DR. KANE IN CUBA.

A noble life is in thy care,

A sacred trust to thee is given:
Bright Island! let thy healing air
Be to him as the breath of Heaven.

The marvel of his daring life

The self forgetting leader bold-
Stirs, like the trumpet's call to strife,
A million hearts of meaner mould.

Eyes that shall never meet his own,
Look dim with tears across the sea,
Where, from the dark and icy zone,
Sweet Isle of Flowers! he comes to thee.

Fold him to rest, oh, pitying clime!
Give back his wasted strength again;
Soothe, with thy endless summer time,
His winter wearied heart and brain.
Sing soft and low, thou tropic bird,

From out the fragrant, flowery tree-
The ear that hears thee now, has heard
The ice-break of the winter sea.

Through his long watch of awful night,
He saw the Bear in Northern skies;
Now, to the Southern Cross of light,
He lifts in hope his weary eyes.

Prayers, from the hearts that watched in fear,
When the dark North no answer gave,
Rise, trembling, to the Father's ear,

That still His love may help and save.

Amesbury, 1st mo., 1857.

E. H. W.

BUOLLIAN

- 1 MAY 1985

P

LIBRARY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co.,

CAMBRIDGE.

I WOULD not sin, in this half-playful strain,

Too light perhaps for serious years, though born

Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,

Against the pure ideal which has drawn
My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.

A simple plot is mine: legends and runes

Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain
Silent from boyhood taking voice again,

Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes
That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,

Thawed into sound: - a winter fireside dream
Of dawns and sunsets by the summer sea,
Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng
Of voyagers from that vaster mystery

Of which it is an emblem; and the dear

Memory of one who might have tuned my song
To sweeter music by her delicate ear.

Ist month, 1867.