Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold. 4. Yet not to thine eternal resting place

5.

Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good-
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun-the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between—
The venerable woods-rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste-

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man.

The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings-yet the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone.

6. So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend

Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men-

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man-
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side.

By those who in their turn shall follow them.

7. So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not like the quarry slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

William Cullen Bryant.

FOR PREPARATION-I. Written when the poet was at the age of nineteen. Point out on the map that part of the Great Desert that extends into Barca;-the Oregon River (now called the Columbia). "Thanatopsis (thanatos = seeing contemplation of death).

death; opsis

=

II. Pā'-tri-ärehs, el'-o-quence, sep'-ŭl-eher, ân'-çient, (ān'shěnt), tomb (toom), dun'-geon (dun'jun), wraps (råps), phăn'-tom (fǎn'tum), mead'-owş, bo'şom.

III. All-beholding, rock-ribbed, gray-headed. Explain the use of the hyphen in each of these words.

IV. Pensive, melancholy waste, summons, drapery, unfaltering, decorations.

V. "Various language "- —a variety of languages, or a language varying only in its tone of sentiment? "Surrendering up thine individual being”is the individuality in the body, or in the mind? "Complaining brooks ”. why called complaining? "Still lapse of ages" (silent flight of time). Make a list of expressions used in this piece to denote death, and to describe its accompaniments (e. g., “last bitter hour,” “stern agony,” etc.).

XLIII.—EMMET'S VINDICATION.

1. MY LORDS: What have I to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored to destroy. I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.

2. Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me without a murmur; but the sentence of law which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the ministry of that law, labor, in its own vindication, to consign my character to obloquy; for there must be guilt somewhere-whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine. The man dies, but his memory lives. That mine may not perish-that it may live in the respect of my countrymen-I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me.

3. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade shall have joined the bands of

those martyred heroes who have shed their blood, on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and virtue; this is my hope-I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the Most High, which displays its powers over man as over the beasts of the forest, which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little more or less than the government standard-a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which its cruelty has made.

4. I swear by the throne of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear-by the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me-that my conduct has been, through all this peril and all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and no other view than that of the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and that I confidently and assuredly hope, wild and chimerical as it may appear, that there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noble enterprise.

5. My country was my idol. To it I sacrificed every selfish, every endearing sentiment; and for it I now offer up my life! I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and from the more galling yoke of a domestic faction, its joint partner and perpetrator in the patricide, whose reward is the ignominy of existing with an exterior of splendor and a consciousness of de

pravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my country from this doubly riveted despotism. I wished to place her independence beyond the reach of any power on earth. I wished to exalt her to that proud station in the world which Providence had fitted her to fill.

6. I have been charged with that importance, in the efforts to emancipate my country, as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your Lordship expressed it, "the life and blood of the conspiracy." You do me honor overmuch. You have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my Lord-men before the splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves dishonored to be called your friends.

7. Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant; in the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and her enemies should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the vengeance of the jealous and wrathful oppressor, and to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights and my country her independence-am I to be