Build thee more stately mansions, O, my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
“ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.”
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
(“From Troilus and Cressida.”)
For time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps—in the corner; welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin—
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and molded of things past,
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er dusted.
A REQUIEM.
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Robert Louis Stevenson, the son of a lighthouse engineer, was born at Edinburgh in 1850. He studied in the university of that city and became a lawyer, though he never practiced. On account of his ill-health he went to Samoa, where he lived with his family and wrote his books. He died in 1894. A few of his stories are: “Treasure island,” “Kidnapped,” “New Arabian Nights,” “St. Ives”; his essays are, “Virginibus Puerisque,” “Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,” and “Familiar Studies on Men and Books.”
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me;
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill.
REQUIESCAT.
BY MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Matthew Arnold, son of the famous head master of Rugby, was born at Laleham, Middlesex, 1822. He studied at Winchester, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford, and was a fellow of Oriel. In 1851 he was made lay inspector of schools, and in ’57 received the appointment of professor of poetry at Oxford. He died at Liverpool in 1888. He wrote “Empedocles on Etna,” “Essays in Criticism,” “Study of Celtic Literature,” “Culture and Anarchy,” and other books of essays.
Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!
In quiet she reposes;
Ah! would that I did, too,