THE TABLES TURNED Up! up, my friend! and quit your books, Up! up, my friend! and clear your looks! The sun, above the mountain's head, Through all the long green fields has spread, Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife; And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! She has a world of ready wealth, One impulse from a vernal wood Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which nature brings; Misshapes the beauteous forms of things- Enough of science and of art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. William Wordsworth CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE How happy is he born and taught Whose passions not his masters are, Of public fame, or private breath; Who envies none that chance doth raise Who hath his life from rumours freed, Who God doth late and early pray This man is freed from servile bands Sir Henry Wotton THE HEATH THIS NIGHT MUST BE MY SONG OF THE YOUNG BED HIGHLANDER SUMMONED FROM THE SIDE OF HIS BRIDE BY THE "FIERY CROSS OF The heath this night must be my bed, Far, far from love and thee, Mary; I may not, dare not, fancy now And all it promised me, Mary. A time will come with feeling fraught! Shall be a thought on thee, Mary. Sir Walter Scott CONTEMPLATE ALL THIS WORK Contemplate all this work of Time, The giant labouring in his youth; Nor dream of human love and truth As dying Nature's earth and lime; But trust that those we call the dead In tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming-random forms, Till at the last arose the man Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime, And of himself in higher place, If so he type this work of time Or, crown'd with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not an idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipp'd in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom To shape and use. Arise and fly The reeling Faun, the sensual feast! Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die ! Alfred Tennyson |