SECTION III. RECITATIONS AND READINGS: POETRY. 1. THE CROWDED STREET. 1. Let me move slowly | through the street, 2. How fast the flitting figures | come! Sóme bright with thoughtless smiles, and sóme | 3. They páss-to toil, to strife, to rèst; To halls in which the feast | is spread; 4. And some to happy homes repàir, Where children pressing cheek to cheek, 5. And sóme, who walk in calmness hére, Shall shudder when they reach the door | Where one who made their dwelling déar, Its flower, its light, is seen no more. 6. Youth, with pale cheek | and slender fráme, And dreams of greatness in thine eye! Goest thou to build an early náme, Or early in the task | to die? 7. Keen son of trade, with eager brów! 8. Who of this crowd | to-night | shall tread | Who writhe | in throes | of mórtal páin ? Shall hide in dens of shame | to-night. 10. Each, where his tasks or pleasures cáll, They páss, and heed each other not. There is who heeds, who holds them áll, In His large love | and boundless thought. 11. These struggling tides | of life | that seem | In wayward, aimless course to ténd, Are éddies of the mighty stréam | BRYANT. 2. THE BUILDERS. 1. All are architects of Fate, 2. Nothing useless is | or lòw; Each thing in its place | is bèst; 3. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials | filled; Our to-days and yesterdays | Are the blocks | with which we build. 4. Truly shape | and fashion thèse; Leave no yawning gaps | between ; Think not, because no man sées, 5. In the elder days | of árt, Builders wrought | with greatest cáre | Each minute and unseen pàrt; For the gods are èverywhere. 6. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen | and the sèen; 7. Else our lives | are incomplète, Standing in these walls of Tíme; 8. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, 9. Thus alone | can we attain | To those túrrets, where the eye | 3. PSALM OF LIFE. 1. Tell me not | in mournful númbers, 2. Life is real! Life | is earnest ! 3. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 4. Art | is lóng, and Time | is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating | Funeral marches | to the gràve. 5. In the world's broad field of battle, Be not like dumb, driven cáttle; 6. Trust no Fúture, howe'er plèasant ! Heart within, and Gód | o'erhead. 7. Lives of great men | all remind us | 8. Foot-prints, that perhaps another, 9. Let us, then, be up and dòing, LONGFELLOW. 4. APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN. [This poem is to be read with slow movement, median stress, expulsive orotund quality, and strong force.] 1. There is a pleasure | in the pathless wòods, I love not man the less | but nature | mòre, What I can ne'er express, yet can not all concèal. 2. Rōll on, thōu deep and dark blue ōcean, ròll! Ten thousand fleets | sweep over thee in vain. Mán marks the earth with rùin-his control | Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plúin | The wrecks | are all thŷ deed, nor doth remain | A shadow of man's rávage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of ráin, He sinks into thy dépths with bubbling gróanWithout a gráve, unknēlled, uncōffined, and unknown. 3. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls | These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, Alike the Armada's príde, or spoils of Trafalgàr. |