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The awful fountains of the deep did lift
Their subterranean portals, and he went
Down to the floor of Ocean, mid the beds
Of brave and beautiful ones. Yet to my soul
In all the funeral pomp, the guise of wo,
The monumental grandeur, with which earth
Indulgeth her dead sons, was nought so sad,
Sublime, or sorrowful, as the mute sea
Opening her mouth to whelm that sailor youth.

LESSON LXXIII.

New England's Dead.-Mc Lellan.

'I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is; behold her, and judge for yourselves.-There is her history. The world know it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every state, from New England to Georgia; and there they will remain forever.' Webster's Speech.

NEW ENGLAND'S DEAD! New England's dead!

On

On every hill they lie;

every field of strife, made red

By bloody victory.

Each valley, where the battle poured

Its red and awful tide,

Beheld the brave New England sword
With slaughter deeply dyed.
Their bones are on the northern hill,
And on the southern plain,
By brook and river, lake and rill,

And by the roaring main.

The land is holy where they fought,
And holy where they fell;

For by their blood that land was bought,
The land they loved so well.

Then glory to that valiant band,

The honored saviors of the land!

O, few and weak their numbers were-
A handful of brave men;

But to their God they gave their
And rushed to battle then.

prayer,

The God of battles heard their cry,
And sent to them the victory.

They left the ploughshare in the mould,
Their flocks and herds without a fold,
The sickle in the unshorn grain,
The corn, half-garnered, on the plain,
And mustered, in their simple dress,
For wrongs to seek a stern redress,
To right those wrongs, come weal, come wo,
To perish, or o'ercome their foe.

And where are ye, O fearless men?
And where are ye to-day?

I call: the hills reply again

That ye have passed away;

That on old Bunker's lonely height,

In Trenton, and in Monmouth ground, The grass grows green, the harvest bright, Above each soldier's mound.

The bugle's wild and warlike blast
Shall muster them no more;
An army now might thunder past,
And they heed not its roar.

The starry flag, 'neath which they fought,
In many a bloody day,

From their old graves shall rouse them not
For they have passed away.

LESSON LXXIV.

Napoleon Dying.—MACARTHY.

YES! bury me deep in the infinite sea,
Let my heart have a limitless grave;
For my spirit in life was as fierce and free
As the course of the tempest-wave.

As far from the stretch of all earthly control
Were the fathomless depths of my mind;
And the ebbs and flows of my single soul
Were as tides to the rest of mankind.

Then my briny pall shall engirdle the world,
As in life did the voice of my fame;

And each mutinous billow that's sky-ward curled
Shall seem to reecho my name.

That name shall be storied in annals of crime

In the uttermost corners of earth;

Now breathed as a curse-now a spell-word sublime,
In the glorified land of my birth.

Ay! plunge my dark heart in the infinite sea;
It would burst from a narrower tomb;
Shall less than an ocean his sepulchre be
Whose mandate to millions was doom?

LESSON LXXV.

Hymn of the Moravian Nuns at the Consecration of Pulaski's Banner.-Longfellow.

The standard of count Pulaski, the noble Pole who fell in the attack upon Savannah, during the American Revolution, was of crimson silk, embroidered by the Moravian nuns of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania.

WHEN the dying flame of day
Through the chancel shot its ray,
Far the glimmering tapers shed
Faint light on the cowled head,
And the censer burning swung,
Where before the altar hung

That proud banner, which, with prayer,
Had been consecrated there;

And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while,
Sung low in the dim mysterious aisle.

Take thy banner. May it wave
Proudly o'er the good and brave,
When the battle's distant wail
Breaks the Sabbath of our vale,—
When the clarion's music thrills
To the hearts of these lone hills,-
When the spear in conflict shakes,
And the strong lance shivering breaks.

Take thy banner;-and, beneath
The war-cloud's encircling wreath,
Guard it-till our homes are free-
Guard it-God will prosper thee!
In the dark and trying hour,
In the breaking forth of power,
In the rush of steeds and men,
His right hand will shield thee then.

Take thy banner. But when night
Closes round the ghastly fight,
If the vanquished warrior bow,
Spare him;-by our holy vow,
By our prayers and many tears,
By the mercy that endears,

Spare him-he our love hath shared-
Spare him as thou wouldst be spared.

Take thy banner;—and if e'er
Thou shouldst press the soldier's bier,
And the muffled drum should beat
To the tread of mournful feet,
Then this crimson flag shall be
Martial cloak and shroud for thee.

And the warrior took that banner proud,
And it was his martial cloak and shroud.

LESSON LXXVI.

Imlac's Description of a Poet.-JOHNSON.

'BEING now resolved to be a poet, I saw every thing with a new purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified: no kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of the forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the changes of the summer clouds.

To a poet nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imag

ination: he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety: for every idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth; and he, who knows most, will have most power of diversifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions and unexpected instruction.'

'All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study, and every country which I have surveyed has contributed something to my poetical powers.'

In so wide a survey,' said the prince, you must surely have left much unobserved. I have lived, till now, within the circuit of these mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of something which I had never beheld before, or never heeded.'

'The business of a poet,' said Imlac, 'is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances; he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness.

'But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude.

'He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same: he must therefore content himself with the slow progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider him

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