A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.

Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure,- Sighed to think I read a book, Only read, perhaps, by me.

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

On a fair prospect some have looked, And felt, as I have heard them say, As if the moving time had been A thing as steadfast as the scene On which they gazed themselves away.

For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.

And when the stream Which overflowed the soul was passed away, A consciousness remained that it had left Deposited upon the silent shore Of memory images and precious thoughts That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.