I like to read out of doors under the trees, and I advise you to make it your companion some summer's day, and read to the accompaniment of birds and rippling water, as you recline under trees by the bank of running stream.

The Hymn to the Seasons gives a sumning up of the longer poem, and we will read the opening lines from this: "These as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring, Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles, And every sense and every heart is joy. Then comes Thy glory in the Summer months, With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun Shoots full perfection through the swelling year; And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks; And oft at morn, deep noon, or falling eve, By brooks and groves, in hollow whispering gales. Thy bounty shines in Autum unconfined, And spreads a common feast for all that lives. In Winter awful Thou! with clouds and storms Around Thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled Majestic darkness! On the whirlwind's wing, Raising sublime, Thou bids't the world adore, And humblest nature with Thy northern blast. Mysterious round, what skill, what force divine, Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train, Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art, Such beauty and beneficence combined; Shade unperceived, so softening into shade, And all so forming an harmonious whole, That, as they still succeed, they ravish still. But wandering oft with brute unconsious gaze, Man marks not Thee; marks not the mighty hand, That ever busy, wheels the silent spheres, Works in the secret deep, shoots steaming thence, The fair profusion that o'er spreads the Spring; Flings from the sun direct the flaming day; Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth. And as on earth this grateful change revolves, With transport touches all the springs of life."

Born 1714.
Died 1763.

William Shenstone lived the sort of life that the poet Cowley longed for, while he aspired to the life that Cowley despised. You remember that Cowley, who was a courtier, was always picturing the delights of a little estate in the country which he could adorn as he chose, and where he would spend his days in a peaceful quiet. Shenstone had just such a little estate inherited from his father, and spent all his time and fortune embellishing it in the most fanciful style of landscape gardening, till he made it a wonder of walks, mazes, arbors, gardens, and running waters. But although he amused himself with these occupations, he was ambitious for political honors, and a little soured and disappointed that he could never attain to them.

He wrote his poetry chiefly, it seems, for his amusement, and not in the hope of any special reward. In his childhood, he had been sent to a village school (called in England a dame school) and his most noted poem, The School-mistress, written in Spenserian stanza, pictures the dame and her school. Here are a few verses from his description of the School-mistress:

"Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow,
Emblem right meet of decency does yield;
Her apron dyed in grain, as blue, I trow,
As is the hare-bell that adorns the field;
And in her hand for sceptre, she does wield
Tway brichen sprays, with anxious fear entwined,
With dark distrust, and sad repentance filled.
And steadfast hate, and sharp affection joined,
And fury uncontrolled, and chastisement unkind.
"A russet stole was o'er her shoulders thrown;
A russet kirtle fenced the nipping air.
'Twas simple russet, but it was her own;
'Twas her own country bred the flock so fair
'Twas her own labour did the fleece prepare;
And sooth to say, her pupils ranged around,
Through pious awe did term it passing rare;
For they in gaping wonderment abound,

And think, no doubt, she been the greatest wight on ground.

"One ancient hen she took delight to feed,
The plodding pattern of the busy dame,
Which ever and anon, impelled by need,
Into her school begirt with chickens came,
Such favour did her past deportment claim;
And if neglect had lavished on the ground
Fragment of bread, she would collect the same;
For well she knew, and quaintly could expound,
What sin it were to waste the smallest crumb she found.
"Right well she knew each temper to discry,
To thwart the proud and the submissive raise;
Some with vile copper-prize exalt on high,
And some entice with pittance small of praise;
And other some with baleful twig affrays,
Even absent she the reins of power doth hold,
While with quaint arts the giddy crowd she sways.
Forewarned, if little bird their pranks behold,

'Twill whisper in her ear, and all the scene unfold."

This picture of the old dame is very real, but better than The School-mistress I like a pastoral by Shenstone, which, although written in a jingling, rather common-place measure has a taste of the old ballad in it, and recalls the fresh days of poetry. This pastoral is in four parts--Ascence, Hope, Solicitude, Disappointment, and is addressed to Phyllis, by the Shepherd Corydon. These are a few stanzas from Part II:

"My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep,

My grottos are shaded with trees,
And my hills are white over with sheep;

I seldom have met with a loss,

Such health do my fountains bestow;
My fountains, all bordered with moss
Where the hare-bells and violets grow.
"Not a pine in my grove is there seen,
But with tendrils of woodbine is bound;
Not a beech's more beautiful green

But a sweet briar entwines it around;
Not my fields in the prime of the year,
More charms than my cattle unfold;

Not a brook that is limpid and clear,
But it glitters with fishes of gold.

"I have found out a gift for my fair,

I have found where the wood pigeons breed,
But let me that plunder forbear,

She will say 'twas a barbarous deed.
For he ne'er can be true, she averred,
Who could rob a poor bird of his young;
And I loved her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.

"I have heard her with sweetness unfold,
How that pity was due to a dove,
That it ever attended the bold,

And she called it the sister of Love;
But her words such a pleasure convey,
So much I her accents adore,
Let her speak, and whatever she say,
Methinks I should love her the more.

"Can a boson so gentle remain

Unmoved, when her Corydon sighs?
Will a nymph that is fond of the plain
These plains and this valley despise?
Dear regions of silence and shade,

Soft scenes of contentment and ease,
Where I could have pleasingly strayed,
If aught in her absence could please.

TALK XLIII.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY POETS GRAY, COLLINS, AKENSIDE, BEATTIE.

NEAR Shenstone in age was Thomas Gray, who has made himself immortal by one poem, and that one of the Born 1716. best in our language-the Elegy in a Country Churchyard. He has written several odes, one to Adversity, another to Eton College, both far above the av

Died 1771.

erage in merit. But the Elegy overshadows all else he has done, and is dear to all lovers of good poetry. Its merit was recognized, too, from the time it first appeared, which is a little unusual. It nearly always happens that really great works are not known to be great till time has sat in judgment upon them. It takes distance to show men how great they really are.

Gray seems to have been like the youth described in his Elegy, contemplative, sad, a man of fastidious tastes, and not quite at home in a rough world. His early life had been clouded by unhappiness; and when childhood, the background of life, is obscured by sadness, the after-life almost takes on a tinge of gloom. The Elegy is doubtless a poem that you already know by heart. Not so familiar, perhaps, are two other fine odes of his, The Bard and The Progress of Poetry. These are, however, much more artificial than the Elegy, which owes its power to the fact that it touched so many responsive chords in the human heart. Another little poem, one of his shortest odes, To Spring, has something of this same sympathetic quality, and also has those touches descriptive of scenes and sounds in nature, which are such marked beauties of the Elegy. For instance, the description of the insect youth upon the wing, while "through the peopled air the busy murmur glows," almost equals the lines, "The beetle whirls his drowsy flight, while distant twinklings lull the distant fold," in the Elegy. But we will read the Ode to Spring:

"Lo! where the rosy-bosomed hours,
Fair Venus' train, appear,

Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of spring;
While, whispering pleasures as they fly,
Cool zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky,
Their gathered fragrance fling.