The flush of youth soon passes from the face,
The spells of fancy from the mind depart;
The form may lose its symmetry and grace,—
But time can claim no victory o'er the heart.

That heart, methinks,

MRS. DINNIES

Were of strange mould, which kept no cherish'd print
Of earlier, happier times, when life was fresh,

And love and innocence made holiday.

I am not old-tho' Time has set

His signet on my brow,

And some faint furrows there have met,
Which care may deepen now:—
For in my heart a fountain flows,
And round it pleasant thoughts repose,
And sympathies and feelings high
Spring like the stars on evening sky.

HILLHOUSE

PARK BENJAMIN.

Honour to him, who, self-complete and brave,
In scorn can carve his pathway to the grave,
And, heeding nought of what men think or say,
Make his own heart his world upon the way!

The New Timon

Mine be the heart that can itself defend-
Hate to the foe, devotion to the friend!
The fearless trust, and the relentless strife,
Honour unsold, and wrong aveng'd with life!

My heart is like the sleeping lake,

The New Timon

Which takes the hue of cloud and sky,

And only feels its surface break

When birds of passage wander by,

Who dip their wings, and upward soar,
And leave it quiet as before.

N. P. WILLIS.

320

HEAVEN-HELL

My heart is like a lonely bird,

That sadly sings,
Brooding upon its nest unheard,
With folded wings.

MRS. A. B. WELBY

Oh! could we read the human heart,
Its strange, mysterious depths explore,
What tongue could tell, or pen impart
The riches of its hidden lore?

HEAVEN-HELL.

Shall we serve heaven

With less respect than we do minister
To our gross selves?

Divines and dying men may talk of hell,
But in my heart her several torments dwell.

There is perpetual spring, perpetual youth;
No joint-benumbing cold, nor scorching heat,
Famine nor age, have any being there.

SHAKSPEARE.

SHAKSPEARE.

MASSINGER AND DECKER.

Heaven's the perfection of all that can
Be said or thought, riches, delight, or harmony,
Health, beauty; and all these not subject to
The waste of time, but in their height eternal.

Hell, their fit habitation, fraught with fire
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.

SHIRLEY.

MILTON'S Paradise Lost.

Here we may reign secure; and in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

MILTON'S Paradise Lost.

HELL HERMIT, &c.

A black and hollow vault,

Where day is never seen; there shines no sun,
But flaming horror of consuming fires;

A lightless sulphur, chok'd with smoky fogs
Of an infected darkness.

In this place

JOHN FORD.

Dwell many thousand thousand sundry sorts
Of never-dying deaths: there damned souls
Roar without pity; there are gluttons fed
With toads and adders; there is burning oil
Pour'd down the drunkard's throat; the usurer
ls forc'd to sup whole draughts of molten gold;
'There is the murderer for ever stabb'd,

Yet can he never die; there lies the wanton
On racks of burning steel, while in his soul
He feels the torment of his raging lust.

JOHN FORD.

The shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
There can I sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale's complaining notes
Tune my distresses, and record my woes.

And wisdom's self

Oft seeks for sweet retir'd solitude,

Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,

SHAKSPEARE.

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.

21

MILTON'S Comus.

822

HERMIT-SOLITUDE, &c.

Retiring from the populous noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

How happy is the lonely vestal's lot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot!

MILTON

GRAY'S Elegy

POPE'S Eloisa.

Far in a wild, unknown to public view,
From youth to age a reverend hermit grew;
The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
His food the fruits, his drinks the crystal well;
Remote from man, with God he pass'd his days,
Prayer all his business-ali his pleasure praise.

PARNELL

O sacred solitude! divine retreat!
Choice of the prudent! envy of the great!
By thy pure stream, or in thy waving shade,
We court fair Wisdom, that celestial maid.

YOUNG

For solitude, however some may rave,
Seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave-
A sepulchre in which the living lie,

Where all good qualities grow sick and die.

Oh solitude! where are the charms

That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,

COWPER'S Retirement

Than reign in this horrible place!
I am out of humanity's reach,

I must finish my journey alone;
Never hear the sweet music of speech-

I start at the sound of my own.

COWPER.

HERMIT-SOLITUDE, &c.

323

Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness—
Some boundless contiguity of space,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit

Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill’d.

Unhappy he, who from the first of joys,
Society, cut off, is left alone

Amid this world of death.

COWPER.

THOMSON'S Seasons.

To view, alone,

The fairest scenes of land and deep,

With none to listen, and reply

To thoughts with which my heart beat high,
Were irksome; for, whate'er my mood,

In sooth, I love not solitude.

BYRON'S Bride of Abydos.

The lonely spider's thin gray pall
Waves slowly, widening o'er the wall.

BYRON'S Giaour

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but nature more
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind.

In solitude

Small power the nipt affections have to grow.

BYRON'S Childe Harold,