closing the sashes, and making all secure. Then the electric prattled overhead for a moment, and wound up with a roar like the explosion of a stone quarry. Then a big drop fell and rolled itself up in a globule of dust in the path; then anotheranother-another. Then I bethought me of my new straw hat, and retreated into the house, and then-it rained! Reader, did you ever see rain in the country? I hope you have; my pen is impotent; I cannot describe it. The storm hushed by degrees, and went off amid saffron flushes, and a glitter of hail. The western sky parted its ashy curtains, and the rugged Palisades lay warm and beautiful under the evening sun. Now the sun sinks amid melted topaz and rubies; and above it, on one side, stretching aloft from the rocky precipices high up in the azure, is a crescent of crimson and golden fragments of clouds! Once more in the sunlight, and so we will throw open all the windows and let in the cool air. The splendor falls on castle walls, Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying! O'er hill and dale, o'er waste and wood, For mark, love, mark! Chirrup! chirrup! he upward flies, They lack all heart, who cannot feel Where brightest wild-flowers choose to be, No witness there, And o'er us, hark! High in the air Chirrups the lark: Chirrup! chirrup! away soars he, A FALLAD OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.-GEORGE H. BOKER. "The ice was here, the ice was there, O, whither sail you, Sir John Franklin? To know if between the land and the pole I charge you back, Sir John Franklin, For between the land and the frozen pole But lightly laughed the stout Sir John, Half England is wrong, if he is right; O, whither sail you, brave Englishman? Between your land and the polar star Come down, if you would journey there, And change your cloth for fur clothing, But lightly laughed the stout Sir John, All through the long, long polar day, And wherever the sail of Sir John was blown, Gave way with many a hollow groan, And with many a surly roar, But it murmured and threatened on every side And closed where he sailed before. Ho! see ye not, my merry men, Sir John, Sir John, 't is bitter cold, Bright summer goes, dark winter comes- But long e'er summer's sun goes down, The dripping icebergs dipped and rose, The ships were staid, the yards were manned, The summer's gone, the winter's come, We sail not on yonder sea: Why sail we not, Sir John Franklin? A silent man was he. The summer goes, the winter comes- I ween, we cannot rule the ways, The cruel ice came floating on, And closed beneath the lee, Till the thickening waters dashed no more; 'T was ice around, behind, beforeMy God! there is no sea! What think you of the whaler now? A sled were better than a ship, Down sank the baleful crimson sun, The snow came down, storm breeding storm, And on the decks was laid: Till the weary sailor, sick at heart, Sir John, the night is black and long, The hissing wind is bleak, The hard, green ice is strong as death: The night is neither bright nor short, The ice is not so strong as hope- What hope can scale this icy wall, The summer went, the winter came- But summer will melt the ice again, The winter went, the summer went, But the hard green ice was strong as death, Hark! heard ye not the noise of guns? 'Tis some uneasy iceberg's roar, As he turns in the frozen min. Hurrah! hurrah! the Esquimaux God give them grace for their charity! Sir John, where are the English fields, Be still, be still, my brave sailors! You shall see the fields again, And smell the scent of the opening flowers, The grass and the waving grain. Oh! when shall I see my orphan child? Oh! when shall I see my old mother, Be still, be still, my brave sailors! Ah! bitter, bitter grows the cold, Oh! think you, good Sir John Franklin, 'Twas cruel to send us here to starve, 'T was cruel, Sir John, to send us here, To starve and freeze on this lonely sea: Oh! whether we starve to death alone, We have done what man has never done- We passed the Northern Sea! |