No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
O better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave!
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave!
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
THE LIVING TEMPLE.
Not in the world of light alone,
Where God has built his blazing throne,
Nor yet alone in earth below,
With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green,
Is all thy Maker's glory seen;
Look in upon thy wondrous frame,—
Eternal wisdom still the same!
The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves,
Whose streams of brightening purple rush,
Fired with a new and livelier blush,
While all their burden of decay,
The ebbing current steals away,
And red with Nature's flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.
No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
Forever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net,
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides;
Then, kindling each decaying part,
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.
But warmed with that unchanging flame,
Behold the outward moving frame;
Its living marbles jointed strong
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason's guiding reins
By myriad rings in countless chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the master's own.
See how yon beam of seeming white
Is braided out of seven-hued light;
Yet in those lucid globes no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark, how the rolling surge of sound,
Arches and spirals circling round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear
With music it is heaven to hear!
Then mark the cloven sphere that holds
All thought in its mysterious folds,
That feels sensation's faintest thrill,
And flashes forth the sovereign will;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells!
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads !
O Father! grant thy love divine
To make these mystic temples thine!
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have sapped the leaning walls of life,
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms,
And mould it into heavenly forms!
261. THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
Of miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's minds To vaster issues.
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order, that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better,-saw within
A worier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love,-
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb,
Unread forever.
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us, who strive to follow.
May I reach
That purest heaven,-be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible,
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
262. THE SONG OF THE CAMP.
BAYARD TAYLOR.
"Give us a song!" the soldiers cried,
The outer trenches guarding,
When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.
The dark Redan, in silent scoff,
Lay, grim and threatening, under;
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belched its thunder.
There was a pause. A guardsman said: "We storm the forts to-morrow;
Sing while we may, another day
Will bring enough of sorrow.'
They lay along the battery's side,
Below the smoking cannon:
Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde,
And from the banks of Shannon.
They sang of love, and not of fame :
Forgot was Britain's glory:
Each heart recalled a different name,
But all sang Annie Laurie."
Voice after voice caught up the song,
Until its tender passion
Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,―
Their battle-eve confession.
Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,
But, as the song grew louder,
Something upon the soldier's cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.
Beyond the darkening ocean burned
The bloody sunset's embers,
While the Crimean valleys learned
How English love remembers.
And once again a fire of hell
Rained on the Russian quarters,
With scream of shot and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars!
And Irish Nora's eyes are dim
For a singer, dumb and gory;
And English Mary mourns for him
Who sang of "Annie Laurie."
Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing;
The bravest are the tenderest,-
The loving are the daring.
263. "IT IS MORE BLESSED."
ROSE TERRY COOKE.
Give! as the morning that flows out of heaven;
Give! as the waves when their channel is riven;
Give! as the free air and sunshine are given;
Lavishly, utterly, carelessly give.
Not the waste drops of thy cup overflowing,
Not the faint sparks of thy hearth ever-glowing,
Not a pale bud from the June rose's blowing;
Give as He gave thee, who gave thee to live.
Pour out thy love like the rush of a river
Wasting its waters, for ever and ever,
Through the burnt sands that reward not the giver ;
Silent or songful, thou nearest the sea.
Scatter thy life as the Summer shower's pouring! What if no bird through the pearl-rain is soaring?
What if no blossom looks upward adoring?
Look to the life that was lavished for thee!
Give, though thy heart may be wasted and weary,
Laid on an altar all ashen and dreary;
Though from its pulses a faint miserere
Beats to thy soul the sad presage of fate,
Bind it with cords of unshrinking devotion;
Smile at the song of its restless emotion;
'Tis the stern hymn of eternity's ocean;
Hear! and in silence thy future await.
So the wild wind strews its perfumed caresses,
Evil and thankless the desert it blesses,
Bitter the wave that its soft pinion presses,
Never it ceaseth to whisper and sing.
What if the hard heart give thorns for thy roses?
What if on rocks thy tired bosom reposes?
Sweetest is music with minor-keyed closes,
Fairest the vines that on ruin will cling.
Almost the day of thy giving is over;
Ere from the grass dies the bee-haunted clover,
Thou wilt have vanished from friend and from lover;
What shall thy longing avail in the grave?
Give as the heart gives whose fetters are breaking,
Life, love, and hope, all thy dreams and thy waking.
Soon, Heaven's river thy soul-fever slaking,
Thou shalt know God and the gift that He gave.
264-TOM BROWN STARTING FOR RUGBY.
Great was the grief amongst the village school-boys when Tom Brown drove off with the Squire one August morning to meet the coach on his way to school at Rugby. Each of them had given him some little present of the best that he had, and his small private box was full of peg-tops, white marbles, screws, birds' eggs, whip-cord, jews-harps, and other miscel laneous boys' wealth.
Poor Jacob Doodle-calf, in floods of tears, had pressed upon him with spluttering earnestness his lame pet hedge-hog (he had always some poor broken-down beast or bird by him); but this Tom had been obliged to refuse by the Squire's order. He had given them all a great tea under the big elm in their play-ground, for which Madam Brown had supplied the biggest cake ever seen in our village; and Tom was really as sorry
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