THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US.

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less for-

lorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn!

i

ODE ON SOLITUDE

BY ALEXANDER POPE.

Pope was born at London in 1688. He had no school education, as he was always sickly, but he learned Latin and Greek from several friends. By the time he was 17 he was an acknowledged wit and critic. His first published poem was "The Pastorals," 1709; then followed "The Rape of the Lock," his best satirical poem, and the next year (1713) he began his translation of the "Iliad." He died at Twickenham in 1744.

Happy the man whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air

In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

PATRIOTISM.

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Sir Walter Scott was born at Edinburgh in 1771. He first began his writing by translating Burger and Goethe, but he left this work to take up the Border Minstrelsy of his own country. In 1814 he published the first of the well-known "Waverley" novels. He sold his copyrights to the firm of Constable, and as the house failed a few years later Scott was heavily involved. As he had also recently bought and repaired the estate of Abbotsford, he was in debt for that also. In spite of ill health he wrote incessantly in order to meet his bills, and gave to the world the novels and poems with which all are so familiar. He died in 1832.

B

reathes there a man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim-
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP.

BY EMMA WILLARD.

Emma Willard, the American educator and author, was one of a family of seventeen children. Her maiden name was Hart. She was born at Berlin, Conn., in 1787. She began teaching in the village school and later became principal of a girls' college at Westfield, Conn., and after her marriage to Dr. John Willard in 1814, opened a boarding school at Middlebury, Conn, into which she introduced new methods and new studies. The school was removed to Troy, N. Y., and became the Troy Female Academy. Retiring from the school in 1858, Mrs. Willard spent the remaining years of her life in revising her text books and writing a volume of poems. She died in 1876.

And such the trust that still were mine,
Though stormy winds swept o'er the brine,
Or though the tempest's fiery breath
Roused me from sleep to wreck and death.

In ocean's caves still safe with Thee,
The germ of immortality;

And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.

BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

The influence of poetry is greater than is generally realized, and many find inspiration to action in reading it. Mrs. Browning in this pathetic poem did much to rouse England to the evil of child labor and to perceive the wrongs done the little ones toiling in its factories and coal mines far beyond their strength.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O, my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears.

But the young, young children, O, my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,

Grinding life down from its mark;

And the children's souls which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.