If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth-"Poor_man," said I, "you pay too dear for your whistle." When I met a man of pleasure, sacrificing every laudable improvement of the mind, or of his fortune, to mere corporeal sensation, and ruining his health in its pursuit-"Mistaken man,' " said I, "you are providing pain for yourself, instead of pleasure; you are paying too dear for your whistle." If I see one fond of appearance or fine clothes, fine houses, fine furniture, fine equipages, all above his fortune, for which he contracts debts, "Alas, say I, "he has paid dear, very dear for his whistle. In short, the miseries of mankind are largely due to their false estimate of things, to giving "too much for their whistles.'

167.-APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

LORD BYRON.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean,-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin,-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,―thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth:-there let him lie.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free.
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts;-not so thou;-
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow,-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed,-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime,—
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made: each zone Obeys thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers, they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror,-'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane,

-as I do here.

168.-POEMS OF WORDSWORTH.

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;-
Turn whereso'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare:

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go.

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;

The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended,

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim

The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man.
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That Nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed,
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts, before which our mortal nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor man nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy

Which having been, must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight,

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they : The innocent brightness of a new-born day

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live ;
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

THE BLIND FIDDLER.

An Orpheus! an Orpheus! Yes, faith may grow bold,
And take to herself all the wonders of old;

Near the stately Panthéon you'll meet with the same,
In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.
His station is there; and he works on the crowd,
He sways them with harmony merry and loud;
He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim,--
Was aught ever heard like his fiddle and him?
What an eager assembly! what an empire is this!
The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss;
The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest;
And the gilt-burthen'd soul is no longer opprest.

As the moon brightens round her the clouds of the night,
So he, where he stands, is a centre of light;

It gleams on the face, there, of dusky-brow'd Jack,
And the pale-visaged baker's, with basket on back.
That errand-bound 'prentice was passing in haste,—
What matter! he's caught, and his time runs to waste;
The newsman is stopp'd, though he stops on the fret;
And the half-breathless lamplighter, he's in the net!
The porter sits down on the weight which he bore;
The lass with her barrow wheels hither her store;-
If a thief could be here he might pilfer at ease;
She sees the musician, 'tis all that she sees!

He stands, backed by the wall;-he abates not his din;
His hat gives him vigor, with boons dropping in,

From the old and the young, from the poorest; and there ! The one-pennied boy has his penny to spare.

O blest are the hearers, and proud be the hand

Of the pleasure it spreads through so thankful a band;

I am glad for him, blind as he is!-all the while

If they speak 'tis to praise, and they praise with a smile.

That tall man, a giant in bulk and in height,
Not an inch of his body is free from delight;
Can he keep himself still, if he would? O not he!
The music stirs in him like wind through a tree.