полная версия

Various
Graded Memory Selections

Полная версия

ELEGY
WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

 
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
 
 
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:
 
 
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wand’ring near her secret bow’r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
 
 
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
 
 
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
 
 
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
 
 
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
 
 
Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.
 
 
The boast of heraldry; the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour—
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
 
 
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If mem’ry o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
 
 
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honor’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?
 
 
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre.
 
 
But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;
Chill penury repress’d their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
 
 
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air,
 
 
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
 
 
Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes
 
 
Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib’d alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin’d:
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
 
 
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.
 
 
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool, sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
 
 
Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
 
 
Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
 
 
For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling’ring look behind?
 
 
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev’n from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires.
 
 
For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonor’d Dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate,
 
 
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
“Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
 
 
“There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by
 
 
“Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt’ring his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or craz’d with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.
 
 
“One morn I missed him on the custom’d hill,
Along the heath, and near his fav’rite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.
 
 
“The next, with dirges due in sad array,
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne—
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Grav’d on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.”
 

THE EPITAPH

 
Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown
Fair science frown’d not on his humble birth,
And melancholy mark’d him for her own.
 
 
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav’n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to mis’ry all he had, a tear,
He gain’d from heav’n (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.
 
 
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his father and his God.
 

—Thomas Gray.

GRADATIM.³²

 
Heaven is not gained at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
 
 
I count this thing to be grandly true,
That a noble deed is a step toward God—
Lifting the soul from the common sod
To a purer air and a broader view.
 
 
We rise by things that are ’neath our feet;
By what we have mastered of good and gain;
By the pride deposed and the passion slain,
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.
 
 
We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust,
When the morning calls us to life and light,
But our hearts grow weary, and, ere the night,
Our lives are trailing the sordid dust.
 
 
We hope, we resolve, we aspire, we pray,
And we think that we mount the air on wings
Beyond the recall of sensual things,
While our feet still cling to the heavy clay.
 
 
Wings for the angels, but feet for men!
We may borrow the wings to find the way—
We may hope, and resolve, and aspire, and pray,
But our feet must rise, or we fall again.
 
 
Only in dreams is a ladder thrown
From the weary earth to the sapphire walls;
But the dream departs, and the vision falls,
And the sleeper wakes on his pillow of stone.
 
 
Heaven is not reached at a single bound:
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
 

—J. G. Holland.

GOD SAVE THE FLAG.³³

 
Washed in the blood of the brave and the blooming,
Snatched from the altars of insolent foes,
Burning with star-fires, but never consuming,
Flashed its broad ribbons of lily and rose.
 
 
Vainly the prophets of Baal would rend it,
Vainly his worshipers pray for its fall;
Thousands have died for it, millions defend it,
Emblem of justice and mercy to all.
 
 
Justice that reddens the sky with her terrors,
Mercy that comes with her white-handed train,
Soothing all passions, redeeming all errors,
Sheathing the saber and breaking the chain.
 
 
Born on the deluge of old usurpations,
Drifted our Ark o’er the desolate seas,
Bearing the rainbow of hope to the nations
Torn from the storm-cloud and flung to the breeze!
 
 
God bless the flag and its loyal defenders
While its broad folds o’er the battle-fields wave,
Till the dim star-wreaths rekindle its splendors
Washed from its stains in the blood of the brave!
 

—Oliver Wendell Holmes.

LIFE.³⁴

 
Forenoon and afternoon and night—Forenoon and afternoon and night,
Forenoon, and—what!
The empty song repeats itself. No more?
Yea, that is life: Make this forenoon sublime,
This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer,
And Time is conquered and thy crown is won.
 

—Edward Rowland Sill.

EIGHTH GRADE

HYMN TO THE NIGHT

 
I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!
 
 
I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o’er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.
 
 
I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
Like some old poet’s rhymes.
 
 
From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there—
From those deep cisterns flows.
 
 
O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.
 
 
Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best beloved Night!
 

—Longfellow.

THE BUILDERS

 
All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
 
 
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.
 
 
For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.
 
 
Truly shape and fasten these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.
 
 
In the elder days of art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.
 
 
Let us do our work as well
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house where God may dwell
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
 
 
Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
 
 
Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.
 
 
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.
 

—Longfellow.

POLONIUS’ ADVICE TO LAERTES

 
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear; but few thine voice;
Take each man’s censure; but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France, of the best rank and station,
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For a loan oft loses both itself and friend.
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all—to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou can’st not then be false to any man.
 

—Shakespeare.

THANATOPSIS

 
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart—
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice—Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements.
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone—nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Book-ribbed and ancient as the sun—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning—and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings—yet—the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest—and what if thou withdraw
Unheeded by the living—and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employment, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
 

—Bryant.

THE AMERICAN FLAG

 
When Freedom, from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.
 
 
Majestic monarch of the cloud!
Who rear’st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumpings loud
And see the lightning lances driven,
When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven—
Child of the sun! to thee ’tis given
To guard the banner of the free;
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke;
And bid its blending shine afar,
Like rainbows on the clouds of war,
The harbingers of victory!
 
 
Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high!
When speaks the signal trumpet tone,
And the long line comes gleaming on,
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,
Each soldier eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn,
And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance;
And when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall,
Like shoots of flame on midnight’s pall,
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall shrink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.
 
 
Flag of the seas! on ocean wave
Thy stars shall glitter o’er the brave,
When death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frightened waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside’s reeling rack;
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly
In triumph o’er his closing eye.
 
 
Flag of the free heart’s hope and home,
By angel hands to valor given,
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us!
 

—Joseph Rodman Drake.

SPEECH AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG

November 18, 1863

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us, to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

—President Lincoln.