MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATUR

And dance and song and generous dower
Are in the shining grains we shower.
Scatter the wheat for shipwrecked men,
Who, hunger-worn, rejoice again

In the sweet safety of the shore,
And wanderers, lost in woodlands drear,
Whose pulses bound with joy to hear
The herd's light bell once more.
Freely the golden spray be shed
For him whose heart, when night comes
On the close alleys of the town,

Is faint for lack of bread.

In chill roof chambers, bleak and bare,
Or the damp cellar's stifling air,
She who now sees, in mute despair,
Her children pine for food,

Shall feel the dews of gladness start
To lids long tearless, and shall part
The sweet loaf, with a grateful heart,
Among her thin, pale brood.
Dear, kindly Earth, whose breast we till!
Oh, for thy famished children, fill,
Where'er the sower walks,

Fill the rich ears that shade the mould
With grain for grain, a hundred fold,
To bend the sturdy stalks.

Strew silently the fruitful seed,

As softly o'er the tilth ye tread,
For hands that delicately knead
The consecrated bread.

The mystic loaf that crowns the board,
When, round the table of their Lord,
Within a thousand temples set,

In memory of the bitter death
Of Him who taught at Nazareth,

His followers are met,

And thoughtful eyes with tears are wet,

As of the Holy One they think,

The glory of whose rising, yet

Makes bright the grave's mysterious brin

MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATURE,

THE SNOW-SHOWER.

STAND here by my side and turn, I pray,
On the lake below thy gentle eyes;
The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray,
And dark and silent the water lies;
And out of that frozen mist the snow
In wavering flakes begins to flow;
Flake after flake,
They sink in the dark and silent lake.

See how in a living swarm they come

From the chambers beyond that misty veil
Some hover awhile in air, and some

Rush prone from the sky like summer hail
All, dropping swiftly or settling slow,
Meet, and are still in the depths below;
Flake after flake

Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.

Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud,
Come floating downward in airy play,
Like spangles dropped from the glistening cr
That whiten by night the milky way;
There broader and burlier masses fall;
The sullen water buries them all-
Flake after flake-

All drowned in the dark and silent lake.

And some, as on tender wings they glide
From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray
Are joined in their fall, and, side by side,

Come clinging along their unsteady way;
As friend with friend, or husband with wife,
Makes, hand in hand, the passage of life;
Each mated flake

Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste
Stream down the snows, till the air is white

See, from a thousand coverts-see,

Spring the armed foes that haunt her track; They rush to smite her down, and we Must beat the banded traitors back.

Ho! sturdy as the oaks ye cleave,
And moved as soon to fear and flight,
Men of the glade and forest! leave

Your woodcraft for the field of fight.
The arms that wield the axe must pour
An iron tempest on the foe;

His serried ranks shall reel before

The arm that lays the panther low.

And ye, who breast the mountain storm
By grassy steep or highland lake,
Come, for the land ye love, to form

A bulwark that no foe can break.
Stand, like your own gray cliffs that mock
The whirlwind, stand in her defence;
The blast as soon shall move the rock
As rushing squadrons bear ye thence.

And ye, whose homes are by her grand
Swift rivers, rising far away,

Come from the depth of her green land,
As mighty in your march as they;
As terrible as when the rains

Have swelled them over bank and bourne, With sudden floods to drown the plains

And sweep along the woods uptorn.

And ye, who throng, beside the deep,
Her ports and hamlets of the strand
In number like the waves that leap

On his long murmuring marge of sand,
Come, like that deep, when, o'er his brim,
He rises, all his floods to pour,
And flings the proudest barks that swim,
A helpless wreck, against his shore.

Few, few were they whose swords of old

Won the fair land in which we dwell;