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Here have I shriek'd in my wild despair,

When the damnéd fiends from their prison came, Sported and gambol'd, and mock'd me here,

With their eyes of fire, and their tongues of flame;
Shouting forever and aye my name!

Woe to the daughters and sons of men!-
Woe to them all when I roam again!

3. How long I have been in this dungeon here,
Little I know, and nothing I care:

What to me is the day or night?
Summer's heat or autumn sere?
Springtide flowers, or winter's blight?
Pleasure's smile, or sorrow's tear?
Time! what care I for thy flight?
Joy! I spurn thee with disdain:
Nothing love I but this clanking chain.

4. Once I broke from its iron hold:

Nothing I said, but, silent and bold,

Like the shepherd that watches his gentle fold,
Like the tiger that crouches in mountain-lair
Hours upon hours, so watch'd I here;

Till one of the fiends that had come to bring
Herbs from the valley, and drink from the spring,
Stalk'd through my dungeon-entrance in!

5. Ha! how he shriek'd to see me free!
Ho! how he trembled and knelt to me,
He who had mock'd me many a day,
And barr'd me out from its cheerful ray!
Ho! how I shouted to see him pray!
I wreathed my hand in the demon's hair,
And choked his breath in its mutter'd prayer,
And danced I then in wild delight,
To see the trembling wretch's fright.

6. Ha! how I crush'd his hated bones

'Gainst the jagged wall, and the dungeon-stones;
And plunged my arm a-down his throat,
And dragg'd to life his beating heart,

And held it up, that I might gloat
To see its quivering fibers start!
Ho! how I drank of the purple flood!
I quaff'd and quaff'd again of blood,
Till my brain grew dark, and I knew no more,
Till I found myself on this dungeon-floor,

Fetter'd and held by this iron chain!
Ho! when I break its links again,
Ha! when I break its links again,
Woe to the daughters and sons of men!
7. My frame is shrunk, and my soul is sad,
And devils mock and call me mad.
Many a dark and fearful sight

Haunts me here in the gloom of night;
Mortal smile or human tear

Never cheers or soothes me here;

The spider shrinks from my grasp away,
Though he's known my form for many a day;
The slimy toad, with his diamond eye,
Watches afar, but comes not nigh;
The craven rat, with her filthy brood,
Pilfers and gnaws my scanty food,
But, when I strive to make her play,
Snaps at my hands and flees away.
Light of day, or ray of sun,

Friend or hope, I've none!—I've none!

8 They call'd me mad; they left me here

To my burning thoughts, and the fiend's despair,
Never, ah! never to see again

Earth, or sky, or sea, or plain;

Never to hear soft pity's sigh,

Never to gaze on mortal eye;

Doom'd through life-if life it be

To helpless, hopeless misery.

Oh, if a single ray of light

Had pierced the gloom of this endless night;
If the cheerful tones of a single voice
Had made the depths of my heart rejoice;
If a single thing had loved me here,
I ne'er had crouch'd to that fiend's despair!

9. They come again! They tear my brain!
They tumble and dart through every vein!
Ho! could I burst this clanking chain,
Then might I spring in the hellish ring,
And scatter them back to their den again!
Ho! when I break its links again,
Ha! when I break its links again,
Woe to the daughters and sons of men!

LESSON CXCIV.

THE TRUE REFORMERS.

BY H. GREELEY.

1. To the rightly-constituted mind, to the truly-developed man, there always is, there always must be, opportunity-opportunity to be and to learn, nobly to do and to endure; and what matter whether with pomp and éclat, with sound of trumpets and shout of applauding thousands, or in silence and seclusion, beneath the calm, discerning gaze of heaven? No station can be humble on which that gaze is approvingly bent; no work can be ignoble which is performed uprightly, and not impelled by sordid and selfish aims.

2. Not from among the children of monarchs, ushered into being with boom of cannon and shouts of reveling millions, but from amid the sons of obscurity and toil, cradled in peril and ignominy, from the bulrushes and the manger, come forth the benefactors and saviors of mankind. So when all the babble and glare of our age shall have passed into a fitting oblivion, when those who have enjoyed rare opportunities, and swayed vast empires, and been borne through life on the shoulders of shouting multitudes, shall have been laid at last to rest in golden coffins, to molder forgotten, the stately marble their only monuments, it will be found that some humble youth, who neither inherited nor found, but hewed out, his opportunities, has uttered the thought which shall render the age memorable, by extending the means of enlightenment and blessing to our race.

3, The great struggle for human progress and elevation proceeds noiselessly, often unnoted, often checked and apparently baffled, amid the clamorous and debasing strifes impelled by greedy selfishness and low ambition. In that struggle, maintained by the wise and good of all parties, all creeds, all climes, bear ye the part of men. Heed the lofty summons, and, with souls serene and constant, prepare to tread boldly in the path of highest duty. So shall life be to you truly exalted and heroic; so shall death be a transition neither sought nor dreaded; so shall your memory, though cherished at first but by a few humble, loving hearts, linger long and gratefully in human remembrance, a watchword to the truthful and an incitement to generous endeavor, freshened by the proud tears of admiring affection, and fragrant with the odors of heaven!

LESSON CXCV.

CASSIUS INSTIGATING BRUTUS TO JOIN THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST CESAR.

FROM SHAKSPEARE.

1. I CANNOT tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.

2.

I was born free as Cæsar; so were you.
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he.
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
Cæsar said to me, "Darest thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood

And swim to yonder point?"

Upon the word,
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,
And bade him follow: so, indeed, he did.
The torrent roar'd; and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews; throwing it aside,
And stemming it with hearts of controversy.
But, ere we could arrive the point proposed,
Cæsar cried, Help me, Cassius, or I sink.

3. I, as Æneas, our great ancestor,

4.

Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Cæsar. And this man

Is now become a god; and Cassius is

A wretched creature, and must bend his body
If Cæsar carelessly but nod on him!
He had a fever when he was in Spain,
And, when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake.

'Tis true, this god did shake:
His coward lips did from their color fly;

And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world
Did lose its luster. I did hear him groan;

Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans

5.

Mark him, and write his speeches in their books,
Alas! it cried, Give me some drink, Titinius;
As a sick girl.

Ye gods! it doth amaze me,

A man of such a feeble temper should

So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and

peep about

To find ourselves dishonorable graves.

Men at some times are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

6. Brutus, and Cæsar! what should be in that Cæsar?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,-
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,
That he is grown so great?

7.

Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man.
When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Oh, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome,
As easily as a king.

LESSON CXCVI.

SPEECH ON BEING FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON.

BY THOMAS F. MEAGHER.

1. A JURY of my countrymen, it is true, have found me guilty of the crime for which I stood indicted. For this I entertain

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