseless hours,
Of which she little dreams. Perhaps she owes
Her sunshine and her rain, her blooming spring
And plenteous harvest, to the prayer he makes,
When, Isaac-like, the solitary saint
Walks forth to meditate at eventide,

And think on her who thinks not for herself.

Forgive him, then, thou bustler in concerns
Of little worth, an idler in the best,
If, author of no mischief and some good,
He seek his proper happiness by means
That may advance, but cannot hinder, thine.
Nor, though he tread the secret path of life,
Engage no notice, and enjoy much ease,
Account him an encumbrance on the state,
Receiving benefits, and rendering none.

His sphere, though humble, if that humble sphere
Shine with his fair example, and though small

His influence, if that influence all be spent
In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife,
In aiding helpless indigence, in works
From which at least a grateful few derive
Some taste of comfort in a world of woe;
Then let the supercilious great confess
He serves his country, recompenses well
The state, beneath the shadow of whose vine
He sits secure, and in the scale of life
Holds no ignoble, though a slighted, place.

WILLIAM COWPER, 1731-1800.

-The Task.

FAME.

OH, who shall lightly say that Fame
Is nothing but an empty name!
Whilst in that sound there is a charm
The nerves to brace, the heart to warm,
As, thinking of the mighty dead,
The young from slothful couch will start,
And vow, with lifted hands outspread,
Like them to act a noble part?

Oh, who shall lightly say that Fame
Is nothing but an empty name!

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