"One morn I missed him on the 'customed hill, "The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." THE EPITAPH. Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, He gave to Misery all he had, a tear; He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) 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. GRAY. plough'man celestial ècstasy circumscribed applause' (-plōz) précincts curfew, the evening bell. French, couvre feu ("cover fire"). William the Conqueror ordained that a bell should be rung at 8 o'clock at night as a signal to the inhabitants to put out their fire and retire to rest. jòcund, delighted, merry. Lat. jucundus, "pleasant," from juvare, "to help, aid." tróphies, memorials of the defeat of an enemy,-things taken from him. Lat. tropaum, Grk. tropaion, from Grk. tropë, 'a turning (to flight)," from trepo, "I turn." ingenuous sequestered aisle (il), the wing of a church, French, aile (sometimes spelt aisle, although the s has no right to be present), Lat. ala, แ a wing." Hampden. John Hampden, a famous English patriot (15941643). When Charles I. imposed the tax of ship-money in time of peace and on inland places, Hampden refused to pay it (1636). This tax was levied, before Charles I.'s time, only on London and the towns of the coast, and in time of war. Examine the poem for Melody. Find examples of Harmony of Sound and Sense in the first stanza. THE DIVER AND HIS CALLING. [DURING a violent gale on Sunday evening, December 28th, 1879, a portion of the North British Railway Bridge over the Tay fell into the river. A train from Edinburgh, which was then crossing to Dundee, went down with (or immediately after) the bridge. A writer in the Daily News watched the subsequent diving operations.] The romance of the diver's life exists only in the imagination of the public. "You may depend upon it," said a diver to the writer; no man continues to be a diver from choice. I am a diver because I have drifted into the business, and I have a wife and family to keep. I should like to get as much money by diving as I can in the shortest possible time, and then get out of it; and no one will convince me that any diver can have a different feeling." The unromantic view which this diver took of his vocation was not at first sight encouraging to the other party to the conversation; but, after all, the diver's own estimate of his calling was an interesting fact to begin with; and it was soon proved that there were other facts which, however prosaically told, would feed the interest with which in spite of himself a romance-loving public will invest his calling. Perhaps the most wonderful thing learned from him was his feeling when submerged in the lonely depths of a dark river like the Tay. In the sea, where this diver was most accustomed to follow his calling, light came to him through many fathoms of water. In rivers it was otherwise. Eternally rushing seaward, and gathering in their course the washings of the hill-sides, their own often falling banks, and the refuse of every ungrateful village and town through which they pass, he found them seldom clear. Indeed, in some cases the darkness was as black as pitch. How, under such conditions, could the diver do his work? To this question the reply is that a new sense is somehow given to him. When he first goes down he is, like the blind man, suddenly transplanted to new surroundings, and left to grope his way painfully about. But, also like the blind man, he instinctively acquires a rapid acquaintance with his new position. On a second or third descent he can tell, he hardly knows how, that here on such a spot his feet trod yesterday, and that this is the new path he must strike out to-day. On a straight river bed he knows exactly when he is repassing over familiar ground, when he has travelled on that same course a greater distance, and when he has deviated from his previous way. He does the right thing intuitively; in a way that he cannot imagine himself doing it in the broad daylight on dry land; and he believes he possesses for the nonce the mysterious compensating faculties of the blind man. When to the silence and loneliness of ocean or river depths are added the blackness of darkness and the dread presence of death, the diver must needs have courage who boldly descends. In the operations at the Tay Bridge, the less experienced divers were by some suspected of succumbing to the terrors of the situation. If there were any human bodies there, they were imprisoned in a double prison of carriage and cage-like girder. It was impossible for any diver quickly to clutch at the body, and, ere he had time to think of his ghastly work, to procure by signal the instant withdrawal of himself and solemn burden to the surface. The work involved patient and deliberate handling of the dead in the dark and silent deep, and few who suspected the divers of shrinking from this task felt brave enough themselves to blame them seriously for it. The suspicion after all had probably but small foundation; at least two of the divers strongly declared that no eerie feeling" would prevent them doing their duty, and said that if necessary they would be glad to bring up the dead even in their arms. Still, the very way in which these men talk of this subject seems to show that below water they cannot face the dead with the callousness of men who are brought into contact with bodies on shore, that, in fact, they have to reason with themselves |