War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Never ending, still beginning, If the world be worth thy winning, Think, O think, it worth enjoying: The Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the gods provide thee. Gazed on the fair Who caused his care And sighed and looked, sighed and looked, Sighed and looked, and sighed again : At length, with love and wine at once oppressed, The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast. VI. Now strike the golden lyre again, A louder yet, and yet a louder strain. And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder. Has raised up his head: As awaked from the dead, And amazed, he stares around. Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries, See the furies arise: See the snakes that they rear, How they hiss in their hair, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes! Behold a ghastly band, Each a torch in his hand! Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain, Inglorious on the plain : Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew. Behold how they toss their torches on high, To light him to his prey, And, like another Helen, fired another Troy. VII. Thus long ago, Ere heaving bellows learned to blow, Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. The sweet enthusiast, from the sacred store, And added length to solemn sounds, Or both divide the crown; He raised a mortal to the skies; She drew an angel down. DRYDEN. The Poor-House. 1. CLOSE at the edge of a busy town, A huge quadrangular mansion stands; Its rooms are all filled with the parish poor; Its walls are all built by pauper hands; And the pauper old and the pauper young Peer out, through the grates, in sullen bands. II. Behind, is a patch of earth, by thorns Fenced in from the moor's wide marshy plains; By the side, is a gloomy lane, that steals To a quarry now filled with years of rains: But within, within! There Poverty scowls, Nursing in wrath her brood of pains. III. Enter and look! In the high-walled yards IV. No communion-no kind thought V. Where is the bright-haired girl, that once VI. Letters they teach in their infant schools; But where are the lessons of great God taught? Lessons that child to the parent bind— Habits of duty-love unbought? Alas! small good will be learned in schools Where Nature is trampled and turned to nought. VII. Seventeen summers, and where the girl The pauper's boyhood, and where is he? VIII. O Power! O Prudence! Law! look down From your heights on the pining poor below! O sever not hearts which God hath joined Together, on earth, for weal and woe. O Senators grave, grave truths may be, Which ye have not learned, or deigned to know IX. O Wealth, come forth with an open hand! To Love, wherever its home be found! But I cease, for I hear, in the night to come, The cannon's blast, and the rebel drum, EGERIA! Sweet creation of some heart |