Who joined man's heart to woman's softest grace, And thrice redeemed the scourges of her race.
Sister of charity and love,
Whose life-blood was soft Pity's tide, Dear goddess of the sylvan grove,
Flower of the forest, nature's pride,
He is no man who does not bend the knee,
And she no woman who is not like thee!
Jamestown, and Plymouth's hallowed rock
To me shall ever sacred be,
I care not who my themes may mock,
Or sneer at them and me.
I envy not the brute who here can stand
Without a thrill for his own native land.
And if the recreant crawl her earth,
Or breathe Virginia's air,
Or in New England claim his birth,
From the old pilgrims there,
He is a bastard, if he dare to mock
Old Jamestown's shrine or Plymouth's famous rock.
JOHN SMITH'S APPROACH TO JAMESTOWN.
PAUSE not now to speak of Raleigh's dreams, Though they might give a loftier bard fit themes: I pause not now to tell of Ocracock,
Where Saxon spray broke on the red-brown rock;
Nor of my native river which glides down Through scenes where rose a happy Indian town; But, leaving these and Chesapeake's broad bay, Resume my story in the month of May,
Where England's cross-St. George's ensign-flowed
Where ne'er before emblazoned banner glowed;
Where English breasts throbbed fast as English eyes
Looked o'er the waters with a glad surprise,
Looked gladly out upon the varied scene
Where stretched the woods in all their pomp
Flinging great shadows, beautiful and vast
As e'er upon Arcadian lake were cast.
Turn where they would, in what direction rove,
They found some bay, or wild, romantic cove,
On which they coasted through those forests dim,
Wherein they heard the never-ceasing hymn
That swelled from all the tall, majestic pines,
Fit choristers of Nature's sylvan shrines.
For though no priest their solitudes had trod,
The trees were vocal in their praise of God.
And then, when, capes and jutting headlands past,
The sails were furled against each idle mast,
They saw the sunset in its pomp descend,
And sky and water gloriously contend
For gorgeousness of colors, red and gold,
And tints of amethyst together rolled,
Making a scene of splendor and of rest
As vanquished day lit camp-fires in the West.
And when the light grew faint on wave and strand,
New beauties woke in this enchanted land,
For through heaven's lattice-work of crimson bars
Like angels looked the bright eternal stars,
And then, when gathered tints of purplish brown,
A golden sickle, reaping darkness down,
The new moon shone above the lofty trees,
Which made low music in the evening breeze,
The breeze which floating blandly from the shore
The perfumed breath of flowering jasmine bore;
For smiling Spring had kissed its clustering vines,
And breathed her fragrance on the lofty pines.
James Barron Hope.
Kekoughton, the River, Va.
SUNSET ON THE KEKOUGHTON RIVER.
EE the scattered clouds of evening, –
Lattice bars across the blue,
Where the moon in pallid beauty
Like an angel gazes through!
Over all the winding river,
By the fading sunset kissed,
Slowly rises up the vapor
In a cloud of ghostly mist.
While the eve is slowly turning
Its last grains of golden sand,
What a holy quiet hovers
Over all the drowsy land!
There is now the spell of silence,
Of a silence calm and deep,
Over all the placid waters
Where the pale mist seems asleep.
And the vessels, slowly gliding
Down the river to the bay,
Show on spreading sheets of canvas
Tints that change from red to gray.
All is quiet, save the murmur
Of the tide upon the bar:
See each little breaker playing
With the image of a star!
And 't is thus that human creatures,
Bowed with age, or fresh in youth,
Give back brokenly the image
Of each grand, celestial truth.
Now the brooding silence deepens,
And the scene is one of rest,
As the wrecked day drifts down grandly
To be stranded in the West,
On yon rugged coast of Cloudland
High above the village spire,
On its mighty, purple headlands
And its crags all tipped with fire.
Green steeps that are storm-rent and sterile,
Wild-sown with the spoils of the shore,—
The night has passed on and the peril,
And the mariners struggle no more.
Sing for the brave ship lost:
Chant for the lives that lie
In unknown haven tossed,
Under a sobbing sky.
Sing requiem, praise to the valor
Unshaken though Fate held the scourge; But dawnlight unveils the stern pallor Of faces swept cold by the surge.
Wreck on the sullen bar,
Never in battle a-sea,
Iron-girted for war,
Challenge shall echo from thee:
Storm, darkness, and depths are thy foemen, And each hero stood to his post;
But master and sailor and yeomen,
Their names shall give fame to the coast.
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