The waxen wing that strove t' empierce the sky,
The daring hand that fired the Ephesian dome,
The Spirit's strife with God for mastery,
Which made the burning depths of hell its home,
Were fell Ambition's. In that one word lies
All that is greatly good or greatly ill;
'Tis best of friends—'tis worst of enemies—
Honey and poison it doth both distil.
With vice enleagued, it sinks our spirit's down,
Till lust and murder gorge their fierce desire;
But virtue weaves for it a deathless crown,
Which teaches noble natures to aspire.
Honor and fame soar on its wingéd breath,
Hurl'd in its downward flight lie sin and death.
AUTHORS.
Authors are beings only half of earth—
They own a world apart from other men:
A glorious realm! giv'n by their fancy birth,
Subjects, a sceptre, and a diadem;
A fairy land of thought, in which sweet bliss
Would run to ecstasy in wild delight,
But that stern Nature drags them back to this,
With call imperious, which they may not slight:
And then they traffic with their thoughts to live,
And coin their laboring brains for daily bread:
Getting scant dross for the rich ore they give,
While often with the gift their life is shed:
And thus they die, leaving behind a name,
At once their country's glory and her shame.
[A FEW THOUGHTS ON FUNERALS.]
——''Tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathéd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death!'
Shakspeare.
In my morning walk in the country, the other day, a common poor-house hearse passed me. It was a long box, painted black, covered with a scant piece of dark cloth of some kind, hardly large enough to allow the tassels to dangle down its sides, in imitation of more gorgeous drapery. The little door at the hind-end of it looked as if it might open into the infernal regions. This dismal box, mounted nakedly on four frail wheels, was drawn along by a pale, lean horse, and the driver sat severe in his shirt-sleeves and tattered hat, like some desperate blackguard driving a night-cart. As he passed the cottages on the road-side, I observed anxious faces following its course; and particularly that of one poor woman, with an infant in her arms, whose poverty-stricken cheek was blanched still whiter, for the moment, as she contemplated the probable picture of her own humble obsequies. I imagined her as thinking of the time when she should leave her unprotected little ones to the chance charities of a heartless world—heartless to her—and herself be carried in this same vehicle to a stoneless grave.
I felt indignant at this unnecessary harrowing up of her feelings, and my own were not pleasantly affected; and then, and since, I have thought much upon the subject of funerals.