dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed
That wither away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that hath often been told.

For we are the same that our fathers have been;
We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,--
We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,
And we run the same course that our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink;
To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling;
But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.

They loved, but their story we cannot unfold;
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers may come;
They enjoyed, but the voice of their gladness is dumb.

They died, ay! they died! and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together like sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.

'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,--
O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

WILLIAM KNOX.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S "HOMER."

"On First Looking Into Chapman's 'Homer,'" by John Keats (1795-1821).
The last four lines of this sonnet form the most tremendous climax in
literature. The picture is as vivid as if done with a brush. Every
great book, every great poem is a new world, an undiscovered country.
Every learned person is a whole territory, a universe of new thought.
Every one who does anything with a heart for it, every specialist every
one, however simple, who is strenuous and genuine, is a "new
discovery." Let us give credit to the smallest planet that is true to
its own orbit.

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;