18. He heeds now the great attraction whereby all things gravitate toward God. He knows there is a swift justice for nations and for men, and he says to the youth: "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth! Let thy heart cheer thee!" “But know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into account." "Hear the sum of the whole matter: Love God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."
FOR PREPARATION.-I. Explain "the cartilage becomes thin and dry"; -"less animal and more earthy matter ";" carbonic acid" (as produced by the breath);—" big, manly voice," etc. (from Shakespeare's "As You Like It"). "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth"-whence this quotation? (Ecclesiastes xi. 9, not literally quoted here.)
II. Pē'-ri-od, touched (tŭcht), rěp'-tile (-til), măr'-riage (-rij), lî'ehen, au'-tumn (-tum), weight (wāt), in-erēase', bough (bou), eomplete', děf'-i-nite, jos'-tle (jos'l), sa'-li-ent, diş-ēaş'-eş, eon'-scious-ness (-shus-).
III. Make a list of the words in this piece in which more than one (plural number) is expressed by a change in the spelling of the word, and write the corresponding words that express but one (singular number).
IV. Usher, woosome, imperial, characteristics, cartilages, penetrates, "carbonic acid," collapse, miracle, infirmities, gravitate.
V. Make a list of the characteristics of spring as described here;-of autumn;—of the characteristics of youth and of old age corresponding to spring and autumn.
I. SOBER NIGHT SCENES IN THE COUNTRY.
1. Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of Cyprus lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn!
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes;
2. There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till,
With a sad, leaden, downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast;
And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove's altar sing;
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
3. But, first and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustomed oak.
4. Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!
Thee, chantress, oft the woods among
I woo, to hear thy evensong;
And, missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry, smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heavens' wide, pathless way,
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
5, Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar ;
Or, if the air will not permit,
Some still, removéd place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bellman's drowsy charm,
To bless the doors from nightly harm;
6. Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high, lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds, or what vast regions, hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook;
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or underground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.
-SOBER DAY SCENES IN FOREST, CLOISTER, AND HER
7. Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career,
Till civil-suited Morn appear,
Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,
But kerchiefed in a comely cloud,
While rocking winds are piping loud,
Or ushered with a shower still,
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
With minute drops from off the eaves.
8. And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring
To archéd walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown that Sylvan loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,
Where the rude ax with heavéd stroke
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
9. There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from Day's garish eye,
While the bee with honeyed thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,
With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep;
10. And let some strange, mysterious dream
Wave at his wings, in airy stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid;
And as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen genius of the wood.
11. But let due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowéd roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows, richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
12. And may, at last, my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.
FOR PREPARATION.-I. Omission of thirty lines from the beginning and of eighteen from the middle of this poem. "Il Penseroso" (the pensive
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