THE GODDESS.

FOR THE SANITARY FAIR.

"WHO Comes?" The sentry's warning ery
Rings sharply on the evening air:
Who comes? The challenge: no reply,
Yet something motions there.

A woman, by those graceful folds }; A soldier, by that martial tread : "Advance three paces. Halt! until Thy name and rank be said."

"My name? Her name, in ancient song,
Who fearless from Olympus came :

Look on me! Mortals know me best
In battle and in flame."

"Enough! I know that clarion voice;

I know that gleaming eye and helm ; Those crimson lips,—and in their dew The best blood of the realm.

"The young, the brave, the good and wise, Have fallen in thy curst embrace :

The juices of the grapes of wrath
Still stain thy guilty face.

"My brother lies in yonder field,

Face downward to the quiet grass: Go back! he cannot see thee now; But here thou shalt not pass."

A crack upon the evening air,
A wakened echo from the hill:
The watch-dog on the distant shore
Gives mouth, and all is still.

The sentry with his brother lies
Face downward on the quiet grass;

And by him, in the pale moonshine,
A shadow seems to pass.

No lance or warlike shield it bears:
A helmet in its pitying hands
Brings water from the nearest brook,
To meet his last demands.

Can this be she of haughty mien,

The goddess of the sword and shield? Ah, yes! The Grecian poet's myth Sways still each battle-field.

For not alone that rugged war

Some grace or charm from beauty gains; But, when the goddess' work is done,

The woman's still remains.

ADDRESS.

OPENING OF THE

CALIFORNIA THEATRE, SAN FRAN

CISCO, JAN. 19, 1870.

BRIEF words, when actions wait, are well:
The prompter's hand is on his bell;
The coming heroes, lovers, kings,
Are idly lounging at the wings;
Behind the curtain's mystic fold
The glowing future lies unrolled,—
And yet, one moment for the Past;
One retrospect,-the first and last.

"The world's a stage," the master said.
To-night a mightier truth is read:
Not in the shifting canvas screen,
The flash of gas, or tinsel sheen;

Not in the skill whose signal calls
From empty boards baronial halls;
But, fronting sea and curving bay,
Behold the players and the play.

Ah, friends! beneath your real skies
The actor's short-lived triumph dies:
On that broad stage, of empire won
Whose footlights were the setting sun,
Whose flats a distant background rose
In trackless peaks of endless snows;
Here genius bows, and talent waits
To copy
that but One creates.

Your shifting scenes: the league of sand,
An avenue by ocean spanned;

The narrow beach of straggling tents,

A mile of stately monuments;

Your standard, lo! a flag unfurled,

Whose clinging folds clasp half the world,—

This is your drama, built on facts,

With "twenty years between the acts."