And it hung, like a pall, with a sable hue,
The heaving waters o'er,
While the lightning glared the darkness through, And I heard the thunder roar!
I floated on:-the storm came fast,
The billows leaped in the furious blast,
And rain, and hail,
Athwart the gale,
Shot from the flaming skies,
While hideous shapes, among the waves,
Like spectres waked from watery graves,
Around me seemed to rise!
Weary and weak, I floated on,
'Mid the tempest's shriek, and the lightning's flash, 'Mid the rushing waves, and the thunder's crash!My vessel o'erwhelmed, and my paddle gone,
I clang to the wreck, and I floated on!
Fearless, I rode the torrent o'er,
Regardless of its deafening roar,
While boldly on my brave bark sped,
Leaping the rocks which lined its bed,
Borne on the billows, till at last
I floated below, and the flood was past!
Past! But, alas! 'twas the river no more,
With its bright blue waves and sylvan shore,
With its broad green banks and leafy bowers,
Its warbling birds and its fragrant flowers!—
'Twas the bright, blue, beautiful river no more,
But a gloomy gulf, with a desolate shore,
And barren banks, which faded away
In a dreary mist that over them lay;-
And wearily now I labored on,
For my spirit was sad, and my strength was gone!
Then backward I gazed,
With enraptured surprise,
Where the sinking sun blazed,
In the bright western skies, —
Where the river still rolled,
Stained with crimson and gold,
While the mountains and hill-tops were bathed in its dyes!
And I turned my light boat, firmly grasping my oar,
And resolved to remount to the river once more,-
For I felt that the river alone could restore
The hopes I had lost 'mid the cataract's roar !
But I struggled in vain up the foaming ascent,
As the whirl of the wild waves my feeble oar bent,
For the stream, rushing on with impetuous flow,
Still cast my frail skiff to the eddies below:-
Then, aweary and worn, as I stood in my bark,
I saw the sun sink, and the waters grow dark;—
But, afar from the billows on which I was tost,
My heart wandered back to the joys it had lost,-
To the meadow, the woodland, the brook, and the bowers,
To the glittering l'elet, the birds, and the flowers,—
And lamenting the scenes which could meet me no more,
I fell down and wept by that desolate shore!
Long years have sullenly worn away,
Since once, at the close of a sweet spring day,
A gentle child was seen to guide
A fragile skiff o'er that torrent's tide.
From rock to rock, it tremblingly fell,
But he managed his little vessel well,
And, borne on the billows' furious flow,
Came safely down to the gulf below;-
Then, turning his boat, he strove to regain
The river above, but he strove in vain,
And, aweary, he wept in his shattered bark,
As the night came on, and the gulf grew dark!
Long years have sullenly worn away;-
But ever, as on that sweet spring day,
You may see that frail skiff floating o'er
The billows which break on the desolate shore;-
But a gray old man, with a furrowed brow
And a trembling hand, guides the vessel now;
And toilsomely still he strives to regain
The river above, but he strives in vain;
And his straining eyes are dimmed with tears,
As he pines for the bliss of his early years, -
When, over the river of childhood's day,
His light skiff gallantly glided away,
And, aweary, he weeps in his shattered bark,
As the night comes on, and the gulf grows dark.
-FRANCIS DEHAES JANVIER.
NEW ENGLAND'S CHEVY CHASE.
'Twas the dead of the night. By the pine-knot's red light Brooks lay, half asleep, when he heard the alarm-
Only this, and no more, from a voice at the door:
"The Red Coats are out and have passed Phipps's farm!"
Brooks was booted and spurred; he said never a word;
Took his horn from its peg, and his gun from the rack;
To the cold midnight air he led out his white mare,
Strapped the girths and the bridle and sprang to her back.
Up the North Country Road at her full pace she strode,
Till Brooks reined her up at John Tarbell's to say:
"We have got the alarm-they have left Phipps's farm;
You rouse the East Precinct and I'll go this way."
John called his hired man, and they harnessed the span;
They roused Abram Garfield, and Garfield called me.
Turn out right away, let no minute-man stay-
The Red Coats have landed at Phipps's!" says he.
By the Powder-House Green seven others fell in;
At Nahum's the Men from the Saw-Mill came down;
So that when Jabez Bland gave the word of command,
And said, “Forward, March!" there march forward The Town.
Parson Wilderspin stood by the side of the road,
And he took off his hat, and he said, "Let us pray!
O Lord, God of Might, let Thine Angels of Light
Lead Thy Children to-night to the Glories of Day!
And let Thy Stars fight all the Foes of the Right,
As the Stars fought of old against Sisera."
And from heaven's high Arch those Stars blessed our March,
Till the last of them faded in twilight away,
And with Morning's bright beam, by the bank of the stream, Half the Country marched in, and we heard Davis say: "On the King's own Highway I may travel all day,
And no man hath warrant to stop me," says he,
"I've no man that's afraid, and I'll march at their head." Then he turned to the boys-" Forward, March! Follow me."
And we marched as he said, and the Fifer, he played
White Cockade," and he played it right well.
We saw Davis fall dead, but no man was afraid—
That Bridge we'd have had, though a Thousand Men fell.
This opened the Play, and it lasted all Day,
We made Concord too hot for the Red Coats to stay;
Down the Lexington Way we stormed-Black, White, and Gray: We were first at the Feast, and were last in the Fray.
They would turn in dismay, as Red Wolves turn at bay.
They leveled, they fired, they charged up the Road:
Cephas Willard fell dead; he was shot in the head
As he knelt by Aunt Prudence's well-sweep to load.
John Danforth was hit just in Lexington street,
John Bridge, at that lane where you cross Beaver Falls;
And Winch and the Snows just above John Munroe's—
Swept away by one swoop of the big cannon balls.
I took Bridge on my knee, but he said: "Don't mind me:
Fill your horn from mine-let me lie where I be.
Our Fathers," says he, "that their Sons might be free,
Left their King on his Throne and came over the Sea;
And that man is a Knave or a Fool who, to save
His life, for a Minute would live like a Slave."
Well! all would not do. There were men good as new,-
From Rumford, from Sangus, from towns far away,-
Who filled up quick and well for each soldier that fell,
And we drove them, and drove them, and drove them all Day. We knew, every one, it was War that begun
When that morning's marching was only half-done.
In the hazy twilight at the coming of Night,
I crowded three buck-shot and one bullet down,
T was my last charge of lead, and I aimed her and said:
Good luck to you, Lobsters, in old Boston Town."
In a Larn at Milk Row, Ephraim Bates and Thoreau,
And Baker and Abram and I made a bed;
We had mighty sore feet, and we'd nothing to eat,
But we'd driven the Red Coats, and Amos, he said:
It's the first time," says he, that it's happened to me
To march to the sea by this road where we've come;
But confound this whole day but we'd all of us say,
We'd rather have spent it this way than to home."
The hunt had begun with the dawn of the sun,
And night saw the Wolf driven back to his Den.
And never since then, in the memory of Men,
Has the old Bay State seen such a hunting again.
-EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
THE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,-
Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
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