From warm Carolinian valleys, And the Muscadel Nor the red Mustang, For richest and best Is the wine of the West, Fills all the room And as hollow trees Are the haunts of bees, For ever going and coming; So this crystal hive Is all alive With a swarming and buzzing and humming. Very good in its way Is the Verzenay, Or the Sillery soft and creamy; But Catawba wine Has a taste more divine, There grows no vine Nor on island or cape, That bears such a grape As grows by the Beautiful River. SANTA FILOMENA. Drugged is their juice When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic, With the fever pains, That have driven the Old World frantic. To the sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer; Is such Borgia wine, Or at best but a Devil's Elixir. While pure as a spring Is the wine I sing, And to praise it, one needs but name it; Has need of no sign, And this Song of the Vine, The winds and the birds shall deliver In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River. SANTA FILOMENA. WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought, The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls, 389 And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares. Honor to those whose words or deeds Raise us from what is low! Thus thought I, as by night I read The wounded from the battle-plain, Lo! in that house of misery Pass through the glimmering gloom, And slow, as in a dream of bliss, As if a door in heaven should be On England's annals, through the long A Lady with a Lamp shall stand THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. 391 A noble type of good, Nor even shall be wanting here THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS. OTHERE, the old sea-captain, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Which he held in his brown right hand. His figure was tall and stately, Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the color of oak And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Into the Arctic seas. 392 THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. "So far I live to the northward, To the east are wild mountain-chains, "So far I live to the northward, More than a month would you sail. "I own six hundred reindeer, “I ploughed the land with horses, With their sagas of the seas; "Of Iceland and of Greenland, For thinking of those seas. "To the northward stretched the desert, And three days sailed due north, "To the west of me was the ocean, |