SUMMER PASTIME.
Do you ask how I'd amuse me
When the long bright summer comes,
And welcome leisure woos me
To shun life's crowded homes;
To shun the sultry city,
Whose dense, oppressive air
Might make one weep with pity
For those who must be there.
I'll tell you then—I would not
To foreign countries roam,
As though my fancy could not
Find occupance at home;
Nor to home-haunts of fashion
Would I, least of all, repair,
For guilt, and pride, and passion,
Have summer-quarters there.
Far, far from watering-places
Of note and name I'd keep,
For there would vapid faces
Still throng me in my sleep;
Then contact with the foolish,
The arrogant, the vain,
The meaningless—the mulish,
Would sicken heart and brain.
No—I'd seek some shore of ocean
Where nothing comes to mar
The ever-fresh commotion
Of sea and land at war;
Save the gentle evening only
As it steals along the deep,
So spirit-like and lonely,
To still the waves to sleep.
There long hours I'd spend in viewing
The elemental strife,
My soul the while subduing
With the littleness of life;
Of life, with all its paltry plans,
Its conflicts and its cares—
The feebleness of all that's man's—
The might that's God's and theirs!
And when eve came I'd listen
To the stilling of that war,
Till o'er my head should glisten
The first pure silver star;
Then, wandering homeward slowly,
I'd learn my heart the tune
Which the dreaming billows lowly,
Were murmuring to the moon!
R.C.
True genius is perpetual youth, health, serenity, and strength. The eye is bright with a fine fire that is undimmed by time, and the mind, not sharing the body's decline from the prime of middle age, continues on with illimitable accession of spiritual power.
Our convictions should be based on conceptions got from insight of principles, and not upon opinions spawned of authority and expediency. Every man shall influence me, no man can decide for me.