There bubbles the shady spring below,

With its bulrush brook where the hazels grow;

"Twas there I found the calamus-root,

And watched the minnows poise and shoot,

And heard the robin lave its wing,

But the stranger's bucket is at the spring.

O ye, who daily cross the sill,

Step lightly, for I love it still;

And when you crowd the old barn-eaves,
Then think what countless harvest-sheaves
Have passed within that scented door
To gladden eyes that are no more!
Deal kindly with these orchard-trees;
And when your children crowd their knees
Their sweetest fruit they shall impart,
As if old memories stirred their heart:
To youthful sport still leave the swing,
And in sweet reverence hold the spring.
The barn, the trees, the brook, the birds,
The meadows with their lowing herds,
The woodbine on the cottage wall—
My heart still lingers with them all.
Ye strangers on my native sill,
Step lightly, for I love it still!

A

FEARLESS shape of brave device,

Our vessel drives through mist and rain,

Between the floating fleets of ice—

The navies of the northern main.

These arctic ventures, blindly hurled
The proofs of Nature's olden force-
Like fragments of a crystal world

Long shattered from its skyey course.

These are the buccaneers that fright

The middle sea with dream of wrecks, And freeze the south winds in their flight, And chain the Gulf-stream to their decks.

At every dragon prow and helm

There stands some Viking as of yore;

Grim heroes from the boreal realm
Where ODIN rules the spectral shore.

And oft beneath the sun or moon

'Their swift and eager falchions glowWhile, like a storm-vexed wind, the rune Comes chafing through some beard of snow.

And when the far north flashes up

With fires of mingled red and gold,

They know that many a blazing cup
Is brimming to the absent bold.

Up signal there, and let us hail

Yon looming phantom as we pass ! Note all her fashion, hull, and sail, Within the compass of your glass.

See at her mast the steadfast glow

Of that one star of ODIN's throne; Up with our flag, and let us show

The Constellation on our own!

And speak her well; for she might say,

If from her heart the words could thaw,
Great news from some far frozen bay,
Or the remotest Esquimaux.

Might tell of channels yet untold,

That sweep the pole from sea to sea;
Of lands which God designs to hold
A mighty people yet to be :-

Of wonders which alone prevail
Where day and darkness dimly meet ;—
Of all which spreads the arctic sail;
Of FRANKLIN and his venturous fleet:

How, haply, at some glorious goal

His anchor holds-his sails are furled; That Fame has named him on her scroll, "COLUMBUS of the Polar World."

Or how his ploughing barks wedge on

Through splintering fields, with battered shares,

Lit only by that spectral dawn,

The mask that mocking Darkness wears ;—

Or how, o'er embers black and few,

The last of shivered masts and spars,

He sits amid his frozen crew

In council with the Norland stars.

No answer but the sullen flow

Of Ocean heaving long and vast ;—

An argosy of ice and snow,

The voiceless North swings proudly past.

THE SEA-KING.

(FROM "THE HOUSE BY THE SEA.")

A MONARCH reigned beneath the sea

On the wreck of a myriad thrones,—

The collected ruins of Tyranny,
Shattered by the hand of Destiny,
And scattered abroad with maniac glee,
Like a gibbeted pirate's bones.

Alone, supreme, he reigned apart,

On the throne of a myriad thrones,Where, sitting close to the world's red heart, Which pulsed swift heat through his ocean mart, He could hear each heavy throe and start,

As she heaved her earthquake groans.

He gazed through the shadowy deep which shields His throne of a myriad thrones,—

And saw the many variant keels

Driving over the watery fields,

Some with thunderous and flashing wheels
Linking the remotest zones.

Oft, like an eagle that swoops in air,
He saw, from his throne of thrones,
The winged anchors with eager stare
Leap midway down to the Ocean's lair—
While hanging plummets gazed in despair
At the unreached sands and stones!

Along his realm lie mountainous bulks,

The tribute to his throne of thrones,—

The merchant's and the pirate's hulks,

And where the ghost of the slaver skulks,
Counting his cargo,-then swears and sulks
Among the manacled bones!

His

navy numbers many a bark,

The pride of his throne of thrones :-
Golden by day and fiery by dark,

Each cleaves his pathway like a shark!
But his favourite barge is a dragon-ark,
The fairest ship he owns!

The voice of that princess beneath the sea
Reached to his throne of thrones ;-
Then he leaped in his barge right gallantly,
And cried, "My child, come sail with me;
We will flash to sunward far and free,
Till love for thy grief atones!"

THIS

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

ON LENDING A PUNCH BOWL.

HIS ancient silver bowl of mine,—it tells of good old times,

Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas

chimes;

They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and

true,

That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl

was new.