Evolution of Expression Volume I Part 14

2. I am sure that a man ought to read as he would grasp a nettle: do it lightly, and you get molested; grasp it with all your strength, and you feel none of its asperities. There is nothing so horrible as languid study, when you sit looking at the clock, wis.h.i.+ng the time was over, or that somebody would call on you and put you out of your misery. The only way to read with any efficacy is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it.

3. To sit with your Livy before you, and hear the geese cackling that saved the Capitol: and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannae, and heaping them into bushels; and to be so intimately present at the actions you are reading of that when anybody knocks at the door it will take you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your own study, or in the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal's weather-beaten face, and admiring the splendor of his single eye.

4. This is the only kind of study which is not tiresome; and almost the only kind which is not useless: this is the knowledge which gets into the system, and which a man carries about and uses like his limbs, without perceiving that it is extraneous, weighty, or inconvenient.

SYDNEY SMITH.

IVRY.

I.

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!

And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre!

Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance, Through the corn-fields green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France!

And thou Roch.e.l.le, our own Roch.e.l.le, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy murmuring daughters; As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy; For cold and stiff and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.

Hurrah! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war!

Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry, and Henry of Navarre!

II.

Oh! how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day, We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array; With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears, There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land; And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand; And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, And good Coligni's h.o.a.ry hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living G.o.d, who rules the fate of war, To fight for his own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.

III.

The king is come to marshal us, in all his armor dressed; And he has bound a snow white plume upon his gallant crest.

He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye, He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.

Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,

Down all our line, a deafening shout, "G.o.d save our Lord the King!"

"And if my standard bearer fall, as fall full well he may-- For never I saw promise yet of such a b.l.o.o.d.y fray-- Press where you see my white plume s.h.i.+ne amidst the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre."

IV.

Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din, Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.

The fiery duke is p.r.i.c.king fast across Saint-Andre's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, Charge for the golden lilies--upon them with the lance!

A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow- white crest; And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star, Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

V.

Now G.o.d be praised, the day is ours; Mayenne hath turned his rein; D'Aumale hath cried for quarter; the Flemish count is slain; Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale; The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail.

And then we thought on vengeance, and all along our van, Remember Saint Bartholomew! was pa.s.sed from man to man.

But out spake gentle Henry--"No Frenchman is my foe; Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go."

Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friends.h.i.+p or in war, As our sovereign lord, King Henry, the soldier of Navarre?

VI.

Right well fought all the Frenchmen who fought for France to-day; And many a lordly banner G.o.d gave them for a prey.

But we of the religion have borne us best in fight; And the good Lord of Rosny hath ta'en the cornet white-- Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en, The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine, Up with it high; unfurl it wide--that all the host may know How G.o.d hath humbled the proud house which wrought his church such woe.

Then on the ground, while trumpets sound their loudest point of war, Fling the red shreds, a foot-cloth meet for Henry of Navarre.

VII.

Ho! maidens of Vienna! ho! matrons of Lucerne-- Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return.

Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles, That Antwerp monks may sing a ma.s.s for thy poor spearmen's souls.

Ho! gallant n.o.bles of the league, look that your arms be bright; Ho! burghers of St. Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night; For our G.o.d hath crushed the tyrant, our G.o.d hath raised the slave, And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valor of the brave.

Then glory to His holy name, for whom all glories are; And glory to our sovereign lord, King Henry of Navarre!

LORD MACAULAY

THE DAFFODILS.

I.

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

II.

Continuous as the stars that s.h.i.+ne And twinkle on the milky way, They stretch'd in never-ending line Along the margin of the bay; Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

III.

The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee; A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company; I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought;

IV.

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

WORDSWORTH

CHEERFULNESS.

1. A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He knows that there is much misery, but that misery is not the rule of life. He sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joy, the whole air is full of careering and rejoicing insects-- that everywhere the good outbalances the bad, and that every evil that there is has its compensating balm.

2. Then the brave man, as our German cousins say, possesses the world, whereas the melancholy man does not even possess his share of it.

Exercise, or continued employment of some kind, will make a man cheerful; but sitting at home, brooding and thinking, or doing little, will bring gloom. The reaction of this feeling is wonderful. It arises from a sense of duty done, and it also enables us to do our duty.

3. Cheerful people live long in our memory. We remember joy more readily than sorrow, and always look back with tenderness on the brave and cheerful.

We can all cultivate our tempers, and one of the employments of some poor mortals is to cultivate, cherish, and bring to perfection, a thoroughly bad one; but we may be certain that to do so is a very grave error and sin, which, like all others, brings its own punishment; though, unfortunately, it does not punish itself only.

4. Addison says of cheerfulness, that it lightens sickness, poverty, affliction; converts ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and renders deformity itself agreeable; and he says no more than the truth.

5. "Give us, therefore, oh! give us"--let us cry with Carlyle-- "the man who sings at his work! He will do more in the same time, --he will do it better,--he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres.

6. "Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous,--a spirit all suns.h.i.+ne, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright."

7. Such a spirit is within everybody's reach. Let us but get out into the light of things. The morbid man cries out that there is always enough wrong in the world to make a man miserable.

Conceded; but wrong is ever being righted; there is always enough that is good and right to make us joyful.