Macmillan's Reading Books. Book V. Unknown
never from this hour to part,
We'll live and love so true,
The sigh that rends thy constant heart
Shall break thy Edwin's too."
[Notes: Oliver Goldsmith, poet and novelist. The friend and contemporary of Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds. Born 1728, died 1774.
This poem is introduced into 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and Goldsmith there says of it, "It is at least free from the false taste of loading the lines with epithets;" or as he puts it more fully "a string of epithets that improve the sound without carrying on the sense."
"Immeasurably spread" = spread to an immeasurable length.
No flocks that range the valleys free. "Free" may be joined either with flocks or with valley.
Note the position of the negative, "No flocks that range," &c. = I do not condemn the flocks that range.
Guiltless feast. Because it does not involve the death of a fellow-creature.
Scrip. A purse or wallet; a word of Teutonic origin. Distinguish from scrip, a writing or certificate, from the Latin word scribo, I write.
Far in a wilderness obscure. Obscure goes with mansion, not with wilderness.
And gaily pressed (him to eat).
With answering care, i.e., with sympathetic care.
A charm that lulls to sleep. Charm is here in its proper sense: that of a thing pleasing to the fancy is derivative.
A shade that follows wealth or fame. A shade = a ghost or phantom.
Swift mantling, &c. Spreading quickly over, like a cloak or mantle.
Where heaven and you reside = where you, whose only thoughts are of Heaven, reside.
Whom love has taught to stray. This use of the word "taught" for "made" or "forced," is taken from a Latin idiom, as in Virgil, "He teaches the woods to ring with the name of Amaryllis." It is stronger than "made" or "forced," and implies, as here, that she had forgotten all but the wandering life that is now hers.
He had but only me. But or only is redundant.
To emulate his mind = to be equal to his mind in purity.
Their constancy was mine. This verse has often been accused of violating sense; but, however artificial the expression may be, neither the sense is obscure, nor the way of expressing it inaccurate. It is evidently only another way of saying "in the little they had of constancy they resembled me as they resembled him in their charms."]
DR. ARNOLD
We listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay, and men too, for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us, and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his life: that it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a battle-field ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them, at the same time, by every word he spoke in the pulpit, and by his whole daily life, how that battle was to be fought; and stood there before them, their fellow-soldier and the captain of their band. The true sort of captain, too, for a boy's army, one who had no misgivings, and gave no uncertain word of command, and, let who would yield or make truce, would fight the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the last drop of blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of and influence boys here and there, but it was this thoroughness and undaunted courage which more than anything else won his way to the hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made them believe first in him, and then in his Master.
It was this quality, above all others, which moved such boys as Tom Brown, who had nothing whatever remarkable about him except excess of boyishness; by which I mean animal life in its fullest measure; good nature and honest impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and thoughtlessness enough to sink a three-decker. And so, during the next two years, in which it was more than doubtful whether he would get good or evil from the school, and before any steady purpose or principle grew up in him, whatever his week's sins and shortcomings might have been, he hardly ever left the chapel on Sunday evenings without a serious resolve to stand by and follow the doctor, and a feeling that it was only cowardice (the incarnation of all other sins in such a boy's mind) which hindered him from doing so with all his heart.
[Note: Dr. Arnold, the head-master of Rugby School, died 1842. His life, which gives an account of the work done by him to promote education, has been written by Dean Stanley.]
MARTYRS
Patriots have toil'd, and in their country's cause
Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve,
Receive proud recompense. We give in charge
Their names to the sweet lyre. The Historic Muse,
Proud of the treasure, marches with it down
To latest times; and Sculpture, in her turn,
Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass
To guard them, and to immortalize her trust.
But fairer wreaths are due—though never paid—
To those who, posted at the shrine of Truth,
Have fallen in her defence. A patriot's blood,
Well spent in such a strife, may earn indeed,
And for a time ensure, to his loved land
The sweets of liberty and equal laws;
But martyrs struggle for a brighter prize,
And win it with more pain. Their blood is shed
In confirmation of the noblest claim,—
Our claim to feed upon immortal truth,
To walk with God, to be divinely free,
To soar and to anticipate the skies.—
Yet few remember them! They lived unknown,
Till persecution dragged them into fame,
And chased them up to Heaven. Their ashes flew—
No marble tells us whither. With their names
No bard embalms and sanctifies his song;
And History, so warm on meaner themes,
Is cold on this. She execrates indeed
The tyranny that doom'd them to the fire,
But gives the glorious sufferers little praise.
[Notes:William Cowper (born 1731, died 1800), the author of 'The Task,' 'Progress of Error,' 'Truth,' and many other poems; all marked by the same pure thought and chaste language.
This poem is written in what is called "blank verse," i.e., verse in which the lines do not rhyme, the rhythm depending on the measure of the verse.
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