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58.-WORTH MAKES THE MAN.

WHAT nothing earthly gives or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy,
Is Virtue's prize; a better would you fix?
Then give Humility a coach and six,
Justice a conqueror's sword, or Truth a gown,
Or Public Spirit its great cure-a crown.
Oh! fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,
The lover and the love of human kind,

Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear,
Because he wants a thousand pounds a-year.
Honour and shame from no condition rise,
Act well your part, there all the honour lies;
Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.
"What differ more," you cry, "than crown and cowl?"
I'll tell you, friend—a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,
The rest is all but leather and prunella.
Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,
Go! and pretend your family is young,
Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.

POPE.

59.-ON THE PLAIN OF MARATHON.

WHERE'ER we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon:

Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares grey Marathon.
The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same;
Unchanged in all except its foreign lord—
Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame
The battle-field, where Persia's victim horde
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword,
As on the morn to distant Glory dear,
When Marathon became a magic word;
Which uttered, to the hearer's eye appear
The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career,
The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above, Earth's, Ocean's plain below;
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene-what now remaineth here?
What sacred trophy marks the hallowed ground,
Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?
The rifled urn, the violated mound,

The dust thy courser's hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.

Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past

Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng;
Long shall the voyager, with the Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue
Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;
Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
Which sages venerate and bards adore,

As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

The parted bosom clings to wonted home,
If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth;
He that is lonely hither let him roam,

And gaze complacent on congenial earth.
Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth;
But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide,
And scarce regret the region of his birth,
When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side,

Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.

BYRON.

60. THE SIEGE OF CORINTH.

ALP felt his soul become more light
Beneath the freshness of the night.
Cool was the silent sky, though calm,
And bathed his brow with airy balm:
Behind, the camp-before him lay,
In many a winding creek and bay
Lepanto's gulf; and, on the brow,
Of Delphi's hill, unshaken snow,
High and eternal, such as shone
Through thousand summers brightly gone,
Along the gulf, the mount, the clime;
It will not melt, like man, to time:
Tyrant and slave are swept away,
Less formed to wear before the ray;
But that white veil, the lightest, frailest,
Which on the mighty mount thou hailest,
While tower and tree are torn and rent,
Shines o'er its craggy battlement;
In form a peak, in height a cloud,
In texture like a hovering shroud,
Thus high by parting Freedom spread,
As from her fond abode she fled,
And lingered on the spot, where long
Her prophet-spirit spake in song.
Oh! still her step at moments falters
O'er withered fields, and ruined altars,
And fain would wake, in souls too broken,
By pointing to each glorious token:
But vain her voice, till better days
Dawn in those yet remembered rays
Which shone upon the Persian flying,
And saw the Spartan smilé in dying.

Not mindless of these mighty times
Was Alp, despite his flight and crimes;
And through this night, as on he wandered,
And o'er the past and present pondered,
And thought upon the glorious dead
Who there in better cause had bled,

He felt how faint and feebly dim
The fame that could accrue to him,

Who cheered the band, and waved the sword,
A traitor in a turbaned horde;

And led them to the lawless siege,
Whose best success were sacrilege.
Not so had those his fancy numbered,

The chiefs whose dust around him slumbered;
Their phalanx marshalled on the plain,
Whose bulwarks were not then in vain.
They fell devoted, but undying;

The very gale their names seemed sighing:
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,

Claimed kindred with their sacred clay;
Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain,
The meanest rill, the mightiest river
Rolled mingling with their fame for ever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
That land is glory's still and theirs!
'Tis still a watchword to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth
He points to Greece, and turns to tread,
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head:
He looks to her, and rushes on
Where life is lost, or freedom won.

BYRON.

61.-CHRISTIAN AND HIS COMRADES AT OTAHEITE.

THE white man landed!-need the rest be told?
The New World stretched its dusk hand to the Old;
Each was to each a marvel, and the tie

Of wonder warmed to better sympathy.

Their union grew: the children of the storm
Found beauty linked with many a dusky form;

While these in turn admired the paler glow,

Which seemed so white in climes that knew no snow.
The chase, the race, the liberty to roam,

The soil where every cottage showed a home;

The cava feast, the yam, the cocoa's root

Which bears at once the cup, and milk, and fruit;
The bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare, yields
The unreaped harvest of unfurrowed fields,—
These, with the luxuries of seas and woods,

The airy joys of social solitudes,

Tamed each rude wanderer to the sympathies
Of those who were more happy, if less wise.
Here, in this grotto of the wave-worn shore,
They passed the Tropic's red meridian o'er;
Nor long the hours-they never paused o'er time,
Unbroken by the clock's funereal chime,
Which deals the daily pittance of our span,
And points and mocks with iron laugh at man.
What deemed they of the future or the past?
The present, like a tyrant, held them fast:
Their hour-glass was the sea-sand, and the tide,
Like her smooth billow, saw their moments glide.—
And let not this seem strange: the devotee
Lives not in earth, but in his ecstasy;

Around him days and worlds are heedless driven,
His soul is gone before his dust to heaven.
Is love less potent? No-his path is trod,
Alike uplifted gloriously to God;

Or linked to all we know of heaven below,
The other better self, whose joy or woe
Is more than ours; the all-absorbing flame
Which, kindled by another, grows the same,
Wrapt in one blaze; the pure, yet funeral pile,
Where gentle hearts, like Bramins, sit and smile.
How often we forget all time, when lone,
Admiring Nature's universal throne,

Her woods, her wilds, her waters, the intense
Reply of hers to our intelligence!

Live not the stars and mountains?

Are the waves

Without a spirit? Are the dropping caves

Without a feeling in their silent tears?

No, no;-they woo and clasp us to their spheres,
Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before

Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.

Strip off this fond and false identity!—

Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?

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