It was upon an April morn,
While yet the frost lay hoar,
We heard Lord James’s bugle-horn
Sound by the rocky shore.
Then down we went, a hundred knights,
All in our dark array,
And flung our armor in the ships
That rode within the bay.
We spoke not as the shore grew less,
But gazed in silence back,
...
Up the streets of Aberdeen,
By the kirk and college green,
Rode the laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.
Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at...
TELL the story to your sons
Of the gallant days of yore,
When the brig of seven guns
Fought the fleet of seven score,
From the set of sun till morn, through the long September night—
Ninety men against two thousand, and the ninety won the fight
In the harbor of Fayal the Azore.
Three...
Two little ones, grown tired of play,
Roamed by the sea, one summer day,
Watching the great waves come and go,
Prattling, as children will, you know,
Of dolls and marbles, kites and strings;
Sometimes hinting at graver things.
At last they spied within their reach
An old boat cast upon the beach;
Helter-skelter, with merry din,...
From “The Purple East”
WHAT profits it, O England, to prevail
In camp and mart and council, and bestrew
With argosies thy oceans, and renew
With tribute levied on each golden gale
Thy treasuries, if thou canst hear the wail
Of women martyred by the turbaned crew,
Whose tenderest mercy was the sword that slew,
And lift no...
Set in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?
The earth, a brittle globe of glass,
Lies in the hollow of thy hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass,
Like shadows through a twilight land,
The spears of crimson-...
ALL hail; thou noble land,
Our Fathers’ native soil!
O, stretch thy mighty hand,
Gigantic grown by toil,
O’er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore!
For thou with magic might
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phœbus travels bright
The world o’er!
The genius of our...
FIRST drink a health, this solemn night,
A health to England, every guest:
That man ’s the best cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
May Freedom’s oak for ever live
With stronger life from day to day:
That man ’s the best Conservative
Who lops the moulded branch away.
Hands...
God of our fathers, known of old,—
Lord of our far-flung battle line,—
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine,—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget,—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,—
An...
She stands, a thousand-wintered tree,
By countless morns impearled;
Her broad roots coil beneath the sea,
Her branches sweep the world;
Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed,
Clothe the remotest strand
With forests from her scatterings made,
New nations fostered in her shade,
And linking land with land.
O ye by...
