Thus would I double my life's fading space;
For he that runs it well twice runs his race.

And in this true delight,
These unbought sports, this happy state,
I would not fear, nor wish, my fate;

But boldly say, each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them ; I have lived to-day.

THE GRASSHOPPER. - Tennyson.

Voice of the summer wind,
Joy of the summer plain,
Life of the summer hours,
Carol clearly, bound along.
No Tithon* thou, as poets feign,
(Shame fall 'em, they are deaf and blind,)
But an insect lithe and strong,
Bowing the seeded summer flowers.
Prove their falsehood and their quarrel,
Vaulting on thy airy feet, ;
Clap thy shielded sides and carol,

Carol clearly, chirrup sweet.
Thou art a mailed warrior, in youth and strength

complete.

202

THE GRASSHOPPER.

Armed cap-a-pie,
Full fair to see;
Unknowing fear,
Undreading loss.
A gallant cavalier,
“ Sans peur et sans reproche," *
In sunlight and in shadow,
The Bayard of the meadow.
I would dwell with thee,

Merry grasshopper,
Thou art so glad and free,

And as light as air;
Thou hast no sorrow or tears,
Thou hast no compt of years,
No withered immortality,
But a short youth, sunny and free.
Carol clearly, bound along,

Soon thy joy is over.
A summer of loud song,

And slumbers in the clover,
What hast thou to do with evil
In thine hour of love and revel,

In thy heat of summer pride
Pushing the thick roots aside
Of the singing, flowered grasses,

That brush thee with their silken tresses ?
What hast thou to do with evil,
Shooting, singing, ever springing

In and out the emerald glooms;
Ever leaping, ever singing,

Lighting on the golden blooms ?

A GRECIAN ANECDOTE. - Milnes.

How Sparta thirsted after orient gold,

And bartered faith for wealth she dared not use, Is as severe a tale as e'er was told

The pride of man to conquer and confuse.

Therefore forget not what that nature was,

That once availed the base desire to foil, When sought the Ionian Aristagoras

To mingle Sparta in his distant broil.

How thick the perils of that far emprise,

How dim the vista cunningly displayed,
The king discerned, with clear and practised eyes,

And bade the stranger court Athenian aid.

To people as to prince, appeal was vain, —

Vain the dark menace, — vain the shadowy gibe, But the wise envoy would not bend again

His homeward steps till failed the wonted bribe.

A suppliant at the regal hearth he stood,

Nor ever thought that proffer to withhold Because about them, in her careless mood,

Played the king's child, — a girl some nine years old.

Ten— twenty-forty talents rose the bait; —

Strange feeling glistened in those infant eyes, That gazed attentive on the grave debate,

And seemed to search its meaning in surprise.

Yet fifty now had well secured the prey,

Had not a little hand tight clasped his arm, And a quick spirit uttered, “Come away,

Father, — that man is there to do you harm."

204

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

Not unaccepted such pure omen came;

That gentle voice the present God revealed, -And back the Ionian chief returned in shame,

Checked by the virtue of that simple shield."

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. – Bryant. The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the

year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows

brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered

leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's

tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs

the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the

gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that

lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sister

hood ? Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of

flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good

of ours. The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold No

vember rain Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the sum

mer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the

wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn

beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls

the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from

upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still

such days will come, To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter

home, When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all

the trees are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill, The south wind searches for the flowers whose fra

grance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream

no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty

died, The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my

side : In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forest

cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so

brief; Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend

of ours, So gentle, and so beautiful, should perish with the