FROM PLUTARCH.

Heaven being willing, even on an osier thou mayest sail.

[Thus rhymed by the old translator of Plutarch: "Were it the will of heaven, an osier bough Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough."]

FROM SEXTUS EMPIRICUS.

Honors and crowns of the tempest-footed

Horses delight one;

Others live in golden chambers;

And some even are pleased traversing securely The swelling of the sea in a swift ship.

FROM STOBÆUS.

This I will say to thee:

The lot of fair and pleasant things

It behooves to show in public to all the people; But if any adverse calamity sent from heaven befall

Men, this it becomes to bury in darkness.

Pindar said of the physiologists, that they “plucked the unripe fruit of wisdom."

Pindar said that "hopes were the dreams of those awake."

FROM CLEMENS OF ALEXANDRIA.

To Heaven it is possible from black
Night to make arise unspotted light,

And with cloud-blackening darkness to obscure
The pure splendor of day.

First, indeed, the Fates brought the wise-counseling

Uranian Themis, with golden horses,

By the fountains of Ocean to the awful ascent
Of Olympus, along the shining way,

To be the first spouse of Zeus the Deliverer.
And she bore the golden-filleted, fair-wristed
Hours, preservers of good things.

Equally tremble before God
And a man dear to God.

FROM ÆLIUS ARISTIDES.

Pindar used such exaggerations [in praise of poetry] as to say that even the gods themselves, when at his marriage Zeus asked if they wanted anything, "asked him to make certain gods for them who should celebrate these great works and all his creation with speech and song."

POEMS

INSPIRATION

IF with light head erect I sing,
Though all the Muses lend their force,

From my poor love of anything,

The verse is weak and shallow as its source.

But if with bended neck I grope,

Listening behind me for my wit,

With faith superior to hope,

More anxious to keep back than forward it;

Making my soul accomplice there

Unto the flame my heart hath lit,

Then will the verse forever wear,

Time cannot bend the line which God has writ.

I hearing get, who had but ears,

And sight, who had but eyes before;

I moments live, who lived but years,

And truth discern, who knew but learning's

lore.

Now chiefly is my natal hour,

And only now my prime of life;

Of manhood's strength it is the flower, 'Tis peace's end, and war's beginning strife.

It comes in summer's broadest noon,
By a gray wall, or some chance place,
Unseasoning time, insulting June,
And vexing day with its presuming face.

I will not doubt the love untold,

Which not my worth nor want hath bought, Which wooed me young, and wooes me old, And to this evening hath me brought.

PILGRIMS

"HAVE you not seen,
In ancient times,

Pilgrims pass by
Toward other climes,
With shining faces,
Youthful and strong,
Mounting this hill

With speech and with song?"

"Ah, my good sir,

I know not those ways:

J

Little my knowledge,
Tho' many my days.
When I have slumbered,
I have heard sounds
As of travelers passing
These my grounds.

"'T was a sweet music
Wafted them by,

I could not tell
If afar off or nigh.
Unless I dreamed it,
This was of yore:
I never told it

To mortal before,
Never remembered
But in my dreams
What to me waking

A miracle seems."

TO A STRAY FOWL

POOR bird! destined to lead thy life
Far in the adventurous west,
And here to be debarred to-night

From thy accustomed nest;

Must thou fall back upon old instinct now, Well-nigh extinct under man's fickle care? Did Heaven bestow its quenchless inner light,