Yes, faith is a goodly anchor;
When skies are sweet as a psalm,
At the bows it lolls so stalwart,
In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm.
And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.
But, after the shipwreck, tell me...
Blue gulf all around us,
Blue sky overhead—
Muster all on the quarter,
We must bury the dead!
It is but a Danish sailor,
Rugged of front and form;
A common son of the forecastle,
Grizzled with sun and storm.
His name, and the strand he hailed from
We know, and there ’s nothing more!
But perhaps his...
“And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.”—DEUTERONOMY xxxiv. 6.
BY Nebo’s lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan’s wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave;
But no man built that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e’er;
For the angels of...
UPON St. Michael’s Isle
They laid him for awhile
That he might feel the Ocean’s full embrace,
And wedded be
To that wide sea—
The subject and the passion of his race.
As Thetis, from some lovely underground
Springing, she girds him round
With lapping sound...
[Corunna, Spain, January 16, 1809]
NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly, at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeams’ misty light,
And...
All day long the storm of battle through the startled valley swept;
All night long the stars in heaven o’er the slain sad vigils kept.
O, the ghastly upturned faces gleaming whitely through the night!
O, the heaps of mangled corses in that dim sepulchral light!
One by one the pale stars faded, and at length the morning broke;
But not one of all the...
AS, bowed by sudden storms, the rose
Sinks on the garden's breast,
Down to the grave our brother goes,
In silence there to rest.
No more with us his tuneful voice
The hymn of praise shall swell;
No more his cheerful heart rejoice
When peals the...
