“ Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky
Loud rings the Nation's cry,—
Union and Liberty! One evermore!
Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us,
Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun!
Thou hast united us, who shall divide us?
Keep us, O keep us, the Many in One!
Up with our banner bright,
Sprinkled with starry light,
Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky
Loud rings the Nation's cry,—
Union and Liberty! One evermore!
Oliver Wendell Holmes. ”

“ And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean
Are bending like corn on the upland lea:
And life in rare and beautiful forms
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, [Pg 64]
And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms
Has made the top of the waves his own:
And when the ship from his fury flies,
When the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore,
Then, far below, in the peaceful sea,
The purple mullet and goldfish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly
Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. ”

“ And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
Flows the River of Life between.
No other voice, nor sound is there,
In the army of the grave;
No other challenge breaks the air,
But the rushing of Life's wave.
And, when the solemn and deep church bell
Entreats the soul to pray,
The midnight phantoms feel the spell,
The shadows sweep away.
Down the broad Vale of Tears afar
The spectral camp is fled;
Faith shineth as a morning star,
Our ghastly fears are dead.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
THE SAILOR'S WIFE.
And are ye sure the news is true? ”

“ I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest;
And a mother she was and is to me;
For I was born on the open sea!
The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the ocean child! ”

“ A home and a country remain not to me.
Never again, in the green sunny bowers,
Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild woven flowers,
And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh!
Erin, my country! though sad and forsaken,
In dreams I revisit thy sea-beaten shore;
But, alas! in a far foreign land I awaken,
And sigh for the friends who can meet me no more!
Oh cruel fate! wilt thou never replace me
In a mansion of peace—where no perils can chase me? ”

“ That, living, we shall be victorious,
Or that, dying, our deaths shall be glorious.
A breath of submission we breathe not;
The sword that we've drawn we will sheathe not!
Its scabbard is left where our martyrs are laid,
And the vengeance of ages has whetted its blade.
Earth may hide—waves engulf—fire consume us,
But they shall not to slavery doom us:
If they rule, it shall be o'er our ashes and graves;
But we've smote them already with fire on the waves,
And new triumphs on the land are before us,
To the charge!—Heaven's banner is o'er us. ”

“ Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.
The forms of men shall be as they had never been;
The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green;
The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant song,
And the nightingale shall cease to chant the evening long.
The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that kills,
And all the fair white flocks shall perish from the hills.
The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the fox,
The wild boar of the wood, and the chamois of the rocks,
And the strong and fearless bear, in the trodden dust shall lie ”

“ On the tail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster,
Forboding to traitors the doom of disaster.
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battlefield calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.
Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape flowed away behind,
Like an ocean flying before the wind;
And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire,
Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire ”

“ Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore;—upon the watery plain [Pg 156]
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war ”

“ Quoth Sir Ralph, "It will be lighter soon,
For there is the dawn of the rising moon."
"Can'st hear," said one, "the breakers roar?
For methinks we should be near the shore;
Now where we are I cannot tell,
But I wish I could hear the Inchcape bell."
They hear no sound, the swell is strong;
Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along,
Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock;
Cried they, "It is the Inchcape Rock!"
Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair,
And curst himself in his despair; [Pg 46]
The waves rush in on every side,
The ship is sinking beneath the tide. ”

“ A SELECTION FROM CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll! ”

“ And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.
[Pg 164]
Britannia needs no bulwarks
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.
With thunders from her native oak
She quells the floods below—
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy winds do blow;
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow. ”

“ We die—does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"
And the gunner said, "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply:
"We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our lives.
We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;
We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow."
And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe. ”

“ Who love a swinging breeze;
And before the woods of Devon,
And the silver cliffs of Wales,
You may see, when summer evenings fall,
The light upon their sails.
But when the year grows darker,
And gray winds hunt the foam,
They go back to Little Brixham,
And ply their toil at home.
And thus it chanced one winter's night,
When a storm began to roar,
That all the men were out at sea,
And all the wives on shore.
Then as the wind grew fiercer,
The women's cheeks grew white, [Pg 87] —
It was fiercer in the twilight,
And fiercest in the night. ”

“ Before the stout harvesters falleth the grain,
As when the strong storm wind is reaping the plain;
And loiters the boy in the briery lane;
But yonder aslant comes the silvery rain,
Like a long line of spears brightly burnished and tall.
Adown the white highway like cavalry fleet,
It dashes the dust with its numberless feet.
Like a murmurless school, in their leafy retreat,
The wild birds sit listening, the drops round them beat;
And the boy crouches close to the blackberry wall.
The swallows alone take the storm on their wing,
And, taunting the tree-sheltered laborers, sing ”

“ He dashed down the lines 'mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray,
By the flash of his eye and the red nostril's play
He seemed to the whole great army to say:
"I've brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester down to save the day!"
Hurrah! hurrah! for Sheridan!
Hurrah! hurrah! for horse and man! ”

“ The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. ”

“ That never are wet with the falling dew;
But in bright and changeful beauty shine,
Far down in the green and glassy brine.
The floor is of sand, like the mountain's drift,
And the pearl shells spangle the flinty snow;
From coral rocks the sea plants lift
Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow.
The water is calm and still below,
For the winds and waves are absent there,
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air. ”

“ Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray,
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea!
Nor I alone—a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fullness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; [Pg 124]
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. ”

“ Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.
Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
William Cullen Bryant.
[Pg 204]
JERUSALEM, THE GOLDEN.
Jerusalem, the golden! ”

“ They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since: their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:—not so thou,
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play—
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow—
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. ”

“ Tears, like the raindrop, may fall without measure,
But rapture and beauty they cannot recall.
Yet all its sad recollections suppressing,
One dying wish my lone bosom can draw;
Erin! an exile bequeathes thee his blessing!
Land of my forefathers! Erin go bragh!
Buried and cold, when my heart stills her motion,
Green be thy field,—sweetest isle of the ocean! ”

“ The shepherd gladly heareth thee,
More harmonious than he.
Thee, country minds with gladness hear,
Prophet of the ripened year:
Thee Phœbus loves and does inspire;
Phœbus is himself thy sire.
To thee of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth. [Pg 193]
Happy insect! happy thou,
Dost neither age nor winter know:
But when thou'st drunk, and danced, and sung
Thy fill, the flowery leaves among,
(Voluptuous and wise withal,
Epicurean animal,)
Sated with the summer feast
Thou retir'st to endless rest. ”

“ When they have slain her lover?"
Out spoke the hardy Highland wight,
"I'll go, my chief—I'm ready:
It is not for your silver bright;
But for your winsome lady:
"And by my word! the bonny bird
In danger shall not tarry:
So though the waves are raging white,
I'll row you o'er the ferry." ”

“ O'er the blue depths of Galilee
There comes a holier calm,
And Sharon waves in solemn praise
Her silent groves of palm.
"Glory to God!" the sounding skies
Loud with their anthems ring,
"Peace to the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven's eternal King!"
Light on thy hills, Jerusalem!
The Savior now is born!
And bright on Bethlehem's joyous plains
Breaks the first Christmas morn.
Edmund H. Sears.
[Pg 94]
WHEN WILT THOU SAVE THE PEOPLE?
When wilt Thou save the people?
O God of mercy, when?
Not kings and lords, but nations!
Not thrones and crowns, but men! ”

“ Whispering new joys to the mild ocean—
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.
The stars with deep amaze,
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.
Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men, [Pg 236]
Orbed in a rainbow ”

“ When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen
To temper the deceitful ray.
And oh, when stoops on Judah's path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be Thou long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!
Our harps we left by Babel's streams,
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn ”