Weary, and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye;
I feel my heart new open'd: O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours :

There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears, than wars or women have ;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.

-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep!-O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber;

Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile,
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch,
A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell?

King Henry IV.

Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deaf'ning clamours in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?—
Canst thou, O partial Sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king?-Then, happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

WHEN in the storm on Albion's coast
The night-watch guards his wary post,
From thoughts of danger free,
He marks some vessel's dusky form,
And hears, amid the howling storm,
The minute gun at sea.

Swift on the shore a hardy few
The life-boat man with a gallant crew,
And dare the dangerous wave:
Through the wild surf they cleave their way,
Lost in the foam, nor know dismay,
For they go the crew to save.

-SHARPE.

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-striken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet birds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere, Destroyer and preserver, hear, oh hear!

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: Oh hear !

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves:

Oh hear !

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed
Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, Sweet, though in sadness. Be thou, spirit, fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth; And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth, Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? -PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother, Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;

The other, rosy as the morn
When, throned on ocean's wave,
It blushes o'er the world;

Yet both so passing wonderful!

Hath then the gloomy Power Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres

Seized on her sinless soul? Must, then, that peerless form Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, those azure veins Which steal like streams along a field of snow,

That lovely outline, which is fair
As breathing marble, perish?
Must putrefaction's breath
Leave nothing of this heavenly sight
But loathsomeness and ruin?
Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it only a sweet slumber
Stealing o'er sensation,

Which the breath of roseate morning
Chaseth into darkness?

Will Ianthe wake again,

And give that faithful bosom joy Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch Light, life, and rapture, from her smile? -PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.