THE MAN OF ROSS.

BY POPE.

-ALL our praises why should lords engross? Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross : Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds, And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds. Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow? From the dry rock who bade the waters flow? Not to the skies in useless columns tost, Or in proud falls magnificently lost;

But clear and artless, pouring through the plain
Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.
Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?
Whose seats the weary traveller repose?

Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise ?
"The Man of Ross," each lisping babe replies.
Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread!
The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread:
He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,
Where age and want sit smiling at the gate:
Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blessed,
The young who labour and the old who rest.
Is any sick the Man of Ross relieves,
Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes and gives.
Is there a variance? enter but his door,
Baulked are the courts, and contest is no more.
Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now a useless race.

Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue
What all so wish, but want the power to do!
O say what sums that generous hand supply?
What mines to swell that boundless charity?

Of debts and taxes, wife and children clear,
This man possessed five hundred pounds a-year.

Blush, Grandeur, blush! proud Courts, withdraw your blaze!
Ye little stars, hide your diminished rays!

And what! no monument, inscription, stone?
His race, his form, his name almost unknown?
Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name:
Go, search it there, where to be born and die,
Of rich and poor makes all the history;
Enough, that virtue filled the space between ;
Proved by the ends of being to have been.

THE BUILDERS.

BY LONGFELLOW.

ALL are architects of Fate

Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low,

Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest

For the structure that we raise,

Time is with materials filled;

Our to-days and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these,
Leave no yawning gaps between :

Think not, because no man sees,

Such things will remain unseen.

P

In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;

For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base,
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow finds its place.

Thus alone can we attain

To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.

THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN.

BY GOLDSMITH.

NEAR yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild,
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a-year;

Remote from towns, he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place;
Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain.
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire, and talked the night away;
Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done,

Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And even his failings leaned to virtue's side;
But in his duty prompt at every call,

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries,
To tempt her new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Beside the bed where parting life was laid,
And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismayed,
The reverend champion stood. At his control
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise,
And his last faltering accents whispered praise.

At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place;

Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway;
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,

With ready zeal, each honest rustic ran;
E'en children followed with endearing wile,

And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile;
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed,
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

Lock up thy senses;-let no passions stir ;-
Wake all to reason-let her reign alone;
Then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth
Of Nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire:

What am I? and from whence? I nothing know,
But that I am; and, since I am, conclude
Something eternal: had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been: Eternal there must be.-
But what eternal ?-Why not human race?
And Adam's ancestors without an end ?-
That's hard to be conceived; since every link
Of that long-chained succession is so frail:
Can every part depend, and not the whole?