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; Woe to the daughters and sons of men!- 3. How long I have been in this dungeon here, What to me is the day or night? 4. Once I broke from its iron hold: Nothing I said, but, silent and bold, Like the shepherd that watches his gentle fold, Till one of the fiends that had come to bring 5. Ha! how he shriek'd to see me free! 6. Ha! how I crush'd his hated bones 'Gainst the jagged wall, and the dungeon-stones; And held it up, that I might gloat Fetter'd and held by this iron chain! Haunts me here in the gloom of night; Never cheers or soothes me here; The spider shrinks from my grasp away, 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, 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; 9. They come again! They tear my brain! 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 2. I was born free as Cæsar; so were you. And swim to yonder point?" Upon the word, 3. I, as Æneas, our great ancestor, 4. Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder Is now become a god; and Cassius is A wretched creature, and must bend his body 'Tis true, this god did shake: And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans 5. Mark him, and write his speeches in their books, Ye gods! it doth amaze me, A man of such a feeble temper should So get the start of the majestic world, Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some times are masters of their fates: 6. Brutus, and Cæsar! what should be in that Cæsar? 7. Age, thou art shamed! 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 |