Soon as thought, soon as thought,
Pleasure to an end is brought;
Yesterday upon proud horses,--
Shot to-day, our quiet corses
Are to-morrow in the grave.
And how soon, and how soon,
Vanish shape and beauty's noon!
Of thy cheeks a moment vaunting,
Like the milk and purple haunting,--
Ah, the roses fade away!
And what, then, and what, then,
Is the joy and lust of men?
Ever caring, ever getting,
From the early morn-light fretting
Till the day is past and gone.
Therefore still, therefore still
I content me, as God will:
Fighting stoutly, nought shall shake me:
For should death itself o'ertake me,
Then a gallant soldier dies.
FROUDE'S HENRY THE EIGHTH.
The spirit of historical criticism in the present age is on the whole a
charitable spirit. Many public characters have been heard through their
advocates at the bar of history, and the judgments long since passed
upon them and their deeds, and deferentially accepted for centuries,
have been set aside, and others of a widely different character
pronounced. Julius Caesar, who was wont to stand as the model usurper,
and was regarded as having wantonly destroyed Roman liberty in order to
gratify his towering ambition, is now regarded as a political reformer
of the very highest and best class,--as the man who alone thoroughly
understood his age and his country, and who was Heaven's own instrument
to rescue unnumbered millions from the misrule of an oligarchy whose
members looked upon mankind as their proper prey.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53