COULD Eve's weak hand, extended to the tree,
In sunder rend that adamantine chain,

Whose golden links effects and causes be,

And which to God's own chain doth fixed remain.

This world 't is true,

Davies.

Was made for Cæsar, but for Titus, too;

And which more blest? who chained his country, say; Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day?

Pope.

Still in constraint your suffering sex remains,
Or bound in formal, or in real chains.

They, with joint force oppression chaining, set
Imperial justice at the helm.

Glad of his liberty, the captive dog

Pope.

Thomson.

Oft gnaws the rope that binds him to his clog;
Still, as a badge of slavery, there remains,
Trail'd at his neck, a remnant of his chains.

We pine for kindred natures,
To mingle with our own;

For communings more high and full
Than aught by mortal known.

We strive with brief aspiring,

Against our bounds in vain,

Yet summoned to be free at last,

Howes.

We shrink and clasp our chain.—Mrs. Hemans.

I gave my love a chain of gold,
Her beauteous neck to bind;
But she keeps me in faster hold,
With chains around my mind.
I think I have the harder part,
For 'neath her lovely chin,

She carries links outside her heart-
My fetters are within!

Campbell.

CHAIN.

CHANCE.

165

Then come the wild weather-come sleet or come snow,
We will stand by each other, however it blow;
Oppression and sickness, and sorrow and pain,
Shall be to our true love as links to the chain.
Longfellow, from the German.

CHANCE.

As th' unthought accident is guilty

Of what we wildly do, so we profess
Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies
Of every wind that blows.

You were used

Shakspere.

To say extremity was the trier of spirits,
That common chances common men could bear.
Shakspere.

Unknowingly she strikes and kills by chance,
Poison is in her eyes, and death in every glance.
Dryden.

Be juster, heav'ns! such virtue punished thus,
Will make us think that chance rules all above,
And shuffles, with a random hand, the lots
Which men are forc'd to draw.

How could judicious atomists conceive

Dryden.

Chance to the sun could his just impulse give?

Blackmore.

Exuberant health diseases him, frail worm,
And the slight bias of untoward chance
Makes his best virtues from the even line,
With fatal declination, turn aside.

Vox et præterea nihil; and the name
Of chance is but the argument of fools,

Southey.

Swoln with th' expansion of their own conceit.
Can that which is not, shape the things that are?
Is chance omnipotent-resolve me why

The meanest shell-fish, and the noblest brute,
Transmit their likeness to the years that come?

Dilnot Sladden.

THOU shalt not see me blush,

Nor change my countenance for this arrest;
A heart unspotted is not easily daunted.-Shakspere.

The lopped tree in time may grow again,

Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower: The sorriest wight may find release of pain,

The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower. Times go by turns, and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost,
That net that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crost;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish.
Unmingled joys here to no man befall;

Who least hath some, who most hath never all.
Southwell.

Thus doth the ever changing course of things
Run a perpetual circle, ever turning;
And that same day that highest glory brings,
Brings us unto the point of back returning.

Daniel.

Hear how Timotheus' various lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While at each change the son of Libyan Jove,
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love.

Youth

Pope.

Knows nought of changes! Age hath traced them all, Expects, and can interpret them.

Isaac Comnenus.

Love bears within itself the very germ

Of change; and how should this be otherwise? That violent things more quickly find a term,

Is shown through nature's whole analogies.

Byron.

The time has been, when no harsh sounds would fall
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall;
But now so callous grown, so chang'd since youth,
I've learn'd to think, and sternly speak the truth.
Byron.

God, veiled in clouded majesty, alone
Gives light to all; bids the great systems move,
And changing seasons in their turn advance,
Unmoved, unchanged Himself.

Somerville.

Ah me! what is there in earth's various range,
Which time and absence may not sadly change?

Sands.

"Oh! day by day," a tottering dotard cries, "Nature decays, and each attraction dies, Women no longer charm as once they charmed, And men no more with pristine strengh are armed; The fruits have lost their flavour, and the sun Shines not so brightly as of yore he shone;

The flowers have shed their fragrance and their hue!”-
Old man! old man! nothing has changed but you!
Imitated from Mallet.

Not in vain the distance beckons,
Forward, forward let us range;

Let the people spin for ever

Down the ringing groves of change.-Tennyson.

In bower and garden rich and rare,

There's many a cherish'd flower,
Whose beauty fades, whose fragrance flits

Within the flitting hour.

Not so the simple forest leaf,

Unprized, unnoticed, lying

The same through all its little life-
It changes but in dying.

Be such, and only such, my friends;
Once mine, and mine for ever;
And here's a hand to clasp in theirs,
That shall desert them never.
And thou be such, my gentle love,
Time, chance, the world defying;
And take, 't is all I have, a heart
That changes but in dying.

G. W. Doane,

How much of change there lies in little space!
How soon the spirits leave their youth behind;
The early green forsakes the bough, the flowers,
Nature's more fairy-like and fragile ones,
Droop on the way-side, and the later leaves
Have artifice and culture-so the heart:

How soon its soft spring hours take darker hues!
And hopes, that are like rainbows, melt in shade;
While the fair future, ah! how fair it seemed!
Grows actual and dark.

Miss Landon.

Weep not that the world changes-did it keep
A stable, changeless course, 't were cause to weep.

I ask not what changes

Have come o'er thy heart,

I seek not what chances
Have doomed us to part;

I know thou hast told me
To love thee no more,
And I still must obey
Where I once did adore.

Change is written on the tide,
On the forest's leafy pride;
On the streamlet glancing bright,
On the jewell'd crown of night;-
All, where'er the eye can rest,
Show it legibly imprest.

Bryant.

Hoffman.

J. H. Clinch.

Ah! if a fairy's magic might were mine,
I'd joy to change with each new wish of thine;
Nothing to all the world beside I'd be,

And everything thou lovest in turn to thee.

Now bear me hence away,

Mrs. Osgood.

I like not this close room, so small and dim;
Around the curtain'd bed are shadows grim,
Which gauntly play,

Turning my mind from pray'r,

I know they tell me of my coming fate,
But oh! not here--I would the change await

In the cool air.

George F. Wood.