One morning, oh! so early, my beloved, my beloved,
All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would cease;
’Twas a thrush sang in my garden, “Hear the story, hear the story!”
    And the lark sang, “Give us glory!”
    And the dove said, “Give us peace!”

II.

Then I listened, oh! so early, my beloved, my beloved,
To that murmur from the woodland of the dove, my dear, the dove;
When the nightingale came after, “Give us fame to sweeten duty!”
    When the wren sang, “Give us beauty!”
    She made answer, “Give us love!”

III.

Sweet is spring, and sweet the morning, my beloved, my beloved;
Now for us doth spring, doth morning, wait upon the year’s increase,
And my prayer goes up, “Oh, give us, crowned in youth with marriage glory,
    Give for all our life’s dear story,
    Give us love, and give us peace!”

Jean Ingelow.

Freedom.

1.  No quality of Art has been more powerful in its influence on public mind; none is more frequently the subject of popular praise, or the end of vulgar effort, than what we call “Freedom.”  It is necessary to determine the justice or injustice of this popular praise.

2.  Try to draw a circle with the “free” hand, and with a single line.  You cannot do it if your hand trembles, nor if it hesitates, nor if it is unmanageable, nor if it is in the common sense of the word “free.”  So far from being free, it must be under a control as absolute and accurate as if it were fastened to an inflexible bar of steel.  And yet it must move, under this necessary control, with perfect, untormented serenity of ease.

3.  I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly free creature than in the common house-fly.  Nor free only, but brave; and irreverent to a degree which I think no human republican could by any philosophy exalt himself to.  There is no courtesy in him; he does not care whether it is king or clown whom he teases; and in every step of his swift mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world’s having been made for flies.

4.  Strike at him with your hand, and to him, the mechanical fact and external aspect of the matter is, what to you it would be if an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for a second, and came crashing down with an aim.  That is the external aspect of it; the inner aspect, to his fly’s mind, is of a quite natural and unimportant occurrence—­one of the momentary conditions of his active life.  He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the back of it.