[1876]
our fathers’ God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and Thee,
To thank Thee for the era done,
And trust Thee for the opening one.
Here, where of old, by Thy design,
The fathers spake that word of Thine
Whose echo is the glad refrain...
The Warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire,
And sued the haughty king to free his long-imprisoned sire;
“I bring thee here my fortress keys, I bring my captive train,
I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord!—oh, break my father’s chain!”
“Rise, rise! even now thy father comes, a ransomed man this day;
Mount thy good horse, and thou...
“The dead hand clasped a letter.”
—SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.
HERE in this leafy place,
Quiet he lies,
Cold, with his sightless face
Turned to the skies;
’T is but another dead;—
All you can say is said.
Carry his body hence,—
Kings must have slaves;
Kings climb to eminence
Over men’s graves....
Early one winter morn, in such a village as this,
Snow-whitened everywhere except the middle road
Ice-roughed by track of sledge, there worked by his abode
Ivàn Ivànovitch, the carpenter, employed
On a huge shipmast trunk; his axe now trimmed and toyed
With branch and twig, and now some chop athwart the bole
Changed bole to billets, bared at once...
Low spake the knight to the peasant-girl:
“I tell thee sooth, I am belted earl;
Fly with me from this garden small,
And thou shalt sit in my castle’s hall;
“Thou shalt have pomp, and wealth, and pleasure,
Joys beyond thy fancy’s measure;
Here with my sword and horse I stand,
To bear thee away to my distant land.
“Take, thou...
Grief hath been known to turn the young head gray,—
To silver over in a single day
The bright locks of the beautiful, their prime
Scarcely o’erpast; as in the fearful time
Of Gallia’s madness, that discrownèd head
Serene, that on the accursèd altar bled
Miscalled of Liberty. O martyred Queen!
What must the sufferings of that night have...
’t Was in the prime of summer time,
An evening calm and cool,
And four-and-twenty happy boys
Came bounding out of school;
There were some that ran, and some that leapt
Like troutlets in a pool.
Away they sped with gamesome minds
And souls untouched by sin;
To a level mead they came, and there
They drave the...
Through air made heavy with vapors murk,
O’er slack and cinders in heaps and holes,
The engine-driver came to his work,
Burly and bluff as a bag of coals;
With a thick gold chain where he bulged the most,
And a beard like a brush, and a face like a toast,
And a hat half-eaten by fire and frost;
And a diamond pin in the folded dirt...
[Supposed to be written in India, while the plague was raging, and playing havoc among the British residents and troops stationed there.]
WE meet ’neath the sounding rafter,
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout to our peals of laughter,
It seems that the dead are there.
But stand to your glasses, steady!
We drink to our comrades...
Refugio Mine, Northern Mexico
DRUNK and senseless in his place,
Prone and sprawling on his face,
More like brute than any man
Alive or dead,—
By his great pump out of gear,
Lay the peon engineer,
Waking only just to hear,
Overhead,
Angry tones that called his name,
Oaths and cries of bitter...
