retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable-and
let it come!! I repeat it, sir, let it come!!! 11. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. may cry, peace, peace-but there is no peace. actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!-I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
On the Existence of a Deity.-YOUNG.
1. RETIRE―the world shut out-thy thoughts call home― Imagination's airy wing repress.
Lock up thy senses. Let no passion stir.
Wake all to reason. Let her reign alone.
Then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth
Of nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire:
What am I? and from whence? I nothing know
But that I am; and since I am, conclude
Something eternal. Had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been. Eternal there must be.
2. But, what eternal? Why not human race,
And Adam's ancestors, without an end?
That's hard to be conceiv'd, since ev'ry link
Of that long chain'd succession is so frail;
Can every part depend and not the whole?
Yet, grant it true, new difficulties rise:
I'm still quite out at sea, nor see the shore.
Whence earth and these bright orbs? Eternal too?
Grant matter was eternal; still these orbs
Would want some other father. Much design
Is seen in all their motions, all their makes.
Design implies intelligence and art,
That can't be from themselves
Man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow?
And nothing greater yet allow'd than man.
3. Who, motion, foreign to the smallest grain, Shot through vast masses of enormous weight? Who bid brute matter's restive lump assume Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly? Has matter innate motion? Then each atom, Asserting its indisputable right
To dance, would form an universe of dust.
Has matter none ?-then whence these glorious forms
And boundless flights, from shapeless and repos'd?
Has matter more than motion? Has it thought,
Judgment and genius? Is it deeply learn'd
In mathematics? Has it fram'd such laws,
Which, but to guess, a Newton made immortal?
If art to form, and council to conduct,
And that with greater far than human skill,
Reside not in each block-a GODHEAD reigns-
And if a GOD there is-that God how great!
LESSON CXLIII.
To-morrow. COTTON.
1. TO-MORROW, didst thou say? Methought I heard Horatio say, To-morrow. Go to I will not hear of it-To-morrow! "Tis a sharper, who stakes his penury Against thy plenty-who takes thy ready cash, And pays thee nought, but wishes, hopes, and promises, The currency of idiots-injurious bankrupt,
That gulls the easy creditor!-To-morrow!
It is a period no where to be found
In all the hoary registers of Time,
Unless perchance in the fool's calendar.
2. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society With those who own it. No, my Horatio,
"Tis Fancy's child, and Folly is its father;
Wrought of such stuff as dreams are, and as baseless
As the fantastic visions of the evening.
But soft, my friend-arrest the present moment:
For be assur'd they all are arrant tell-tales:
And though their flight be silent, and their path
Trackless, as the wing'd couriers of the air,
They post to heaven, and there record thy folly.
Because, though station'd on th' important watch,
Thou, like a sleeping, faithless sentinel,
Didst let them pass unnotic'd, unimprov'd.
And know, for that thou slumb'rest on the guard,
Thou shalt be made to answer at the bar
For every fugitive: and when thou thus
Shalt stand impleaded at the high tribunal
Of hood-wink'd Justice, who shall tell thy audit?
3. Then stay the present instant, dear Horatio,
Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings.
'Tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more precious Than all the crimson treasures of life's fountain.
O! let it not elude thy grasp; but, like
The good old patriarch* upon record,
Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee.
Vanity of Power and Misery of Kings.-SHAKSPEARE.
1. No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs:
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so,-for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
́Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own, but death;
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
2. For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:-
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd;-
3.
For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,—
* See Genesis, chap. xxxii. 24-30,
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and humor'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and-farewell king!
4. Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while :
I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief,
Need friends:-Subjected thus,
How can you say to me-I am a king?
1. I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished,—and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless-and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came, and went-and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
2. And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
3. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
Lord George Gordon Byron, an English nobleman, distinguished as a poet. He was born in London, Jan. 22d, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, in April, 1824, while assisting the Greeks in their glorious struggle for freedom.
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd.
4.
The wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food:
5. And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails-men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh.
6. The meagre by the meagre were devour'd;
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts, and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.
7. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place,
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
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