No More Learning

Rough winter's blasts to spring give way,
Spring yields to summer's sovran ray;
Then summer sinks in autumn's reign,
And winter holds the world again.
Her losses soon the moon supplies,
But wretched Man, when once he lies
Where Priam and his sons are laid,
Is naught but ashes and a shade.
Who knows if Jove, who counts our score,
Will toss us in a morning more?
What with your friend you nobly share
At least you rescue from your heir.
Not you, Torquatus, boast of Rome,
When Minos once has fixed your doom,
Or eloquence or splendid birth
Or virtue shall restore to earth.
Hippolytus, unjustly slain,
Diana calls to life in vain,
Nor can the might of Theseus rend
The chains of hell that hold his friend.

SAMUEL JOHNSON.


_153_

NOW have I made my monument: and now
Nor brass shall longer live, nor loftier raise
The royallest pyramid its superb brow.
Nor ruin of rain or wind shall mar its praise,
Nor tooth of Time, nor pitiless pageantry
O' the flying years. In death I shall not die
Wholly, nor Death's dark Angel all I am
Make his; but ever flowerlike my fame
Shall flourish in the foldings of the Mount
Capitoline, where the Priests go up, and mute
The maiden Priestesses.
From mean account
Lifted to mighty, where the resolute
Waters ot Aufidus reverberant ring
O'er fields where Daunus once held rustic state,
Of barren acres simple-minded king,--
There was I born, and first of men did mate
To lyre of Latium Aeolic lay.
Clothe thee in glory, Muse, and grandly wear
Thy hardly-gotten greatness, and my hair
Circle, Melpomene, with Delphian bay.

H. W. G.
_161_

HE who sublime in epic numbers rolled,
And he who struck the softer lyre of love,
By Death's unequal hand alike controlled,
Fit comrades in Elysian regions move!

BYRON.


_166_

HAD he not hands of rare device, whoe'er
First painted Love in figure of a boy?
He saw what thoughtless beings lovers were,
Who blessings lose, whilst lightest cares employ.

Nor added he those airy wings in vain,
And bade through human hearts the godhead fly;
For we are tost upon a wavering main;
Our gale, inconstant, veers around the sky.

Nor, without cause, he grasps those barbed darts,
The Cretan quiver o'er his shoulder cast;
Ere we suspect a foe, he strikes our hearts;
And those inflicted wounds for ever last.

In me are fix'd those arrows, in my breast;
But sure his wings are shorn, the boy remains;
For never takes he flight, nor knows he rest;
Still, still I feel him warring through my veins.

In these scorch'd vitals dost thou joy to dwell?
Oh shame! to others let thy arrows flee;
Let veins untouch'd with all thy venom swell;
Not me thou torturest, but the shade of me.

Destroy me--who shall then describe the fair?
This my light Muse to thee high glory brings:
When the nymph's tapering fingers, flowing hair,
And eyes of jet, and gliding feet she sings.

ELTON.


_179_

NO longer, Paullus, vex with tears my tomb:
There is no prayer can open the black gate.
When once the dead have passed beneath the doom,
Barred is the adamant and vows too late.

E'en though the lord of hell should list thy prayer,
Thy tears shall idly soak the sullen shores:
Vows may move heaven; when Charon holds his fee,
The grass-grown pile stands closed by lurid doors.