Hark, how chimes the passing bell!
There's no music to a knell;
All the other sounds we hear,
Flatter, and but cheat our ear.
This doth put us still in mind
That our flesh must be resigned,
And, a general silence made,

The world be muffled in a shade.
[Orpheus' lute, as poets tell,
Was but moral of this bell,
And the captive soul was she,
Which they called Eurydice,
Rescued by our holy groan,
A loud echo to this tone.]
b.

SHIRLEY-The Passing Bell.

Sc. 5.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land;
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

L. 111.

In every sorrowing soul I pour'd delight,
And poverty stood smiling in my sight.
HOMER-Odyssey. Bk. 17. L. 505.
Pope's trans.

0.

It never was our guise To slight the poor, or aught humane despise. p. HOMER-Odyssey. Bk. 14. L. 65. Pope's trans.

In misery's darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely want retir'd to die.
SAM L JOHNSON-On the Death of
Mr. Robert Levet. St. 5.

q.

T.

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.
LOWELL-The Vision of Sir Launfal.
Pt. II. VIII.
For his bounty

There was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like.

8. Antony and Cleopatra. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 87.

The poor must be wisely visited and liberally cared for, so that mendicity shall not be tempted into mendacity, nor want exasperated into crime.

t. ROBERT C. WINTHROP Yorktown Oration in 1881.

O Blackbird! sing me something well:
While all the neighbors shoot thee round,
I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground,
Where thou may'st warble, eat and dwell.
b. TENNYSON-The Blackbird.

How sweet the harmonies of the afternoon!
The Blackbird sings along the sunny breeze
His ancient song of leaves, and summer boon;
Rich breath of hayfields streams thro' whis-
pering trees;

And birds of morning trim their bustling wings,

And listen fondly-while the Blackbird sings. FREDERICK TENNYSON-The Blackbird.

C.

Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,

Wearing a bright black wedding-coat; White are his shoulders and white his crest. h. BRYANT-Robert of Lincoln.

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife,

Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life,

Broods in the grass while her husband sings. i. BRYANT Robert of Lincoln.

One day in the bluest of summer weather, Sketching under a whispering oak,

I heard five bobolinks laughing together,
Over some ornithological joke.

j.
When Nature had made all her birds,
With no more cares to think on,
She gave a rippling laugh and out
There flew a Bobolinkon.

C. P. CRANCH-Bird Language.

k. C. P. CRANCH-The Bobolinks.
Bobolink! that in the meadow,
Or beneath the orchard's shadow,
Keepest up a constant rattle
Joyous as my children's prattle,
Welcome to the north again.

Thou should'st be carolling thy Maker's praise,
Poor bird! now fetter'd, and here set to draw,
With graceless toil of beak and added claw,
The meagre food that scarce thy want allays!
And this-to gratify the gloating gaze
Of fools, who value Nature not a straw,
But know to prize the infraction of her law
And hard perversion of her creatures' ways!
Thee the wild woods await, in leaves attired,
Where notes of liquid utterance should engage
Thy bill, that now with pain scant forage earns.
p.
JULIAN FANE-Poems. Second Edition,
with Additional Poems. To a
Canary Bird.