Joy was upon that dark man's face,

And thus, with laughing eye, spake he― "Loose ye the lord of °Zaara's waste, And let my arms be free;

'He has a martial heart,' thou sayst, But oh! who will not be

A hero, when he fights for life,

And home, and country,-babes and wife.

"And thus I for the strife prepâre;
The Thracian °falchion to me bring;
But ask the imperial leave to spare
The shield-a useless thing.
Were I a Samnite's rage to dare,
Then o'er me should I fling
The broad orb; but to lion's wrath
The shield were but a sword of lath."

And he has bared his shining blade,

And springs he on the shaggy foe;
Dreadful the strife, but briefly played―
The desert king lies low,

His long and loud death-howl is made,
And there must end the show.

And when the multitude were calm,
The favorite freedman took the palm.

"Kneel down, Rome's emperor beside:"

He knelt, that dark man ;-o'er his brow Was thrown a wreath in crimson dyed, And fair words gild it now;

"Thou'rt the bravest youth that ever tried To lay a lion low;

And from our presence forth thou go'st
To lead the Dacians of our host."

Then flushed his cheek, but not with pride,
And grieved and gloomily spoke he:
"My cabin stands where blithely glide
Proud Danube's waters to the sea;
I have a young and blooming bride,
And I have children three;
No Roman wealth nor rank can give
Such joy, as in their arms to live.

"My wife sits at the cabin door,

With throbbing heart and swollen eyes;

While tears her cheek are coursing o'er,
She speaks of sundered ties.
She bids my tender babes deplore
The death their father dies;
She tells these jewels of my home
I bleed to please the rout of Rome.

"I cannot let those cherubs stray
Without their sire's protecting care;
And I would chase the griefs away
Which cloud my wedded fair."
The monarch spoke, the guards obey,
And gates unclosed are;

He's gone-no golden bribes divide

The Dacian from his babes and bride.

J. A. JONES.

CLXXI. SPLENDORS OF THE SEA.

It is a day to make one in love with life. The remains of the long storm, before which we have been driven for a week, lie in white, turreted masses around the horizon, the sky overhead is spotlessly blue, the sun is warm, the wind steady and fresh, but soft as a child's breath, and the sea-I must sketch to you more elaborately. We are in the Gulf Stream. The water here, as you know, even to the cold banks of Newfoundland, is always blood warm, and the temperature of the air mild at all seasons, and just now, like a south wind on land in June. Hundreds of sea birds are sailing around us—the spongy sea weeds washed from the West Indian rocks, a thousand miles away in the southern latitudes, float by in large masses-the sailors, barefoot and bareheaded, are scattered over the rigging, doing "fairweather work"-and just in the edge of the horizon, hidden by every swell, stand two vessels with all sail spread, making, with the first fair wind they have had in many days, for America.

This is the first day that I have been able to be long enough on deck to study the sea. I came on deck this morning and looked around, and for an hour or two I could scârce realize that it was not a dream. Much as I had watched the sea from our bold promontory at Nahant, and well as I thought I knew its character in storms and calms, the scene which was before me surprised and bewildered me utterly. At the first glance, we were just in the gorge of the sea; and looking over the leeward quarter I saw, stretching up from tho keel, what I can only describe as a hill of dazzling blue, thirty or

forty feet in real altitude, but sloped so far away that the white crest seemed to me a cloud, and the space between, a sky of the most wonderful beauty and brightness. A moment more, and the crest burst over with a splendid volume of foam; the sun struck through the thinner part of the swell in a line of vivid emerald, and the whole mass swept under us, the brig rising and riding on the summit with the buoyancy and grace of a bird.

The single view of the ocean which I got at that moment will be⚫ impressed upon my mind for ever. Nothing that I ever saw on land at all compares with it for splendor. No sunset, no lake scene of hill and water, no fall, not even Niagara, no glen or mountain gap, ever approached it. They had had no time to "knock down," as the sailors phrase it, and it was a storm at sea without the hurricane and rain. I looked off to the horizon, and the long majestic swells were heaving into the sky upon its distant limit, and between it and my eye lay a radius of twelve miles, an immense plain flashing with green and blue and white, and changing place and color so rapidly as to be almost painful to the sight. I stood holding by the °tafferel an hour, gazing on it with a childish delight and wonder. The spray had broken over me repeatedly, and as we shipped half a sea at the scuppers at every roll, I was standing half the time up to the knees in water; but the warm wind on my forehead, after a week's confinement to my berth, and the excessive beauty lavished upon my sight, were so delicious, that I forgot all, and it was only in compliance with the captain's repeated suggestion that I changed my position.

I mounted the quarter-deck, and pulling off my shoes, like a schoolboy, sat over the leeward rails, and, with my feet dipping into the warm sea at every lurch, gazed at the glorious show for hours. I do not hesitate to say that the formation, progress, and final burst of a sea wave, in a bright sun, are the most gorgeously beautiful sight under heaven. I must describe it like a jeweler to you, or I can never convey my impressions.

First of all, a quarter of a mile away to the windward, your eye is caught by an uncommonly high wave, rushing right upon your track, and heaping up slowly and constantly as it comes, as if some huge animal were ploughing his path steadily and powerfully beneath the surface. Its ground," as a painter would say, is of a deep indigo, clear and smooth as enamel, its front curved inward, like a shell, and turned over at the summit with a crest of foam, flashing and changing perpetually in the sunshine, like the sudden outburst of a million of "unsunned diamonds ;" and right through its bosom, as the sea falls off, or the angle of refraction changes, there runs a shifting band of the most vivid green, that you would take to have been the "cestus of Venus as she rose from the sea, it is so supernaturally translucent and beautiful. As it nears you, it looks in shape like the prow of

Cleopatra's barge, as they paint it in the old pictures; but its colors, and the grace and majesty of its march, and its murmur (like the low tones of an organ, deep and full, and, to my ear, ten times as articulate and solemn), almost startle you into the belief that it is a sentient being, risen glorious and breathing from the ocean.

As it reaches the ship, she rises gradually, for there is apparently an underwave driven before it, which prepares her for its power; and as it touches the quarter, the whole magnificent wall breaks down beneath you with a deafening surge, and a volume of foam issues from its bosom, green and blue and white, as if it had been a mighty casket in which the whole wealth of the sca, chrysoprase, and emerald, and brilliant spars, had been heaped and lavished at a throw. This is the "tenth wave," and, for four or five minutes, the sea will be smooth about you, and the sparkling and dying foam falls into the wake, and may be seen, like a white path, stretching away over the swells behind, till you are tired of gazing at it. Then comes another from the same direction, and with the same shape and motion, and so on till the sun sets, or your eyes are blinded and your brain giddy with splendor.

I am sure this language will seem exaggerated to you, but, it is a mere skeleton, a goldsmith's inventory, of the reality. I long ago learned that first lesson of a man of the world, "to be astonished at nothing," but the sea has overreached my philosophy-quite. I am changed to a mere child in my wonder. Be assured no view of the ocean from land can give you a shadow of an idea of it. Within even the outermost Capes, the swell is broken, and the color of the water in soundings is essentially different-more dull and earthly. Go to the mineral cabinets of Cambridge or New Haven, and look at the fluor spars, and the turquoises, and the clear specimens of chrysoprase, and quartz, and diamond, and imagine them all polished and clear, and flung at your feet by millions in a noonday sun, and it may help your conceptions of the sea after a storm. N. P. WILLIS.

CLXXII.-CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR.

WHO is the happy warrior? Who is he,
That every man in arms should wish to be?
It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright:

Who, with a natural instinct to discern

What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn,
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care:
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;

In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest tower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
By objects which might force the soul to abate
His feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is °placable, because occasions rise

So often that demand such sacrifice;

More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress,
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
"Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends.
Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil, for a guard against whose ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest;
He fixes good on good alone, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows:
Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honorable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;

Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state;

Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all:

Whose powers shed round him in the common strife, Or mild concerns of ordinary life,

A constant influence, a peculiar grace;

But who, if he be called upon to face

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined

Great issues, good or bad, for human kind,