FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A

DEJANEIRA.

FRIVOLOUS mind of man,

Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts, Though man bewails you not,

How I bewail you!

Little in your prosperity

Do you seek counsel of the Gods.

Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.

In profound silence stern

Among their savage gorges and cold springs
Unvisited remain

The great oracular shrines.

Thither in your adversity

Do you betake yourselves for light,

But strangely misinterpret all you hear.

New hearts with the inquirer's holy robe,
And purged, considerate minds.

And him on whom, at the end

Of toil and dolor untold,

The Gods have said that repose

At last shall descend undisturbed,
Him you expect to behold

In an easy

old age, in a happy home; No end but this you praise.

But him, on whom, in the prime
Of life, with vigor undimmed,
With unspent mind, and a soul
Unworn, undebased, undecayed,
Mournfully grating, the gates

Of the city of death have forever closed,
Him, I count him, well-starred.

PALLADIUM.

ET where the upper streams of Simois flow

SE

Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood;

And Hector was in Ilium, far below,

And fought, and saw it not, but there it stood.

It stood; and sun and moonshine rained their light
On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.

Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight

Round Troy; but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.
Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah! too rare.
Men will renew the battle in the plain
To-morrow; red with blood will Xanthus be;
Hector and Ajax will be there again;
Helen will come upon the wall to see.

Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,

And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs, And fancy that we put forth all our life,

And never know how with the soul it fares.

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,
Upon our life a ruling effluence send;
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die,

And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.

W

HUMAN LIFE.

HAT mortal, when he saw,

Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
"I have kept uninfringed my nature's law;
The inly-written chart thou gavest me
To guide me, I have steered by to the end?"

Ah! let us make no claim

On life's incognizable sea

To too exact a steering of our way!

Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim

If some fair coast has lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hailed us to keep company!

Ay, we would each fain drive

At random, and not steer by rule!

Weakness! and worse, weakness bestowed in vain! Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive, We rush by coasts where we had lief remain; Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.