The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe,
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago.
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber, through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress !

MONT BLANC BEFORE SUNRISE.1

HAST thou a charm to stay the Morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc !
The Arvé and the Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee, and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge. But when I look again
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.

O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought! entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the mean while wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing -- there,

As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven.

Awake, my soul ! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret, ecstasy ! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs! all join my hymn !

1 In parts, a paraphrase of Fredrike Brün's poem, p. 222.

Byron.

Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink, —
Companion of the Morning-star at dawn,

Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn

Co-herald wake! oh, wake! and utter praise !
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jaggèd rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam ?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain, -
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?

"God!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plain echo, "God!"

"God!" sing, ye meadow streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "God!"
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost !
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds !
Ye signs and wonders of the elements !
Utter forth "God!" and fill the hills with praise !

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast,
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain! thou
That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me, — rise, oh, ever rise!

Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

Coleridge.

PROBLEM VIII. Read an account of some historic event, and show how the imagination may be used to realize its significance more vividly.

THE CONCORD HYMN.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone,

That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, or leave their children free!
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

THIS precious stone set in a silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive of a house
Against the enemy of less happier lands:

Emerson.

Richard II.

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England !
This England never did, nor never shall,

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror

But when it first did help to wound itself,

Come the three corners of the world in arms,

And we shall shock them: nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but trne.

Shakespeare.

verse.

IV. IMAGINATION AND SCIENCE.

IMAGINATION is not a wild departure from truth. Truth is its material, its life and soul. It uses all the facts of science. Poetry in every age employs discoveries as the rounds of a ladder up which it climbs to a higher outlook upon the mystery of the uniNo age has equalled our own in scientific investigations. These have furnished Tennyson with some of his greatest inspirations; and the deepest philosophical thought of our speculative age has been the theme of Browning. Bacon, the father of all modern science, was contemporaneous with Shakespeare. In our greatest era of poetry the foundations of science were laid. Poetry and science are not antagonistic. In fact, imagination is an agent in scientific investigation; it is part of the initiatory step of the true scientific method. The scientific method begins with preliminary observation or formation of hypothesis; and to this succeeds experiment and observation, to prove or disprove this hypothesis; then follows generalization. Thus imagination precedes and inspires scientific investigation, and true scientific attainment awakens a struggle for higher realization of the new truth.

Imagination goes beyond science; it supplies what science lacks; it brings the facts discovered by science into living unity.

As truth is not antagonistic to fact, so imagination is not antagonistic to reason. Indeed, imagination gives careful observation, and is helpful to reception: as Wordsworth has said, "Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge."

Imagination has a sphere peculiarly her own. She refuses to become the handmaid or servant of any science, philosophy, creed, or

view of life; and yet she sheds light on all. She does not supply or pervert facts, nor is she subservient to them. She unites facts, and discovers higher relations, beauties, and truths. She often points out the path where reason and experiment must walk, and always precedes rather than follows. She transcends external relations, but never warps or acts inconsistently with truth.

In the following illustration, notice with what scientific accuracy Tennyson describes the coming on of night and the rising moon. Nor is the passage any less poetic for its scientific basis.

Move eastward, happy Earth! and leave

Yon orange sunset waning slow :

From fringes of the faded eve,

O happy planet! eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes

That watch me from the glen below.

In the same way, note the scientific facts hinted at in the next illustration from "In Memoriam." The ideas of Tennyson are here also scientifically accurate; he gives established facts, and the poetry is all the more sublime and imaginative from its truthfulness.

THERE rolls the deep where grew the tree.

O Earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.

The hills are shadows, and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands;

They melt like mist, the solid lands,

Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

PROBLEM IX.

State in plain prose the scientific facts referred to in one of the following poems; then read the poem, and observe the uses made of such facts by the imagination. Are the facts perverted by being idealized, or only more intensely realized?

ROLL on, and with thy rolling crust

That round thy poles thou twirlest,

Roll with thee, Earth! this grain of dust,

As through the Vast thou whirlest :