Sheathed be the sword! and may his voice
Call up the nations to rejoice,
That War his tattered flag has furled,
And vanished from a wiser world!
Hurrah! the work is done!
Still may he ring when struggles cease,
Still may he ring for joy's increase,
For progress in the arts of peace,
And friendly trophies won!
When rival nations join their hands,
When plenty crowns the happy lands,
When knowledge gives new blessings birth,
And freedom reigns o'er all the earth!
Hurrah! the work is done!
XXXVII.-THE LAUNCHING OF THE SHIP.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a native of Portland, Maine, U.S. of America, and was born in 1807. He is Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres in Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
ALL is finished! and at length
Has come the bridal day
Of beauty and of strength.
To-day the vessel shall be launched!
With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched,
Slowly, in all his splendours dight,
The great sun rises to behold the sight.
The ocean old,
Centuries old,
Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled,
Paces restless to and fro,
Up and down the sands of gold.
His beating heart is not at rest;
And far and wide,
With ceaseless flow,
His beard of snow
Heaves with the heaving of his breast.
He waits impatient for his bride.
There she stands,
With her foot upon the sands;
Decked with flags and streamers gay,
In honour of her marriage day,
Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending Round her like a veil descending,
Loud and sudden there was heard,
All around them and below,
The sound of hammers, blow on blow,
Knocking away the shores and spurs.
And see! she stirs !
She starts, she moves,—she seems to feel
The thrill of life along her keel,
And spurning with her foot the ground,
With one exulting, joyous bound,
She leaps into the ocean's arms!
And, lo! from the assembled crowd
There rose a shout, prolonged and loud,
That to the ocean seemed to say,
"Take her, O bridegroom, old and grey;
Take her to thy protecting arms,
With all her youth and all her charms'
How beautiful she is! how fair
She lies within those arms, that press
Her form with many a soft caress
Of tenderness and watchful care!
Sail forth into the sea, O ship!
Through wind and wave, right onward steer!
The moistened eye, the trembling lip,
Are not the signs of doubt or fear.
Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness, and love, and trust,
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity, with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel;
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope;
What anvils rang, what hammers beat;
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope.
Fear not each sudden sound and shock;
"Tis of the wave, and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale.
In spite of rock and tempest roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee-are all with thee.
XXXVIII.-KING ARTHUR AND QUEEN GUINEVERE.
The "Idylls of the King" is a poem consisting of four tales, three of which are derived from the legendary history of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. This extract is taken from the Fourth Idyll, and represents the last interview between the King and Queen Guinevere, who is stung with remorse for her guilty love of Sir Lancelot.
BUT when the Queen immersed in such a trance,
And moving through the past unconsciously,
Came to that point, when first she saw the King
Ride toward her from the city, sighed to find
Her journey done, glanced at him, thought him cold,
High, self-contained, and passionless, not like him,
“Not like my Lancelot”—while she brooded thus
And grew half-guilty in her thoughts again,
There rode an armed warrior to the doors.
A murmuring whisper through the nunnery ran,
Then on a sudden a cry, "The King." She sat
Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet
Through the long gallery from the outer doors
Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell,
And grovelled with her face against the floor:
There with her milk-white arms and shadowy hair
She made her face a darkness from the King:
And in the darkness heard his armed feet
Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice,
Monotonous and hollow like a ghost's
Denouncing judgment, but though changed, the King's:
"Liest thou here so low, the child of one
I honoured, happy, dead before thy shame ?
Well is it that no child is born of thee.
The children born of thee are sword and fire,
Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws,
The craft of kindred and the godless hosts
Of heathen swarming o'er the Northern Sea.
And of this remnant will I leave a part,
True men, who love me still, for whom I live,
To guard thee in the wild hour coming on,
Lest but a hair of this low head be harmed.
Fear not thou shalt be guarded till my death.
Howbeit, I know, if ancient prophecies
Have erred not, that I march to meet my doom.
Thou hast not made my life so sweet to me,
That I the King should greatly care to live;
For thou hast spoilt the purpose of my life.
Bear with me for the last time, while I show,
Even for thy sake, the sin which thou hast sinned."
He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch
Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet.
Far off a solitary trumpet blew.
Then waiting by the doors the war-horse neighed,
As at a friend's voice, and he spake again:
"Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes;
I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,
I, whose vast pity almost makes me die
To see thee, laying there thy golden head,
My pride in happier summers, at my feet.
The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law,
The doom of treason and the flaming death,
(When first I learnt thee hidden here), is past.
The pang-which while I weighed thy heart with
Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee,
Made my tears burn-is also past, in part.
And all is past, the sin is sinned, and I,
Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God
Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest.
But how to take last leave of all I loved?
O golden hair, with which I used to play,
Not knowing! O imperial-moulded form,
And beauty such as never woman wore,
Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee.
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