In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwreck'd brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

EXTREME UNCTION.

Go! leave me, Priest; my soul would be
Alone with the consoler Death;

Far sadder eyes than thine will see

This crumbling clay yield up its breath; These shrivelled hands have deeper stains Than holy oil can cleanse away,—

Hands that have plucked the world's coarse gains As erst they plucked the flowers of May.

Call, if thou canst, to those gray eyes

Some faith from youth's traditions wrung;
This fruitless husk which dustward dries
Has been a heart once, has been young;
On this bowed head the awful Past

Once laid its consecrating hands;
The Future in its purpose vast

Paused, waiting my supreme commands.

But look! whose shadows block the door?
Who are those two who stand aloof?
See! on my hands this freshening gore
Writes o'er again its crimson proof!
My looked-for death-bed guests are met,
There my dead Youth doth wring its hands,
And there, with eyes that goad me yet,
The ghost of my Ideal stands !

God bends from out the deep and says,
"I gave thee the great gift of life;

Wast thou not called in many ways?

Are not my earth and heaven at strife? I gave thee of my seed to sow,

Bringest thou me my hundred-fold?" Can I look up with face aglow,

And answer, "Father, here is gold?"

I have been innocent; God knows
When first this wasted life began
Not grape with grape more kindly grows
Than I with every brother man ;
Now here I gasp; what lose my kind,
When this fast-ebbing breath shall part ?
What bands of love and service bind
This being to the world's sad heart?

Christ still was wandering o'er the earth
Without a place to lay his head;
He found free welcome at my hearth,

He shared my cup and broke my bread;
Now, when I hear those steps sublime,
That bring the other world to this,
My snake-turned nature, sunk in slime,
Starts sideway with defiant hiss.

Upon the hour when I was born,

God said, "Another man shall be," And the great Maker did not scorn Out of himself to fashion me;

He sunned me with his ripening looks,

And Heaven's rich instincts in me grew,

As effortless as woodland nooks

Send violets up and paint them blue.

Yes, I who now, with angry tears,

Am exiled back to brutish clod,

Have borne unquenched for four-score years
A spark of the eternal God;

And to what end? How yield I back
The trust for such high uses given?
Heaven's light hath but revealed a track
Whereby to crawl away from heaven.

Men think it is an awful sight

To see a soul just set adrift
On that drear voyage from whose night
The ominous shadows never lift;
But 'tis more awful to behold

A helpless infant newly born,
Whose little hands unconscious hold
The keys of darkness and of morn.

Mine held them once; I flung away
Those keys that might have open set
The golden sluices of the day,

But clutch the keys of darkness yet;
I hear the reapers singing go

Into God's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below

Grope shuddering at the gates of night.

O glorious Youth, that once was mine!
O high ideal! all in vain

Ye enter at this ruined shrine

Whence worship ne'er shall rise again; The bat and owl inhabit here,

The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near,

The image of the God is gone.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

ANNABEL LEE.

IT was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived, whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love, and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love that was more than love,

I and my Annabel Lee

With a love that the wingéd seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;