(Gibbon.

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline,
Retreat from care, that never must be mine,
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like
these,

Little do men perceive what solitude is, and I was never less alone than when with myself. how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, (Bacon. He enter'd in his house-his home no more, For without hearts there is no home;and felt

where there is no love.

The solitude of passing his own door

Without a welcome.

(Byron.

For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.

A youth of labor with an age of ease;
Who quits a world where strong temptations
try,

And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly!
(Goldsmith.

SORROW.

This life of ours is a wild æolian harp of many a joyous strain,

(Milton. Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone, and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves. (Montaigne. Eagles we see fly alone; and they are but A Saviour's crown of sorrow is remembering

sheep which always herd together.

But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain.

happier things.

(Longfellow.

(Tennyson. (Sir P. Sidney. He who hath most of heart knows most of

(Byron.

sorrow.

(Bailey.

Among them, but not of them.
Where should the scholar live? In solitude, To live beneath sorrow one must yield to it.

(Tennyson.

They are never alone who are accompanied No greater grief than to remember days (Sir P. Sidney. Of joy when misery is at hand.

with noble thoughts.

(Dante.

In this world, full often our joys are only the The day drags through, though storms keep tender shadows which our sorrows cast.

O lost hours and days in which we might Thought once awakened does not again

LIVING THOUGHTS OF GREAT THINKERS.

Great thoughts, like great deeds, need no That great mystery of TIME, were there no

834

GEMS FOR THE FIRESIDE.

This day was yesterday to-morrow nam'd:
To-morrow shall be yesterday proclaimed:
To-morrow not yet come, not far away,
What shall to-morrow then be call'd? To-
day.
(Owen.

For the next win he spurs amain,
In haste alights, and scuds away,—
But time and tide for no man stay.
(Wm. Somerville.

Defer not till to-morrow to be wise,
To-morrow's sun to thee may never rise;
Or should to-morrow chance to cheer thy
sight

With her enlivening and unlook'd for light,
How grateful will appear her dawning rays,
As favors unexpected doubly please.

(Congreve.

(Quarles. Whence is the stream of Time? What source supplies

The idol of to-day pushes the hero of yester- Whom gone, if thou canst not recall, redeem. day out of our recollection; and will in turn be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow. (Washington Irving. God has commanded time to console the unhappy. (Joubert.

Too late I stayed,-forgive the crime;
Unheeded flew the hours,
How noiseless falls the foot of time
That only treads on flowers!

Its everlasting flow? What gifted hand
Shall raise the veil by dark Oblivion spread,
And trace it to its spring? What searching

eye

Shall pierce the mists that veil its onward

course,

(Spencer. And read the future destiny of man?

However we pass Time, he passes still,
Passing away whatever the pastime,
And, whether we use him well or ill,
Some day he gives us the slip for the last

time.

Be true, and thou shalt fetter Time with everlasting chain.

Come, gone,-gone forever,—

(Schiller.

Gone as an unreturning river,-
Gone as to death the merriest liver,-
Gone as the year at the dying fall,-
To-morrow, to-day, yesterday, never,—
(Owen Meredith. | Gone once for all. (Christina G. Rosetti.

LIVING THOUGHTS OF GREAT THINKERS.

835

No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are passed.

(Byron.

Who shall contend with time,-unvanquished
time, the conqueror of conquerors and
lord of desolation. (H. K. White.
One always has time enough, if one will
apply it well.
(Goethe.

Flowers have an expression of countenance
as much as men or animals. Some seem
to smile; some have a sad expression;
some are pensive and diffident; others
again are plain, honest and upright, like
the broad-faced sunflower and the holly-
hock.
(Henry Ward Beecher.
Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.
(Bovee.
By the street of By-and-by" one arrives
at the house of "Never." (Cervantes.
The every-day cares and duties, which men
call drudgery, are the weights and
counterpoises of the clock of time, giv:
ing its pendulum a true vibration, and
its hands a regular motion; and when
they cease to hang upon the wheels, the
pendulum no longer swings, the hands Hope smiled when your nativity was cast,

(Bryant. Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,

no longer move, the clock stands still.

(Longfellow. Threefold the stride of Time, from first to

last!

One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and gold

en,

Stars, that in the earth's firmament do
shine.
(Longfellow.

Children of Summer!

(Wordsworth. Daisies infinite

(Cowper.