Page images
PDF
EPUB

33*

Into Hiawatha's wigwam
Came two other guests, as silent
As the ghosts were, and as gloomy,
Waited not to be invited,

Did not parley at the doorway,
Sat there without word of welcome
In the seat of Laughing Water;
Looked with haggard eyes and hollow
At the face of Laughing Water.

And the foremost said: "Behold me!

I am Famine, Bukadawin!"

And the other said: "Behold me!
I am Fever, Ahkosewin!"

And the lovely Minnehaha
Shuddered as they looked upon her,
Shuddered at the words they uttered,
Lay down on her bed in silence,
Hid her face, but made no answer;
Lay there trembling, freezing, burning
At the looks they cast upon her,
At the fearful words they uttered.
Forth into the empty forest
Rushed the maddened Hiawatha;
In his heart was deadly sorrow,
In his face a stony firmness;
On his brow the sweat of anguish
Started, but it froze and fell not.

Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting,

With his mighty bow of ash-tree,
With his quiver full of arrows,
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
Into the vast and vacant forest

On his snow-shoes strode he forward.
"Gitche Manito, the Mighty!"

Cried he with his face uplifted
In that bitter hour of anguish,

"Give your children food, O father!
Give us food, or we must perish!

Give me food for Minnehaha,
For my dying Minnehaha!"

From "Hiawatha."

HEAVEN'S SUNRISE TO EARTHLY BLINDNESS.

THE world waits

MRS. BROWNING.

For help. Beloved, let us love so well,
Our work shall still be better for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work,
And both, commended, for the sake of each,
By all true workers and true lovers, born.
Now press the clarion on thy woman's lip
(Love's holy kiss shall still keep consecrate)
And breathe the fine keen breath along the brass,
And blow all class-walls level as Jericho's

Past Jordan; crying from the top of souls,
To souls, that they assemble on earth's flats
To get them to some purer eminence
Than any hitherto beheld for clouds!

What height we know not,—but the way we know,
And how by mounting aye, we must attain,
And so climb on. It is the hour for souls;
That bodies, leavened by the will and love,
Be lightened to redemption. The world's old;
But the old world waits the hour to be renewed:
Toward which, new hearts in individual growth
Must quicken, and increase to multitude
In new dynasties of the race of men,—
Developed whence, shall grow spontaneously
New churches, new oeconomies, new laws
Admitting freedom, new societies

Excluding falsehood. He shall make all new.
My Romney!-lifting up my hand in his,
As wheeled by Seeing spirits towards the east,
He turned instinctively,—where, faint and fair,
Along the tingling desert of the sky,
Beyond the circle of the conscious hills,
Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass
The first foundations of that new, near Day
Which should be builded out of heaven, to God.

He stood a moment with erected brows,
In silence, as a creature might, who gazed:
Stood calm, and fed his blind, majestic eyes
Upon the thought of perfect noon. And when
I saw his soul saw,- Jasper first," I said,
"And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony;
The rest in order, . . last, an amethyst."

[ocr errors]

From "Aurora Leigh."

NATIONAL ODES AND BATTLE PIECES.

NATIONAL SONGS.

SONGS of our land, ye are with us for ever:
The power and the splendor of thrones pass away;
But yours is the might of some deep-rolling river,

Still flowing in freshness through things that decay.
Ye treasure the voices of long-vanished ages;

Like our time-honored towers, in beauty ye stand;
Ye bring us the bright thoughts of poets and sages,
And keep them among us, old songs of our land.

The bards may go down to the place of their slumbers,
The lyre of the charmer be hushed in the grave;
But far in the future the power of their numbers
Shall kindle the hearts of our faithful and brave.
It will waken an echo in souls deep and lonely,
Like voices of reeds by the winter wind fanned;
It will call up a spirit of freedom, when only

Her breathings are heard in the songs of our land.

For they keep a record of those, the true-hearted,
Who fell with the cause they had vowed to maintain;
They show us bright shadows of glory departed,

Of love unrewarded, and hope that was vain;

The page may be lost, and the pen long-forsaken,

ANONYMOUS.

And weeds may grow wild o'er the brave heart and hand;

But ye are still left when all else hath been taken,

Like streams in the desert-sweet songs of our land!

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.

WHEN Freedom from her mountain height

Unfurled her standard to the air,

She tore the azure robe of night,

And set the stars of glory there.

She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white,
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.

Majestic monarch of the cloud,

Who rear'st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumpings loud
And see the lightning lances driven,

When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven,
Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given
To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!

Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high,
When speaks the signal trumpet tone,

And the long line comes gleaming on.
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,

Has dimmed the glistening bayonet, Each soldier eye shall brightly turn

To where thy sky-born glories burn; And as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance. And when the cannon-mouthings loud

Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall

Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall;
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall sink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.

Flag of the seas! on ocean wave

Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave;

When death, careering on the gale,

Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea

Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly
In triumph o'er his closing eye.

Flag of the free heart's hope and home!
By angel hands to valor given;
The stars have lit the welkin dome,

And all thy hues were born in heaven.
For ever float that standard sheet!

Where breathes the foe but falls before us,

With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,

And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

O! SAY, can you see, by the dawn's early light,

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming; Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep
As it fitfully blows, half-conceals, half discloses ?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam;
Its full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is the band who so vauntingly swore,
'Mid the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,

A home and a country they'd leave us no more?

Their blood hath washed out their foul footsteps' pollution;

« PreviousContinue »