Have a Blast, InstaPutz Readers...

E. E. Hale:

Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and drank something, and then began, without a thought of what was coming,—

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,”—

It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on, still unconsciously or mechanically,—

“This is my own, my native land!”

Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,—

“Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?—
If such there breathe, go, mark him well,”—

By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on,—

“For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,”—

and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on...