And beg an alms of spring-time ne’er denied
Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods
Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year.
Lowell.
With hands clasped before him, and forefingers pressed against his lips, he travelled slowly with his eye along the great rows of shelved volumes on the walls, as though seeking temporary company in their familiar forms and titles.
Many another lonely man, unable to enjoy that strangely soothing companionship for the solitary, which nature gives in the murmuring and music of the woods, has found in his library a forest as tranquilizing to the fevered mind, and discovered between its unfading leaves the birds that make tenderest music for the soul.
Orpheus C. Kerr.
Among the epigrams of Leonidas of Tarentum, in the Greek Anthology, is one which becomes especially interesting if we take into account the writer’s history, and bear in mind that he had experimental knowledge of exile, from having been carried away captive by Pyrrhus. Its subject is “Home, sweet home.”
Cling to thy home! if there the meanest shed
Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thy head,