Heed not the jav'lin's fury, regard not clashing

of broadswords;

But all-boldly amongst crowned heads and the rulers

of empires

Stalk, not shrinking abashed from the dazzling

glare of the red gold,

Not from the pomp of the monarch, who walks forth

purple-apparelled:

These things shew that at times we are bankrupt, surely, of Reason;

When too all Man's life through a great Dark

laboureth onward.

For, as a young boy trembles, and in that mystery,

Darkness,

Sees all terrible things: so do we too, ev'n in the

daylight,

Ofttimes shudder at that, which is not more really

alarming

Than boys' fears, when they waken, and say

some danger is o'er them.

So this panic of mind, these clouds which gather

around us,

Fly not the bright sunbeam, nor the ivory shafts of

the Day-star:

Nature, rightly revealed, and the Reason only, dispel them.

Now, how moving about do the prime material atoms Shape forth this thing and that thing; and, once shaped, how they resolve them;

What power says unto each, This must be; how an inherent

Elasticity drives them about Space vagrantly on

ward;

I shall unfold: thou simply give all thyself to my

teaching.

Matter mingled and massed into indissoluble union Does not exist. For we see how wastes each

separate substance;

So flow piecemeal away, with the length'ning cen

turies, all things,

Till from our eye by degrees that old self passes,

and is not.

Still Universal Nature abides unchanged as aforetime.

Whereof this is the cause. When the atoms part from a substance,

That suffers loss; but another is elsewhere gaining an increase:

So that, as one thing wanes, still a second bursts

into blossom,

Soon, in its turn, to be left. Thus draws this

Universe always

Gain out of loss; thus live we mortals one on another. Bourgeons one generation, and one fades. Let but

a few years

Pass, and a race has arisen which was not as in

a racecourse,

One hands on to another the burning torch of

Existence.

FROM HOMER.

N. I.

SING, O daughter of heaven, of Peleus' son, of

Achilles,

Him whose terrible wrath brought thousand woes

on Achaia.

Many a stalwart soul did it hurl untimely to Hades, Souls of the heroes of old: and their bones lay strown on the sea-sands,

Prey to the vulture and dog. Yet was Zeus ful

filling a purpose;

Since that far-off day, when in hot strife parted

asunder

Atreus' sceptred son, and the chos'n of heaven,

Achilles.

Say then, which of the Gods bid arise up battle between them?

Zeus's and Leto's son. With the king was kindled

his anger:

Then went sickness abroad, and the people died

of the sickness:

For that of Atreus' son had his priest been lightly

entreated,

Chryses, Apollo's priest. For he came to the ships of Achaia,

Bearing a daughter's ransom, a sum not easy to

number:

And in his hand was the emblem of Him, far

darting Apollo,

High on a sceptre of gold: and he made his prayer

to the Grecians;

Chiefly to Atreus' sons, twin chieftains, ordering

armies:

"Chiefs sprung of Atreus' loins; and ye,

greaved Achaians!

brazen

So may the Gods this day, the Olympus-palacèd,

grant you