For Memorizing

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK.

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O, Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

-Tennyson.

For Memorizing

THE VICAR'S SERMON.

Whatsoe'r you find to do,

Do it, boys, with all your might:
Never be a little true,

Or a little in the right.

Trifles even lead to heaven;

Trifles make the life of man:

So in all things, great and small things,
Be as thorough as you can.

Let no speck their surface dim,-
Spotless truth and honor bright;
I'd not give a fig for him

Who says that any lie is white!
He who falters, twists or alters
Little atoms when we speak,
May deceive me, but, believe me,
To himself he is a sneak.

Help the weak if you are strong;
Love the old if you are young;
Own a fault if you are wrong;
If you're angry, hold your tongue.
In each duty there's a beauty,
If your eyes you do not shut,
Just as surely and securely

As a kernel in a nut.

For Memorizing

Love with all your heart and soul,
Love with eye and ear and touch
That's the moral of the whole:

You can never love too much!
'Tis the glory of the story

In our babyhood begun;
Hearts without it, never doubt it,
Are as worlds without a sun.

If you think a word will please,
Say it, if it is but true;
Words may give delight with ease
When no act is asked from you.
Words may often soothe and soften
Gild a joy and heal a pain;

They are treasures yielding pleasures

It is wicked to retain.

-Charles Mackay.

THE THREE FISHERS.

Three fishers went sailing away to the west
Away to the west as the sun went down,

Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;

For men must work, and women must weep;
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbor bar be moaning.

For Memorizing

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,

And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up, ragged and brown;
But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbor bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
In the morning gleam as the tide went down,

And the women are weeping and wringing their hands
For those who will never come home to the town;
For men must work, and women must weep -

And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep-
And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

-Charles Kingsley.

NOBILITY.

True worth is in being, not seeming,
In doing each day that goes by,
Some little good,-not in dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.

For, whatever men say in blindness,

And in spite of the fancies of youth,
There's nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.

For Memorizing

We get back our mete as we measure,
We cannot do wrong and feel right,
Nor can we give pain and feel pleasure,
For justice avenges each slight.

The air for the wing of the sparrow,

The bush for the robin and wren,
But always the path that is narrow
And straight for the children of men.

We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing that it gets.

For good lieth not in pursuing,

Nor gaining of great nor of small;
But just in the doing, and doing

As we would be done by, is all.

Through envy, through malice, through hating,
Against the world early and late

No jot of our courage abating,—

Our part is to work and to wait.

And slight is the sting of his trouble.

Whose winnings are less than his worth;

For he who is honest is noble,

Whatever his fortune or birth.

-Alice Cary.