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Or how the sacred pine tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads ?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
While love and terror laid the tiles.

5. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon,
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids,
gaze upon the pyramids;

To

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For out of thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

6. These temples grew as grows the grass: Art might obey, but not surpass.

The passive master lent his hand

To the vast Soul that o'er him planned;
And the same Power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

7. Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.

One accent of the Holy Ghost

The heedless world hath never lost.

8. I know what say the fathers wise-
The book itself before me lies-
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger golden lips or mines-
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;
His words are music in my ear-
I see his cowléd portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. Who was Phidias? (His greatness lies chiefly in the fact that he invented and fixed for all later artists the features by which the gods of the Greek Olympus are recognized.) "Delphic oracle"? Parthenon (adorned by Phidias)? Chrysostom (meaning "golden mouthed")? Jeremy Taylor, who is alluded to below, resembled Chrysostom in his eloquence. Coleridge pronounced him "the most eloquent of divines." This poem is made on the portrait of Taylor (1613-67), the "cowléd churchman" spoken of, and celebrates the inspiration of the prophet, priest, poet, and artist.

II. Aisle (il), wrought (rawt), feath'-ers (feth'-), mỹr'-i-adş, pōr'trait, pròph'-et (and pròf'it).

III. "Wrought "-explain its derivation from "work."

IV. Problem, cowl, pensive, allure, endure, monastic, litanies, canticles, dome, sincerity, piles, sibyls, fanes, groined.

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V. "Burdens of the Bible "-in what sense is the word burden used here? ("Burden of a song.") "Conscious stone" (metaphor for a conscious purpose which moved the architect who made the plan of the church). Have you seen the colors on the inside of a seashell? "Painted with morn (colors of the dawn, caused by the succession of narrow seams or furrows where the layers of annual growth join). "Granted them an equal date with Andes," etc. (i. e., accepted them as works of equal merit and author. ity). What is the allusion in "Pentecost"? "Tables yet unbroken " (tables of the soul-not to be broken, like the stone ones of Moses).

CXXXI. THE GREATNESS OF NAPOLEON.

1. There are different orders of greatness. Among these, the first rank is unquestionably due to moral greatness, or magnanimity; to that sublime energy by which the soul, smitten with the love of virtue, binds itself in dissolubly, for life and for death, to truth and duty; espouses as its own the interests of human nature; scorns all meanness and defies all peril; hears in its own conscience a voice louder than threatenings and thunders; withstands all the powers of the universe which would sever it from the cause of freedom and religion; reposes an unfaltering trust in God in the darkest hour; and is ever "ready to be offered up" on the altar of its country or of mankind.

2. Of this moral greatness, which throws all other forms of greatness into obscurity, we see not a trace in Napoleon. Though clothed with the power of a god, the thought of consecrating himself to the introduction of a new and higher era, to the exaltation of the character and condition of his race, seems never to have dawned on his mind. The spirit of disinterestedness and selfsacrifice seems not to have waged a moment's war with self-will and ambition.

3. His ruling passions, indeed, were singularly at variance with magnanimity. Moral greatness has too much simplicity, is too unostentatious, too self-subsistent, and enters into others' interests with too much heartiness, to live an hour for what Napoleon always lived-to make itself the theme, and gaze, and wonder of a dazzled world.

4. Next to moral comes intellectual greatness, or genius in the highest sense of that word; and by this we

mean that sublime capacity of thought through which the soul, smitten with the love of the true and the beautiful, essays to comprehend the universe, soars into the heavens, penetrates the earth, penetrates itself, questions the past, anticipates the future, traces out the general and all-comprehending laws of nature, binds together by innumerable affinities and relations all the objects of its knowledge, rises from the finite and transient to the infinite and the everlasting; frames to itself, from its own fullness, lovelier and sublimer forms than it beholds; discerns the harmonies between the world within and the world without us, and finds in every region of the universe types and interpreters of its own deep mysteries and glorious inspirations. This is the greatness which belongs to philosophers, and to the master spirits in poetry and the fine arts.

5. Next comes the greatness of action; and by this we mean the sublime power of conceiving bold and extensive plans; of constructing and bringing to bear on a mighty object a complicated machinery of means, energies, and arrangements, and of accomplishing great outward effects.

6. To this head belongs the greatness of Bonaparte ; and that he possessed it we need not prove, and none will be hardy enough to deny. A man who raised himself from obscurity to a throne; who changed the face of the world; who made himself felt through powerful and civilized nations; who sent the terror of his name across seas and oceans; whose will was pronounced and feared as destiny; whose donatives were crowns; whose antechamber was thronged by submissive princes; who broke down the awful barrier of the Alps, and made them a highway; and whose fame was spread beyond the boun

daries of civilization to the steppes of the Cossack and the deserts of the Arab—a man who has left this record of himself in history has taken out of our hands the question whether he shall be called great. All must concede to him a sublime power of action-an energy equal to great effects. W. E. Channing.

FOR PREPARATION.-I. Give a brief account of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte ;-of his passage of the Alps. What of his early obscurity? Where did he fight the Arabs? "Cossack" alludes to his campaign against

Moscow.

II. In dis'-so-lu-bly, knowl'-edge (nol'ej), types, steppes (stěps), eon çéde'.

III. Correct (and give your reasons for it) "who sent the terror of his name across sea's and ocean's; who'se will was pronounced as destiny."

IV. Espouses, obscurity, consecrating, era, unostentatious, universe, anticipates, affinities, donatives, "barrier of the Alps," "penetrates the earth." V. Discriminate "greatness of intellect" from "greatness of action," and give an example to illustrate the difference. Name the chief traits of "moral greatness."

CXXXII. THE DESERT.

FIRST VOICE.

"Ah me-the scorching sand!

The cloudless, burned-out blue!

The choking air on every hand,

That the raindrops never through!”

SECOND VOICE.

"The oasis was fair,

The green palm tree with its dates,
And the breath of the far-off ocean air,
Where the restful harbor waits."

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