A Sweet Child Is The Sweetest Thing

What A Place To Be In Is An Old Library! It Seems As Though All The Souls Of All The Writers That Have Bequeathed Their Labours To These Bodleians Were Reposing Here As In Some Dormitory, Or Middle State. I Do Not Want To Handle, To Profane The Leaves, Their Winding-sheets. I Could As Soon Dislodge A Shade. I Seem To Inhale Learning, Walking Amid Their Foliage; And The Odor Of Their Old Moth-scented Coverings Is Fragrant As The First Bloom Of The Sciential Apples Which Grew Amid The Happy Orchard.

The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls The Soul Of Music Shed, Now Hangs As Mute On Tara's Walls As If That Soul Were Fled. So Sleeps The Pride Of Former Days, So Glory's Thrill Is O'er; And Hearts That Once Beat High For Praise Now Feel That Pulse No More.

Rags, Which Are The Reproach Of Poverty, Are The Beggar's Robes, And Graceful Insignia Of His Profession, His Tenure, His Full Dress, The Suit In Which He Is Expected To Show Himself In Public.

A Babe Is Fed With Milk And Praise.

Antiquity! Thou Wondrous Charm, What Art Thou? That Being Nothing Art Everything? When Thou Wert, Thou Wert Not Antiquity - Then Thou Wert Nothing, But Hadst A Remoter Antiquity, As Thou Calledst It, To Look Back To With Blind Veneration; Thou Thyself Being To Thyself Flat, Jejune, Modern! What Mystery Lurks In This Retroversion? Or What Half Januses Are We, That Cannot Look Forward With The Same Idolatry With Which We For Ever Revert! The Mighty Future Is As Nothing, Being Everything! The Past Is Everything, Being Nothing!