Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/358

348[March 13, 1869] ality, their manners, and laws. In religion they were intolerant; for we are told by Herodotus that the Persians had no idols, indeed, ridiculed anthropomorphic representations of Deity, and were as fierce as the Jews themselves against the practice of idolatry, destroying the Greek temples, and breaking in pieces the images of the gods.

For our acquaintance with these particulars we are indebted to prose history, and prose philosophy. Nor are we deserted, if we seek information on the progress of the culture so cautiously and gradually introduced and promoted. We might thus tell, how the Syrians proceeded to develop the possibilities of written language; how the Phœnicians discovered and first navigated the Atlantic Ocean, and had settlements in Cyprus and Crete, and worked gold mines in the remote islands of Thasos, and silver mines in the south and south-west of Spain; how in Africa they founded the colonies of Utica and Carthage; how from Gades they sailed far down the African coast; and how from Britain they brought tin, and from the Baltic, Prussian amber; all showing that industry had taken the place of inactivity and rude valour. By it nature was subjected to the profit of man, and the nations were delivered from her fear and the slavish bondage that she had previously been permitted to inflict. From this point we rise to the pure Theism, which distinguishes the religion of Judæa, and which subordinates all beneath it to the mere prose conditions of historical life, and permits not to natural objects any theological element whatever.

The recognition of the spiritual in nature is yet allowed to poetry; but it is alien to the genius of prose. Prose assigns to every thing that is limited and circumscribed its proper place, and insists on its finite existence. It points out the distinction between the unknowable and the known, and will no longer suffer the confusion between them, which vitiated so much controversial writing of the last and previous centuries. If prose had done no more than this, it has rendered a service which entitles it to the highest honour, as being of the greatest utility, and one the merit of which belongs exclusively to itself.

A GARLAND OF LYRICS.

OUTSIDE AND IN. browse the meek-eyed cattle, Quietly nibble the timid sheep, And the wind among the beechen branches Seems as 'twould cradle the rooks to sleep. The smoke curls blue from the kitchen chimney, The manor house shines white in the sun; Peace dwelleth here, and the evening glory Of a life—well ending—well begun!

Thou foolish poet! Pass the threshold! The master sits in his old arm-chair, And two strong keepers watch beside him, Lest he should slay them unaware. He raves, he whines, he groans, he whimpers; His wife and children have fled, forlorn; And could he know the doom he suffers, He'd curse the day that he was born.

BEAUTY AND GRIEF. There's something beautiful in sadness, A something sad in all that's fair; To trace, why this should be, is madness, And leads the mind one knows not where. Yet when we think on these affinities, Beauty and grief become divinities.

THE DOUBLE BANKRUPTCY. "You owe me full a thousand pounds." "I owe, but cannot pay." "Then you shall go to prison strong." "Well—if I must—I may."

"Hold off your hand, hard-hearted wretch! This man is not for thee! His age is three score years and ten, And he's in debt to me!

"He owes you money—me his life. Come, aged friend!" he saith; "Come to my quiet prison house, Come to the peace of ;

"This huckster acts from base revenge, And I from lore divine!" The old man sighed and breathed his last, "! only friend! I'm thine!"

THE LIVING MEN. I see the true men of the day— The great, the brave, heroic souls— Not as they pass me in the way Amid the common human shoals; But with the eyes of future Time, Their halos fixed, their wreaths entwined, Sages, and wits, and bards sublime; The benefactors of their kind.

THE BUSY WORKMEN. "Each drop you drink's a workman true," Said Dorothy, to her lord. "A workman? How?" said her angry spouse, Scowling across the board. "Yes," said the wife, "they're workmen sure, And make your coffin strong; They saw the wood, they drive the nails, They'll put you in ere long."

THE PLAGIARIST. If I've a taper that I light Where other tapers shine, Am I a thief and plagiarist, And is the light not mine? And if my taper shed a ray Much brighter than the first, Is taper number one the best, And number two the worst?

You say my thoughts in Homer lurk;— Perhaps! But I'd be told, Where honest Homer found his thoughts— His new ones or his old? The skylark sang in Homer's time;— I hear it in the blue; Did this day's lark rob Homer's lark? Sweet critic, tell me true!

PEARLS BEFORE A HOG. We passed the Chablis with the fish, He drank and made no sign, He was a man of mighty mark That we had brought to dine.

We gave him Clicquot, dry and iced, He sipped—not drained the glass; And next we served Chateau Lafitte;— He let the bottle pass.

What could be done with churl like this? We tried the Clos Vougeot And Corton Pierre, two royal drinks, That cheer our world of woe.