11 Oh, wedded lòve! how beaùtiful, How pùre a thing thou art: Whose influence even in dèath can rule, Can cheer life's roughest walk, and shed 12 There was a solemn, sacred feeling And softly from the cabin stealing, 13 And to their boat returning, each With thoughtful brows and haste, That Charnel Ship, which years before, 14 They left her in the icebergs, where A monument of death and fear, And, grateful for their own release, EXERCISE 49. Life.-A Spanish Poem.-EDINburgh Review. 1 Oh! while we eye the rolling tide, Let us the present hour employ, 2 Let no vain hope deceive the mind- Our golden dreams of yore were bright,. 3 Our lives like hasting streams must be, That into one ingulfing sea, Are doomed to fall The sea of death, whose waves roll on, 4 Alike the river's lordly tide, Death levels poverty and pride, Within the grave. 5 Our birth is but a starting place; There all those glittering toys are bought, 6 Say then how poor and little worth Dreams of a sleep that death must break, EXERCISE 50. Death and the Drunkard.-ANONYMOUS. 1 His form was fair, his cheek was health; His wife the fount of ceaseless joy; How laughed his daughter, played his boy; Till half its contents decked his head. 'Tis gone! but all the fault was his. 2 The social glass I saw him seize, 3 In the bowl's bottom Bankruptcy He only sought the bowl the more. The dropsy in the cup I mixed; I sent the mad wretch to restrain. 4 On the bowl's bottom then myself.. 5 Haggard his eyes, upright his hair, 6 Death speaks ah, reader, dost thou hear? Hast thou no lurking cause to fear? Has not o'er thee the sparkling bowl The Plague in London.-ROTHELAN. In its malignancy, it engrossed the ill of all other maladies, and made doctors despicable. Of a potency equal to death, it possessed itself of all his armouries, and was itself the death of every other mortal distemper. The 5 touch, yea, the very sight of the infected, was deadly; and its signs were so sudden, that families seated in happiness at their meals have seen the plague spot begin to redden, and have wildly scattered themselves forever. The cement of society was dissolved by it. Mothers, 10 when they saw the sign of the infection on the babes at their bosom, cast them from them with abhorrence. Wild places were sought for shelter;- -some went intc ships and anchored themselves afar off on the waters. But the angel that was pouring the vial had a foot on the 15 sea, as well as on the dry land. No place was so wild, that the plague did not visit-none so secret that the quick-sighted pestilence did not discover, none could fly that it did not overtake. It was as if Heaven had repented the making of man20 kind, and was shovelling them all into the sepulchre. Justice was forgotten, and her courts deserted. The terrified jailers fled from the felons that were in fettersthe innocent and the guilty leagued themselves together, and kept within their prisons for safety;-the grass grew 25 in the market-places;-the cattle went moaning up and down the fields, wondering what had become of their keepers; the rooks and the ravens came into the towns, and built their nests in the mute belfries;-silence was universal, save when some infected wretch was seen 30 clamouring at a window. For a time all commerce was in coffins and shrouds; but even that ended. Shrift there was none; churches and chapels were open, but neither priests nor penitent entered; all went to the charnel-house. The sex35 ton and the physician were cast into the same deep and wide grave: the testator and his heirs and executors were hurled from the same cart into the same hole together. Fire became extinguished, as if its element too had expired: the seams of the sailorless ships yawn40 ed to the sun. Though doors were open, and coffers unwatched, there was no theft; all offences ceased, and no calamity but the universal wo of the pestilence was heard among men. The wells overflowed, and the conduits ran to waste; the dogs banded themselves together, 45 having lost their masters, and ran howling over all the land; horses perished of famine in their stalls; old friends but looked at one another when they met, keeping themselves far aloof; creditors claimed no debts, and courtiers performed their promises; little children went wander50 ing up and down, and numbers were seen dead in all corners. Nor was it only in England that the plague so raged: it travelled over a third part of the whole earth, like the shadow of an eclipse, as if some dreadful thing had been interposed between the world and the sun55 source of life. * * * At that epoch, for a short time, there was a silence, and every person in the street, for a moment stood still; London was as dumb as a churchyard. Again the sound of a bell was heard; for it was that sound, so 60 long unheard, which arrested the fugitive multitude, and caused their silence. At the third toll a universal shout arose, as when the herald proclaims the tidings of a great battle won, and then there was a second silence. The people fell on their knees, and with anthems of 65 thankfulness rejoiced in the dismal sound of that tolling death-bell; for it was a signal of the plague being so abated that men might again mourn for their friends, and hallow. their remains with the solemnities of burial. |