--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

THE NOBLY BORN

Who counts himself as nobly born
Is noble in despite of place;
And honors are but brands to one
Who wears them not with nature's grace.

The prince may sit with clown or churl
Nor feel himself disgraced thereby;
But he who has but small esteem
Husbands that little carefully.

Then, be thou peasant, be thou peer,
Count it still more thou art thine own.
Stand on a larger heraldry
Than that of nation or of zone.

Art thou not bid to knightly halls?
Those halls have missed a courtly guest:
That mansion is not privileged
Which is not open to the best.

Give honor due when custom asks,
Nor wrangle for this lesser claim;
It is not to be destitute
To have the thing without the name.

Then, dost thou come of gentle blood,
Disgrace not thy good company;
If lowly born, so bear thyself
That gentle blood may come of thee.

Strive not with pain to scale the height
Of some fair garden's petty wall;
But climb the open mountain side
Whose summit rises over all.

And, for success, I ask no more than this:
To bear unflinching witness to the truth.
All true whole men succeed; for what is worth
Success's name unless it be the thought,
The inward surety, to have carried out
A noble purpose to a noble end,
Although it be the gallows or the block?
'Tis only Falsehood that doth ever need
These outward shows of gain to bolster her.

--James Russell Lowell.

Greatly begin! though thou have time
But for a line, be that sublime--
Not failure, but low aim is crime.

--James Russell Lowell.

THE BURIAL OF MOSES

By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave.
But no man dug that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er;
For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth.
Noiselessly as the daylight
Comes when the night is done,
And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek
Grows into the great sun--

Noiselessly as the springtime
Her crest of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the h