"--_Saxe_.
8. There were communities, scarce known by name
In these degenerate days, but once far-famed,
Where liberty and justice, hand in hand,
Ordered the common weal; where great men grew
Up to their natural eminence, and none
Saving the wise, just, eloquent, were great;
Where power was of God's gift to whom he gave
Supremacy of merit--the sole means
And broad highway to power, that ever then
Was meritoriously administered,
Whilst all its instruments, from first to last,
The tools of state for service high or low,
Were chosen for their aptness to those ends
Which virtue meditates.--_Henry Taylor_.
9. Stranger, these gloomy boughs
Had charms for him; and here he loved to sit,
His only visitant a straggling sheep,
The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper;
And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath
And juniper and thistle sprinkled o'er,
Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour
A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here
An emblem of his own unfruitful life;
And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze
On the more distant scene,--how lovely 't is
Thou seest,--and he would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty, still more beauteous.
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