,,Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray,
Take her to thy protecting arms,
With all her youth and all her charms!"
How beautiful she is! How fair
She lies within those arms, that press
Her form with many a soft caress
Of tenderness and watchful care!
Sail forth into the sea, O ship!
Through wind and wave, right onward steer!
The moistened eye, the trembling lip,
Are not the signs of doubt or fear!
Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!
Thou, too, sail on, O ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity, with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
"T is of the wave, and not the rock;
"T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee, are all with thee!
THE LUCK OF EDENHALL. FROM UHLAND.
[THE tradition upon which this ballad is founded, and the,,shards of the Luck of Edenhall," still exist in England. The goblet is in the possession of Sir Christopher Musgrave, Bart., of Eden Hall, Cumberland; and is not so entirely shattered as the ballad leaves it.] Or Edenhall, the youthful Lord Bids sound the festal trumpet's call;
He rises at the banquet board,
And cries, 'mid the drunken revellers all,
,,Now bring me the Luck of Edenhall!"
The butler hears the words with pain,
The house's oldest seneschal,
Takes slow from its silken cloth again,
The drinking glass of crystal tall:
They call it The Luck of Edenhall.
Then said the Lord:,,This glass to praise,
Fill with red wine from Portugal!"
The gray-beard with trembling hand obeys;
A purple light shines over all,
It beams from the Luck of Edenhall.
Then speaks the Lord, and waves it light,
,,This glass of flashing crystal tall
Gave to my sires the Fountain-Sprite;
She wrote in it: If this glass doth fall,
Farewell then, O Luck of Edenhall!
,,'Twas right a goblet the Fate should be
Of the joyous race of Edenhall!
Deep draughts drink we right willingly;
And willingly ring with merry call,
Kling! klang! to the Luck of Edenhall!"
First rings it deep, and full, and mild,
Like to the song of a nightingale;
Then like the roar of a torrent wild;
Then mutters at last, like the thunder's fall,
The glorious Luck of Edenhall!
,,For its keeper takes a race of might, The fragile goblet of crystal tall;
It has lasted longer than is right;
Kling! klang! — with a harder blow than all Will I try the Luck of Edenhall!"
As the goblet ringing flies apart,
Suddenly cracks the vaulted hall;
And through the rift the wild flames start:
The guests in dust are scattered all,
With the breaking Luck of Edenhall!
In storms the foe, with fire and sword:
He in the night had scaled the wall;
Slain by the sword lies the youthful Lord,
But holds in his hand the crystal tall,
The shattered Luck of Edenhall.
On the morrow the butler gropes alone,
The gray-beard in the desert hall,
He seeks his Lord's burnt skeleton,
He seeks in the dismal ruin's fall
The shards of the Luck of Edenhall.
,,The stone wall," saith he,,,doth fall aside, So long, that both by night and day
Down must the stately columns fall;
Glass is this earth's Luck and Pride;
In atoms shall fall this earthly ball
One day, like the Luck of Edenhall."
The end lies ever in my thought:
To a grave so cold and deep
The mother beautiful was brought;
Then dropped the child asleep.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT,
Born 1794.
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When
thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow
Where thy pale form was laid with many
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall
claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy
mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at Shalt thou retire alone
heart;
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around-
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,
Comes a still voice -Yet a few days, and
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world
The powerful of the earth
Rock-ribb'd, and ancient as the sun, the vales Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustain❜d and
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd
round all,
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
WHEN the radiant morn of Creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,
And the empty realms of darkness and death
Were moved through their depth by his
mighty breath,
And orbs of beauty and spheres of flame
From the void abyss in myriads came,
In the joy of youth as they darted away,'
Through the widening wastes of space to
play,
Their silver voices in chorus rung,
And this was the song the bright ones sung.
Away, away! through the wide, wide.
sky,
and what if thou The fair blue fields that before us lie,
withdraw
Each sun, with the worlds that around him
roll,
Unheeded by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase And her waters that lie like fluid light.
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall
Each planet, poised on her turning pole;
With her isles of green, and her clouds of
white,
For the source of glory uncovers his face, Their mirth and their employments, and And the brightness o'erflows unbounded
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green
And make their bed with thee. As the And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides In our ruddy air and our blooming sides: Lo! yonder the living splendours play; spring, and he Away, on our joyous path, away! who goes In the full strength of years, matron, maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed
Look, look, through our glittering ranks
afar,
In the infinite azure, star after star,
How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly
pass!
Shall one by one be gather'd to thy side,
By those, who, in their turn, shall follow How the verdure runs o'er each rolling
So live, that, when thy summons comes to And the path of the gentle winds is seen, Where the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
And see, where the brighter day-beams pour,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave, at night, How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower;
And the morn and eve, with their pomp of O Earth! dost thou too sorrow for the past Like man thy offspring? Do I hear thee
hues, Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews; And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone the night goes round!
Away, away! in our blossoming bowers, In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours, In the seas and fountains that shine with
See love is brooding, and life is born, And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice, like us, in motion and light.
Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs
Gone with their genial airs and melodies,
The gentle generations of thy flowers,
And thy majestic groves of olden time,
Perish'd with all their dwellers? Dost thou
wail
For that fair age of which the poets tell,
Ere the rude winds grew keen with frost,
or fire
Fell with the rains, or spouted from the hills,
To blast thy greenness, while the virgin
night
Was guiltless and salubrious as the day?
Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful Or haply dost thou grieve for those that
To weave the dance that measures the For living things that trod awhile thy face, years, The love of thee and heaven and now they sleep
Glide on, in the glory and gladness sent To the farthest wall of the firmament, The boundless visible smile of Him,
Mix'd with the shapeless dust on which
To the veil of whose brow your lamps are Trample and graze? I too must grieve
with thee, their graves are far
A MIDNIGHT black with clouds is in the sky;
I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight
Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain
Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star
Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze,
From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth,
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass.
No sound of life is heard, no village hum,
Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path,
Nor rush of wing, while, on the breast of
Earth,
I lie and listen to her mighty voice:
A voice of many tones sent up from
Upon thy mountains, yet, while I recline,
Alone, in darkness, on thy naked soil,
The mighty nourisher and burial-place
Of man, I feel that I embrace their dust.
Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong, And heaven is listening. The forgotten graves
Of the heart-broken utter forth their plaint. The dust of her who loved and was betray'd, And him who died neglected in his age; The sepulchres of those who for mankind Labour'd, and earn'd the recompense of scorn; Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones Of those who, in the strife for liberty, Where beaten down, their corses given to dogs,
Their names to infamy, all find a voice. The nook in which the captive, overtoil❜d, Lay down to rest at last, and that which
Childhood's sweet blossoms, crush'd by crue hands,
And hollows of the great invisible hills,
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far Send up a plaintive sound. From battle
Into the night a melancholy sound!
Where heroes madly drave and dash'd their My native Land of Groves! a newer page
Of cities, now that living sounds are hush'd, THE groves were God's first temples. Ere Murmur of guilty force and treachery.
Here, where I rest, the vales of Italy
Are round me, populous from early time,
And field of the tremendous warfare waged
"Twixt good and evil. Who, alas, shall dare
Interpret to man's ear the mingled voice
From all her ways and walls, and streets
and streams,
And hills and fruitful fields? Old dungeons
breathe
man learn'd
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them,
framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offer'd to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences,
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the gray old trunks, that high
in heaven
Of horrors veil'd from history; the stones
Of mouldering amphitheatres, where flow'd
The life-blood of the warrior slave, cry out. Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the
The fanes of old religions, the proud piles
Rear'd with the spoil of empires
Of cities dug from their volcanic graves,
Report of human suffering and shame
And folly. Even the common dust, among
The springing corn and vine-rows, wit-
The ages of oppression. Ah, I hear
A murmur of confused languages,
The utterance of nations now no more,
Driven out by mightier, as the days of heaven
Chase one another from the sky. The blood
Of freemen shed by freemen, till strange lords
Came in the hour of weakness, and made fast
The yoke that yet is worn, appeals to Heaven.
sound
Of the invisible breath, that sway'd at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and
bow'd
His spirit with the thought of boundless
power,
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs
That our frail hands have raised? Let me,
at least,
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,
Offer one hymn thrice happy, if it find
Acceptance in his ear.
Father, thy hand Hath rear'd these venerable columns, thou What then shall cleanse thy bosom, gentle Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy
breeze,
And shot towards heaven.
From all its painful memories of guilt?
The whelming flood, or the renewing fire,
Or the slow change of time? that so, at last,
The horried tale of perjury and strife,
Murder and spoil, which men call history,
May seem a fable, like the inventions told
By poets of the gods of Greece. O thou,
Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep,
Among the sources of thy glorious streams, Among their branches; till, at last, they stood,
The centuryliving crow, Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
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