AT PORT ROYAL.

An' now he open ebery door,
An' trow away de key;
He tink we lub him so before,
We lub him better free.

De yam will grow, de cotton blow,
He'll gib de rice an' corn:

O nebber you fear, if nebber you hear
De driver blow his horn!

So sing our dusky gondoliers;
And, with a secret pain,

And smiles that seem akin to tears,
We hear the wild refrain.

We dare not share the negro's trust,
Nor yet his hope deny;

We only know that God is just,
And every wrong shall die.

Rude seems the song; each swarthy face,
Flame-lighted, ruder still:

We start to think that hapless race
Must shape our good or ill;

That laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed;

And, close as sin and suffering joined,
We march to Fate abreast.

Sing on, poor hearts! your chant shall be
Our sign of blight or bloom,
The Vala-song of Liberty,

Or death-rune of our doom!

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ICHABOD!

S

O fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore !

Revile him not,
A snare for all ;

And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!

the Tempter hath

O, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night!

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven?

Let not the land, once proud of him,
Insult him now,

Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,

A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains,

A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.

OUR STATE.

All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:

When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!

Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!

OUR STATE.

THE

HE South-land boasts its teeming cane,
The prairied West its heavy grain,
And sunset's radiant gates unfold
On rising marts and sands of gold

Rough, bleak and hard, our little State
Is scant of soil, of limits strait;
Her yellow sands are sands alone,
Her only mines are ice and stone!

From Autumn frost to April rain,
Too long her winter woods complain ;
From budding flower to falling leaf,
Her summer time is all too brief.

Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands,
And wintry hills, the school-house stands,
And what her rugged soil denies,
The harvest of the mind supplies.

The riches of the commonwealth

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health;

And more to her than gold or grain,
The cunning hand and cultured brain.

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For well she keeps her ancient stock,
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock;
And still maintains, with milder laws,
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause!

Nor heeds the sceptic's puny hands,
While near her school the church-spire stands;
Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule,
While near her church-spire stands the school!

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

THE

1850.

HE evil days have come,
Are made a prey;

Bar up the hospitable door,

Put out the fire-lights, point no more
The wanderer's way.

the poor

For Pity now is crime; the chain
Which binds our States

Is melted at her hearth in twain,
Is rusted by her tears' soft rain:
Close up her gates.

Our Union, like a glacier stirred
By voice below,

Or bell of kine, or wing of bird,
A beggar's crust, a kindly word
May overthrow!

Poor, whispering tremblers!
Our blood and name;
Bursting its century-bolted frost,

Each gray cairn on the Northman's coast
Cries out for shame!

- yet we boast

STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

O for the open firmament,
The prairie free,

The desert hillside, cavern-rent,
The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent,
The Bushman's tree!

Than web of Persian loom most rare,
Or soft divan,

Better the rough rock, bleak and bare,
Or hollow tree, which man may share
With suffering man.

I hear a voice: "Thus saith the Law,
Let Love be dumb;
Clasping her liberal hands in awe,
Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw
From hearth and home."

I hear another voice: "The poor
Are thine to feed;

Turn not the outcast from thy door,
Nor give to bonds and wrong once more
Whom God hath freed."

Dear Lord! between that law and thee
No choice remains;

Yet not untrue to man's decree,
Though spurning its rewards, is he
Who bears its pains.

Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast
And threatening word;

I read the lesson of the Past,

That firm endurance wins at last
More than the sword.

O, clear-eyed Faith, and Patience, thou
So calm and strong!

Lend strength to weakness, teach us how
The sleepless eyes of God look through
This night of wrong!

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