The Test

"One musician is sure,     His wisdom will not fail,     He has not tasted wine impure,     Nor bent to passion frail.     Age cannot cloud his"

"With beams December planets dart     His cold eye truth and conduct scanned,     July was in his sunny heart,     October in his liberal hand."

"Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen,     To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between:     Future or Past no richer secret folds,"

"Nature centres into balls,     And her proud ephemerals,     Fast to surface and outside,     Scan the profile of the sphere;     Knew they wh"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"