ON BOARD THE '76.

WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.

NOVEMBER 3, 1864.

OUR ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, Her rudder gone, her main-mast o'er the side;

Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free

Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide :

Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn,

We lay, awaiting morn.

Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair;

And she that bore the promise of the world

Within her sides, now hopeless, helm. less, bare,

At random o'er the wildering waters hurled;

The reek of battle drifting slow alee
Not sullener than we.

Morn came at last to peer into our

woe,

When lo, a sail! Now surely help was nigh;

The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; but no,

Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by

And hails us:-"Gains the leak! Ay, so we thought!

Sink, then, with curses fraught!"

I leaned against my gun still angryhot,

And my lids tingled with the tears held back;

This scorn methought was crueller than shot:

The manly death-grip in the battlewrack, Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more ⚫ friendly far

Than such fear-smothered war.

And lengthen out our dates With that clear fame whose memory sings

In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates :

Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!

Not such the trumpet-call

Of thy diviner mood,
That could thy sons entice

From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest

Of those half-virtues which the world calls best,

Into War's tumult rude :
But rather far that stern device

The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood

In the dim, unventured wood, The VERITAS that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth

Amid the dusk of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.

Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her;

But these, our brothers, fought for her,

At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness: Their higher instinct knew Those love her best who to themselves are true,

And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;

They followed her and found her Where all may hope to find, Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,

But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.

Where faith made whole with deed
Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed,

They saw her plumed and mailed, With sweet stern face unveiled, And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.

IV.

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides

Into the silent hollow of the past;

What is there that abides

To make the next age better for the last?

Is earth too poor to give us Something to live for here that shall outlive us?

Some more substantial boon

Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?

The little that we see

From doubt is never free ;
The little that we do

Is but half-nobly true;

With our laborious hiving

What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,

Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss,

Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,

After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires,

Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,

Are tossed pell-mell together in the