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7. The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strong as iron bands.

H. W. LONGfellow.

8. Week in, week out, from morn till night
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge
With measur'd beat and slow.

H. W. LONGFELLOW.

9. How blest the farmer's simple life!
How pure the joy it yields!
Far from the world's tempestuous strife,
Free, 'mid the scented fields !

10. The cobbler's all depends upon his awl,

C. W. EVEREST.

And sheer's the merit of the tailor's shears;
The farmers crop their living from their crop,
And each man shares the blessings of their shares.
Who ever saw the workman wield his saw

Or move his plane along the timber's plane,

Or with just rule adjust his iron rule,

Must fuin admit his skill he does not feign.

BLINDNESS.

J. T. WATSON.

1. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon;
Irrevocably dark! total eclipse,
Without all hope of day.

MILTON'S Samson Agonistes.

2. O, loss of sight, of thee I most complain!

Light, the prime work of God, to me 's extinct,
And all her various objects of delight

Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd.

MILTON'S Samson Agonistes.

3.

Thus with the year

Seasons return, but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But clouds instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways
of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with an universal blank

Of nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

MILTON'S Paradise Lost.

4. Nor to these idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or stars, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward.

5. Ah! little know they of the dreamy sadness

MILTON.

That shadows o'er my spirit's viewless urn,
For they can look out on the free world's gladness,
Where blossoms blow, and stars shoot out and burn;
While I must sit, a fair yet darken'd flower,

Amid the bright band gathering round our hearth,
The only sad thing in our sweet home's bower-
Oh! for one glance upon the fresh green earth!

MRS. A. B. WELBY.

BLUSH. (See BASHFULNESS.)

1.

BOASTING.

The honour's overpaid,

When he that did the act is commentator.

SHIRLY,

94

BOOKS-NEWSPAPER - PRESS.

2. For highest looks have not the highest mind,

3.

Nor haughty words most full of highest thought;
But are like bladders blown up with the wind,
That being prick'd evanish into nought.

SPENSER'S Fairy Queen.

Who knows himself a braggart,

Let him fear this; for it will come to pass
That ev'ry braggart shall be found an ass.

4.

5.

Here's a large mouth, indeed,

SHAKSPEARE.

That spits forth death, and mountains, rocks, and seas;
Talks as familiarly of roaring lions,

As maids of thirteen do of puppy dogs.

What art thou? Have not I

An arm as big as thine? a heart as big?
Thy words, I grant, are bigger, for I wear not
My dagger in my mouth.

6. We rise in glory, as we sink in pride; Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.

SHAKSPEARE.

SHAKSPEARE.

YOUNG'S Night Thoughts.

7. For men, it is reported, dash and vapour
Less on the field of battle than on paper;
Thus, in the history of each dire campaign,
More carnage leads the newspaper than plain.

DR. WOLCOT's Peter Pindar.

BOOKS-NEWSPAPER-PRESS.

1. Books are a part of man's prerogative;
In formal ink they thought and voices hold;
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old.

SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.

BUTLER.

2.

'Tis in books the chief

Of all perfections, to be plain and brief.

3. "T were well with most, if books, that could engage
Their childhood, pleas'd them at a riper age;
The man approving what had charm'd the boy,
Would die at last in comfort, peace and joy;
And not with curses on his art, who stole
The gem of truth from his unguarded soul.

COWPER.

4. What is it but a map of busy life,

Its fluctuations and its vast concerns?

COWPER.

5. Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

DENHAM.

6. The printed part, tho' far too large, is less

.

Than that which, yet unprinted, waits the press.

From the Spanish.

7. The Past but lives in words: a thousand ages
Were blank, if books had not evok'd their ghosts,
And kept the pale, unbodied shades to warn us
From fleshless lips..

BULWER'S Cromwell.

8. 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, altho' there's nothing in 't.

BYRON'S English Bards and Scotch Reviews.

9. Turn to the press-its teeming sheets survey,
Big with the wonders of each passing day;
Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires and wrecks,
Harangues and hailstones, brawls and broken necks.

CHARLES SPRAGUE'S Curiosity.

10. "T was heaven to lounge upon a couch, said Gray, And read new novels through a rainy day.

CHARLES SPRAGUE's Curiosity.

96

BOOKS-NEWSPAPER-PRESS.

11. Trade hardly deems the busy day begun,
Till his keen eye along the sheet has run;
The blooming daughter throws her needle by,
And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh;
While the grave mother puts her glasses on,
And gives a tear to some old crone that's gone.
The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down,
To know what last new folly fills the town;
Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things,
The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings.

CHARLES SPRAGUE'S Curiosity.

12. See tomes on tomes, of fancy and of power,
To cheer man's heaviest, warm his holiest hour.

CHARLES SPRAGUE'S Curiosity.

13. Turn back the tide of ages to its head,

And hoard the wisdom of the honour'd dead.

CHARLES SPRAGUE's Curiosity.

14. Newspaper! who has never felt the pleasure that it brings? It always tells us of so many strange and wondrous things! It makes us weep at tales of wo―it fills our hearts with

mirth

It tells us of the price of stock-how much produce is

worth

And when, and where, and how, and why, strange things occur on earth.

Has war's loud clarion call'd to arms? has lightning

struck a tree?—

Has Jenkins broke his leg?—or has there been a storm at

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Has the sea-serpent shown his head?-a comet's tail been

seen?

Or has some heiress with her groom run off to Gretna
Green ?-

All this, and many wonders more, you from this sheet may

glean.

J. T. WATSON.

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