July the Thirtieth Thomas Gray, Died 1771 ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee She was a maiden city, bright and free; And what if she had seen those glories fade, When her long life hath reach'd its final day: William Wordsworth ENGLAND AND SWITZERLAND, 1802 Two Voices are there; one is of the Sea, There came a tyrant, and with holy glee Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft; That Mountain floods should thunder as before, William Wordsworth ON THE PROSPECT OF PLANTING ARTS AND LEARNING IN AMERICA The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime In distant lands now waits a better time, In happy climes, where from the genial sun In happy climes, the seat of innocence, There shall be sung another golden age, Not such as Europe breeds in her decay; Westward the course of empire takes its way; A fifth shall close the drama with the day; George Berkeley TOM BOWLING Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling, No more he'll hear the tempest howling, Tom never from his word departed, His friends were many and true-hearted, But mirth is turn'd to melancholy, Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather, Shall give, to call life's crew together, Thus Death, who kings and tars despatches, In vain Tom's life has doff'd : For though his body's under hatches, Charles Dibdin THE LITTLE BLACK BOY My mother bore me in the southern wild, But I am black, as if bereaved of light. My mother taught me underneath a tree; And, pointing to the east, began to say: "Look on the rising sun; there God does live, And gives His light, and gives His heat away; And flowers, and trees, and beasts, and men receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday. "And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love, And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove. "For when our souls have learned the heat to bear, The clouds wili vanish; we shall hear His voice, Saying: 'Come from the grove, my love and care, And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."" Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me, And thus I say to little English boy: When I from black, and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy, I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear NURSE'S SONG When the voices of children are heard on the green, And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast, And everything else is still. Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies. "No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, And we cannot go to sleep; Besides in the sky the little birds fly, And the hills are all covered with sheep." - Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, And then go home to bed. The little ones leap'd, and shouted, and laugh'd; And all the hills echoèd. William Blake AS THRO' THE LAND As thro' the land at eve we went, We fell out, my wife and I, When we fall out with those we love For when we came where lies the child There above the little grave, Oh, there above the little grave, We kiss'd again with tears. Alfred Tennyson |