There knowledge breathes in balmy air,
Not wrung, as here, with panting breast:
The wisdom born of toil you share;
But he, the wisdom born of rest.
For every picture here that slept,
A living canvas is unrolled;
The silent harp he might have swept
Leans to his touch its strings of gold.
Believe, dear Friends, they murmur still
Some sweet accord to those you play,
That happier winds of Eden thrill
With echoes of the earthly lay;
That he, for every triumph won,
Whereto your poet-souls aspire,
Sees opening, in that perfect sun,
Another blossom's bud of fire!
Each song, of Love and Sorrow born,
Another flower to crown your boy,--
Each shadow here his ray of morn,
Till Grief shall clasp the hand of Joy!
HOUSE-BUILDING.
Because our architecture is bad, and because the architecture of our
forefathers in the Middle Ages was good, Mr. Ruskin and others seem to
think there is no salvation for us until we build in the same spirit as
they did. But that we should do so no more follows than that we should
envy those geological ages when the club-mosses were of the size of
forest-trees, and the frogs as big as oxen. There are many advantages to
be had in the forests of the Amazon and the interior of
Borneo,--inexhaustible fertility, endless water-power,--but no one
thinks of going there to live.
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