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النشر الإلكتروني

VIRTUE.

Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;

The dews shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.

Sweet rose! whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;

Thy root is ever in its grave;

And thou must die.

Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses;

A box where sweets compacted lie;

Thy music shows ye have your closes;

And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;

But, though the whole world turn to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

Herbert.

MENTAL BEAUTY.

Mind, mind alone, bear witness earth and heaven!
The living fountains in itself contains

Of beauteous and sublime: here hand in hand,
Sit paramount the Graces; here enthroned,

Celestial Venus, with divinest airs,
Invites the soul to never-fading joy.

Look then abroad through nature, to the range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres,
Wheeling unshaken through the void immense;
And speak, O man! does this capacious scene
With half that kindling majesty dilate
Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar's fate,
Amid the crowd of patriots; and his arm
Aloft extending, like eternal Jove

When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the father of his country hail?
For lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust,
And Rome again is free! Is aught so fair
In all the dewy landscapes of the spring,
In the bright eye of Hesper or the morn,
In nature's fairest forms, is aught so fair
As virtuous friendship? as the candid blush
Of him who strives with fortune to be just?
The graceful tear that streams for others' woes?
Or the mild majesty of private life,
Where Peace with ever-blooming olive crowns
The gate; where Honour's literal hands efface
Unenvied treasures, and the snowy wings

Of innocence and love protect the scene.

Akenside.

THE WILES OF CRAFT.

What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware,
As to deny the crafty cunning train

By which deceit doth mask in vizard fair:
And cast her colours dyed deep in grain,

To seem like truth, whose shape she well can feign,
And fitting gestures to her purpose frame,

The guiltless mind with guile to entertain.

Spenser.

TOMBS.

Tombs are the clothes of the dead: a grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered. Tombs ought in some sort to be proportioned, not to the wealth, but to the deserts of the party interred.

There were officers appointed in the Grecian games, who always by public authority did pluck down the statues erected to the victors, if they exceeded the true symmetry and proportion of their bodies. We need such now-a-days to order monuments to men's merits, chiefly to reform such depopulating tombs as have no good fellowship with them, but engross all the room, leaving neither seats for the living, nor graves for the dead. It was a wise and thrifty law which Reutha King of Scotland made, that noblemen should have so many pillars or long-pointed stones set in their sepulchres, as they had slain enemies in the wars. If the order were also enlarged to those who in peace had excellently deserved of the church or commonwealth, it might well be revived.

The shortest, plainest, and truest epitaphs are best. I say the shortest, for when a passenger sees a chronicle written on a tomb, he takes it in trust some great man lies there buried, without taking pains to examine who it is. Mr Cambden, in his "Remains," presents us with examples of great men that had little epitaphs. And when once a witty gentleman was asked what epitaph was fitted to be written on Mr Cambden's tomb, let it be, said he, "Cambden's Remains."

I say also the plainest: for, except the sense lie above ground, few will trouble themselves to dig for it. Lastly, it must be true, not, as in some monuments, where the red veins in the marble may seem to blush at the falsehoods written on it. He was a witty man who first taught a stone to speak, but he was a wicked man that taught it first to lie.

A good memory is the best monument: others are subject to casualty and time; and we know that the Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the power of their founders. Let us be careful to provide rest for our souls, and our bodies will provide rest for themselves.

Thomas Fuller.

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Ah me! how many perils do enfold

The righteous man, to make him daily fall:

Were not that heavenly grace did him behold,
And steadfast truth acquit him out of all.

Spenser.

GOD'S LOVE AND PITY.

Great God, whom we with humbled thoughts adore,

Eternal, infinite, almighty king,

Whose dwellings heaven transcend, whose throne before Archangels serve, and seraphim do sing:

Of nought who wrought all that with wond'ring eyes

We do behold within this various round;

Who makes the rocks to rock, to stand the skies;
At whose command clouds peals of thunder sound:
Ah! spare us worms, weigh not how we, alas!
Evil to ourselves, against thy laws rebel;

Wash off those spots, which still in conscience' glass,

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