When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain
Plunging down headlong through the whirling main,
His wastes of snow are lovelier in his eye
Than all the flowery vales beneath the sky;
And dearer far than Cæsar's palace-dome,
His cavern-shelter, and his cottage-home.
O'er China's garden-fields and peopled floods,
In California's pathless world of woods;
Round Andes' heights, where winter, from his throne,
Looks down in scorn upon the summer zone;
By the gay borders of Bermuda's isles,
Where spring with everlasting verdure smiles;
On pure Madeira's vine-robed hills of health h;
In Java's swamps of pestilence and wealth;
Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackals drink,
'Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates' brink;
On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanished like a dream;
Where Greece, a specter, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonored vales;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,
Around the beauteous isle of liberty;—
Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest!
Ex. LXVII.-MEN WHO NEVER DIE.
WE dismiss them not to the chambers of forgetfulness and death. What we admired, and prized, and venerated in them, can never be forgotten. I had almost said that they are now beginning to live; to live that life of unimpaired
influence, of unclouded fame, of unmingled happiness, for which their talents and services were destined. Such men do not, can not die. To be cold and breathless; to feel not and speak not; this is not the end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on the pillars of the age, who have poured their hearts' blood into the channels of the public prosperity. Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead? Can you not still see him, not pale and prostrate, the blood of his gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek, and the fire of liberty in his eye? Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon, is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which made these men, and men like these, can not die. The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed, motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the lofty spirits that conceived, resolved, and maintained it, and which alone, to such men, "make it life to live," these can not expire;—
"These shall resist the empire of decay,
When time is o'er, and worlds have passed away;
Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie,
But that which warmed it once can never die."
Ex. LXVIII.-THE AMERICAN FLAG.
WHEN Freedom, from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dies
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white,
With streakings of the morning light;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.
Majestic monarch of the cloud,
Who rear'st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumping loud,
And see the lightning lances driven,
When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven,—
Child of the sun! to thee 'tis given
To guard the banner of the free;
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!
Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high.
When speaks the signal trumpet tone,
And the long line comes gleaming on,―
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,-
Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn;
And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance.
And, when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
And gory sabers rise and fall
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall,
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall fall beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.
Flag of the seas! on ocean's wave
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave.
When Death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back,
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee;
And smile to see thy splendors fly,
In triumph, o'er his closing eye.
Flag of the free heart's hope and home!
By angel hands to valor given!
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
For ever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?
Ex. LXIX.—THE AMERICAN EAGLE.
C. W. THOMPSON.
BIRD of the heavens! whose matchless eye
Alone can front the blaze of day,
And, wandering through the radiant sky,
Ne'er from the sunlight turns away;
Whose ample wing was made to rise
Majestic o'er the loftiest peak,
On whose chill tops the winter skies,
Around thy nest, in tempests, speak,-
What ranger of the winds can dare,
Proud mountain king! with thee compare;
Or lift his gaudier plumes on high
Before thy native majesty,
When thou hast ta'en thy seat alone
Upon thy cloud-encircled throne?
Bird of the cliffs! thy noble form
Might well be thought almost divine;
Born for the thunder and the storm,
The mountain and the rock are thine;
And there, where never foot has been,
Thy eyrie is sublimely hung,
Where lowering skies their wrath begin,
And loudest lullabies are sung
By the fierce spirit of the blast,
When, his snow-mantle o'er him cast,
He sweeps across the mountain top,
With a dark fury naught can stop,
And wings his wild, unearthly way
Far through the clouded realms of day.
Bird of the sun! to thee,-to thee
The earliest tints of dawn are known,
And 'tis thy proud delight to see
The monarch mount his gorgeous throne, Throwing the crimson drapery by,
That half impedes his glorious way;
And mounting up the radiant sky,
E'en what he is, the king of day!
Before the regent of the skies
Men shrink, and vail their dazzled eyes;
But thou, in regal majesty,
Hast kingly rank as well as he;
And with a steady, dauntless gaze
Thou meet'st the splendor of his blaze.
Bird of Columbia! well art thou
An emblem of our native land;
With unblenched front and noble brow,
Among the nations doomed to stand;
Proud, like her mighty mountain woods;-
Like her own rivers, wandering free;
And sending forth from hills and floods
The joyous shout of liberty!
Like thee, majestic bird! like thee,
She stands in unbought majesty,
With spreading wing, untired and strong,
That dares a soaring far and long,
That mounts aloft, nor looks below,
And will not quail though tempests blow.
The admiration of the earth,
In grand simplicity she stands; Like thee, the storms beheld her birth, And she was nursed by rugged hands; But, past the fierce and furious war, Her rising fame new glory brings, For kings and nobles come from far To seek the shelter of her wings. And like thee, rider of the cloud, She mounts the heavens, serene and proud, Great in a pure and noble fame, Great in her spotless champion's name, And destined in her day to be
Mighty as Rome,-more nobly free.
|