O Nature, how fair is thy face,
And how light is thy heart, and how friendless thy grace!
1245
OWEN MEREDITH:  Lucile, Pt. i., Canto v., St. 28.

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
1246
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT:  Thanatopsis.

=News—­Newspapers.=

The first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office; and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember’d knolling a departing friend.
1247
SHAKS.:  2 Henry IV., Act i., Sc. 1.

Evil news rides post, while good news baits. 1248 MILTON:  Samson Agonistes, Line 1538.

Turn to the press—­its teeming sheets survey, Big with the wonders of each passing day; Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks, Harangues and hailstones, brawls and broken necks. 1249 SPRAGUE:  Curiosity.

=Newton.=

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:  God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light. 1250 POPE:  Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton.

Newton (that proverb of the mind), alas! 
Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent,
That he himself felt only “like a youth
Picking up shells by the great ocean—­Truth.”
1251
BYRON:  Don Juan, Canto vii., St. 5.

=New Year.=

The wave is breaking on the shore,—­
The echo fading from the chime—­
Again the shadow moveth o’er
The dial-plate of time!
1252
WHITTIER:  The New Year.

=Niagara.=

Flow on for ever in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty; ...  God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead; and the cloud
Mantles around thy feet.
1253
MRS. SIGOURNEY:  Niagara.

=Night.=

Dark night, that from the eye his function takes, The ear more quick of apprehension makes. 1254 SHAKS.:  Mid.  N. Dream, Act iii., Sc. 2.

Now began
Night with her sullen wing to double-shade
The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couch’d,
And now wild beasts came forth, the woods to roam.
1255
MILTON:  Par.  Regained, Bk. i., Line 409.

Awful Night! 
Ancestral mystery of mysteries.
1256
GEORGE ELIOT:  Spanish Gypsy, Bk. iv.

Night, night it is, night upon the palms. 
Night, night it is, the land wind has blown. 
Starry, starry night, over deep and height;
Love, love in the valley, love all alone.
1257
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:  The Feast of Famine.

Night is the time to weep,
  To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory where sleep
  The joys of other years.
1258
JAMES MONTGOMERY:  The Issues of Life and Death.