THE MARINER'S SONG.

Yet, laugh not in your carnival of crime

Too proudly, ye oppressors! Spain was free!
Her soil has felt the footprints, and her clime
Been winnowed by the wings of Liberty;
And these, even parting, scatter, as they flee,
Thoughts, influences, to live in hearts unborn;
Opinions that shall wrench the prison-key
From Persecution, show her mask off-torn,
And tramp her bloated bead beneath the foot of Scorn!
Glory to those that die in this great cause!

Kings, bigots, can inflict no brand of shame,
Or shape of death, to shroud them from applause:
No! manglers of the martyr's earthly frame!
Your hangmen fingers can not touch his fame.
Still in your prostrate land there shall be some
Proud hearts, the shrines of Freedom's vestal flame.
Long trains of ill may pass unheeded, dumb;
But Vengeance is behind, and Justice is to come!

309

CAMPBELL.

XI. THE MARINER'S SONG.

A WET sheet and a flowing sea,
A wind that follows fast,

And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
While, like the eagle free,
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee.

"O! for a soft and gentle wind!"
I heard a fair one cry;

But give to me the snoring breeze,
And white waves heaving high;
And white waves heaving high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free,
The world of waters is our home,
And merry men are we.

There's tempest in yon hornëd
And lightning in yon cloud;
And hark the music, mariners,
The wind is piping loud;

moon,

YE who love the haunts of Nature, love the sunshine of the meadow, love the shadow of the forest, love the wind among the branches, and the rain-shower and the snow-storm, and the rushing of great rivers through their palisades of pine-trees, and the thunder in the mountains, whose innumerable echoes flap like eagles in their eyries,* - listen to these wild traditions, to this Song of Hiawatha !†

Ye who love a nation's legends, love the ballads of a people, that, like voices from afar off, call to us to pause and listen, speak in tones so plain and childlike, scarcely can the ear distinguish whether they are sung or spoken, - listen to this Indian legend, to this Song of Hiawatha !

Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, who have faith in God and Nature, who believe that in all ages every human heart is human; that, in even savage bosoms, there are longings, yearnings, strivings, for the good they comprehend not; that the feeble hands and helpless, groping blindly in the darkness, touch God's right hand in the darkness, and are lifted up and strengthened, listen to this simple story, to this Song of Hiawatha! Ye who sometimes in your rambles through the green lanes of the country, where the tangled barberry-bushes hang their tufts. of crimson berries over stone walls gray with mosses, pause by some neglected grave-yard, for a while to muse and ponder on a half-effaced inscription, writ with little skill of song-craft, homely phrases, but each letter full of hope and yet of heart-break, full of all the tender pathos of the Here and the Hereafter, - stay and read this rude inscription, read this song of Hiawatha !

* Pronounced a'riz.

LONGFELLOW.

XIII. - THE GRAVE.

BLEST are the dormant

In death! They repose
From bondage and torment,
From passions and woes,

+ Pronounced He-a-wa'tha, the second a as in fall.

THE TWO RETURNED TOURISTS

311

From the yoke of the world and the snares of the traitor! The grave, the grave is the true liberator!

Griefs chase one another

Around the earth's dome;
In the arms of our mother
Alone is our home.

Woo pleasure, ye triflers! The thoughtful are wiser;
The grave, the grave is their one tranquillizer!

Is the good man unfriended
On life's ocean-path,

Where storms have expended
Their turbulent wrath?

Are his labors requited by slander and rancor?

The grave, the

grave is his sure bower-anchor!

To gaze on the faces

Of lost ones anew

To lock in embraces

The loved and the true

Were a rapture to make even Paradise brighter; grave, the grave is the great reuniter !

The

Crown the corpse, then, with laurels,

The conqueror's wreath!

Make joyous with chorals

The chamber of death;

And welcome the victor with cymbal and psalter grave, the grave is the only exalter!

The

S. A. WAHLMANN.

XIV. -THE TWO RETURNED TOURISTS

-

Two travelers through the gateway went
To the glorious Alpine world's ascent :
The one, he followed Fashion's behest,
The other felt the glow in his breast.

And when the two came home again,
Their kin all clustered round the men:

'Twas a buzz of questions on every side.

"And what have you seen? — do tell!" they cried.

-

The one with yawning made reply:

"What have we seen?- Not much have I !

1

Trecs, meadows, mountains, groves, and streams,
Blue sky and clouds, and sunny gleams."

The other, smiling, said the same;

But with face transfigured and eye of flame:

66

Trees, meadows, mountains, groves, and streams!
Blue sky and cloud, and sunny gleams!"

FROM THE GERMAN, BY C. T. BROOKS.

XV.

RIENZI TO THE ROMAN CONSPIRATORS IN 1347

ROMANS! look round you on this sacred place

There once stood shrines, and gods, and godlike men. What see you now? what solitary trace

Is left of all that made Rome's glory then? The shrines are sunk, the Sacred Mount bereft Even of its name. - and nothing now remains But the deep memory of that glory, left

To whet our pangs and aggravate our chains!
But shall this be? Our sun and sky the same,
Treading the very soil our fathers trod,
What withering curse hath fallen on soul and frame,
What visitation hath there come from God,

To blast our strength, and rot us into slaves,
Here, on our great forefathers' glorious graves?
It can not be! Rise up, ye mighty dead,
If we, the living, are too weak to crush
These tyrant priests, that o'er your empire tread,
Till all but Romans at Rome's tameness blush!
Happy, Palmyra, in thy desert domes,

Where only date-trees sigh, and serpents hiss!
And thou, whose pillars are but silent homes

For the stork's brood, superb Per-sep'olis!
Thrice happy both, that your extinguished race
Have left no embers -no half-living trace-
No slaves, to crawl around the once proud spot,
Till past renown in present shame 's forgot;
While Rome, the queen of all, whose very wrecks,
If lone and lifeless through a desert hurled,
Would wear more true magnificence than decks
The assembled thrones of all the existing world-
Rome, Rome alone is haunted, stained, and cursed,
Through every spot her princely Tiber laves,

THE POUNDER.

By living human things-the deadliest, worst,
This earth engenders- tyrants and their slaves!
And we
- O, shame! - we, who have pondered o'er
The patriot's lesson, and the poet's lay;
Have mounted up the streams of ancient lore,
Tracking our country's glories all the way-
Even we have tamely, basely kissed the ground,
Before that tyrant power, that ghost of her,
The world's imperial mistress- sitting, crowned
And ghastly, on her mouldering sepulcher!
But this is past!-too long have lordly priests
And priestly lords led us, with all our pride
Withering about us, like devoted beasts,

Dragged to the shrine, with faded garlands tied.
"Tis o'er the dawn of our deliverance breaks!
Up from his sleep of centuries awakes
The Genius of the old republic, free
As first he stood, in chainless majesty,

And sends his voice through ages yet to come,
Proclaiming Rome, Rome, Rome, Eternal Rome!

313

"have vead, friend Sancho, that a certain Spanish knight, whose name was Die Perez de Vargas, having broken his sword in the heat of an engagement, pulled up by the roots a wild olive-tree, or at least tore down a massy branch, and did such wonderful execution, crushing and grinding so many Moors with it that day, that he won himself and his posterity the surname of The Pounder, or Bruiser." - Don Quixote.

THE Christians have beleaguered the famous walls of Xe'res;
Among them are Don Alvar and Don Diego Perez,
And many other gentlemen, who, day succeeding day,
Give challenge to the Saracen and all his chivalry.*

When rages the hot battle before the gates of Xeres,
By trace of gore ye may explore the dauntless path of Perez.
No knight like Don Diego, no sword like his is found,
In all the host, to hew the boast of Paynims to the ground.

It fell one day, when furiously they battled on the plain,
Diego shivered both his lance and trusty blade in twain;

*This word being derived from the French, the ch should have the sound of sh. Pronounced shivalry.