For well thou managest that life of thine,
While I oh ask not what I do with mine!
Would I were such !

FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE

Cover Me With Your Everlasting Arms

COVER

me with your everlasting arms,

Ye guardian giants of this solitude!

From the ill-sight of men, and from the rude, Tumultuous din of yon wild world's alarms! Oh, knit your mighty limbs around, above, And close me in for ever! let me dwell With the wood spirits, in the darkest cell That ever with your verdant locks ye wove. The air is full of countless voices, joined In one eternal hymn; the whispering wind, The shuddering leaves, the hidden water-springs, The work-song of the bees, whose honeyed wings Hang in the golden tresses of the lime,

Or buried lie in purple beds of thyme.

Expostulation

WHAT though the sun must set, and darkness

come,

Shall we turn coldly from the light,

And o'er the heavens call an earlier gloom,

Because the longest day must end in night?
What though the golden summer flies so fast,
Shall we neglect the rosy wreaths she brings,
Because their blooming sweetness may not last,
And winter comes apace with snowy wings?
What though this world be but the journeying land,
Where those who love but meet to part again;
Where as we clasp in welcome friendship's hand
That greeting clasp becomes a parting strain :
'Tis better to be blest for one short hour,
Than never know delight of love or joy,
Friendship, or mirth, or happiness, or power,
And all that Time creates, and must destroy.

EMILY BRONTE

Often Rebuked

OFTE

FTEN rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be :

To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,

And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading : It vexes me to choose another guide :

Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;

Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell :
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

The Old Stoic

RICHES I hold in light esteem,

And Love I laugh to scorn;

And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me

Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty'!

Yes, as my swift days near their goal,

'Tis all that I implore ;

In life in death, a chainless soul,

With courage to endure.

Home

ANNE BRONTE

HOW brightly glistening in the sun

The woodland ivy plays!

While yonder beeches from their barks
Reflect his silver rays.

That sun surveys a lovely scene
From softly smiling skies;

And wildly through unnumbered trees

The wind of winter sighs :

Now loud, it thunders o'er my head,
And now in distance dies.

But give me back my barren hills
Where colder breezes rise;

Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees
Can yield an answering swell,
But where a wilderness of heath
Returns the sound as well.

For yonder garden, fair and wide,

With groves of evergreen,

Long winding walks, and borders trim, And velvet lawns between ;

Restore to me that little spot,
With grey walls compassed round,
Where knotted grass neglected lies,
And weeds usurp the ground.

Though all around this mansion high
Invites the foot to roam,

And though its walls are fair within—
Oh, give me back my HOME!

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

Qua Cursum Ventus

AS ships, becalmed at eve, that lay

With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail at dawn of day Are scarce long leagues apart descried;

When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving, side by side :

E'en so-but why the tale reveal

Of those, whom year by year unchanged, Brief absence joined anew to feel, Astounded, soul from soul estranged?