Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CITY AND VILLAGE. Once again within the city, 'mid its multitudinous din, Stand I, while, as sinks a leaf when left by the uncertain wind, So the daily village quiet, and the calm I had within, Shrinks before the magic contact of the ever-shaping mind. In the village life is sluggish, waking up but for a space, As the engines shriek and whistle down by hill and wooded glen; But here a mightier striving stamps itself upon my race— Here are all the active ages, and the tramp of busy men. Then away with daily labour, thoughts of books or weary rhyme, Let me plunge into this whirlpool rolling on in mad unrest— Let me, Faust-like, have the weal of men in all the coming time, That its triumph may strike vigour through the soul within my breast. Hush ! we spoke not of the sorrow that upon their joys will peer, As the huge unshapen monster glared in on pale Frankenstein, Edging life's uncertain smile with all the drapery of a tear, And placing in the cup the drop that dulls and drugs the wine. But heed not this, and think that, in the rolling on of years, The slow whirlpool of sure change will lift this life still higher up, Till it leave behind its apehood, and its daily load of fears, And drink existence gladly as if angels held the cup. Far apocalyptic touches that unveil the years to be, Show this in ecstatic glimpses, as when mists upon a hill Lift their trailing arms of whiteness, till, as in a dream, we see A summer gush of glory lying hid behind them still. Is the pencil of broad Hogarth still to keep its biting truth, And for ever flash its satire on the world's sweat-blinded sight ? Are we still to stumble onward on a pathway all unsmooth, Like a Cyclops in his cavern smitten with the loss of light? Ay, the tim...