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S

ICHABOD!

O fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone

Forevermore !

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And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!

O, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night!

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven?

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OUR STATE.

All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:

When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!

Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;

Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!

TH

OUR STATE.

HE South-land boasts its teeming cane,
The prairied West its heavy grain,

And sunset's radiant gates unfold
On rising marts and sands of gold!

Rough, bleak and hard, our little State
Is scant of soil, of limits strait;
Her yellow sands are sands alone,
Her only mines are ice and stone!

From Autumn frost to April rain,
Too long her winter woods complain;
From budding flower to falling leaf,
Her summer time is all too brief.

Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands,

And wintry hills, the school-house stands,
And what her rugged soil denies,

The harvest of the mind supplies.

The riches of the commonwealth

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health;

And more to her than gold or grain,

The cunning hand and cultured brain.

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For well she keeps her ancient stock,
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock;
And still maintains, with milder laws,
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause!

Nor heeds the sceptic's puny hands,

While near her school the church-spire stands; Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule,

While near her church-spire stands the school!

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Poor, whispering tremblers! — yet we boast Our blood and name;

Bursting its century-bolted frost,

Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast
Cries out for shame!

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

O for the open firmament,

The prairie free,

The desert hillside, cavern-rent,
The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent,
The Bushman's tree!

Than web of Persian loom most rare,
Or soft divan,

Better the rough rock, bleak and bare,
Or hollow tree, which man may share
With suffering man.

I hear a voice: "Thus saith the Law,
Let Love be dumb;

Clasping her liberal hands in awe,
Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw
From hearth and home."

I hear another voice: «The poor
Are thine to feed;

Turn not the outcast from thy door,
Nor give to bonds and wrong once more
Whom God hath freed."

Dear Lord! between that law and thee
No choice remains;

Yet not untrue to man's decree,
Though spurning its rewards, is he
Who bears its pains.

Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast
And threatening word;

I read the lesson of the Past,
That firm endurance wins at last
More than the sword.

O, clear-eyed Faith, and Patience, thou
So calm and strong!

Lend strength to weakness, teach us how
The sleepless eyes of God look through
This night of wrong!

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CARCE had the solemn Sabbath-bell

Ceased quivering in the steeple,

Scarce had the parson to his desk
Walked stately through his people,

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