Dropping his cross-wrought mantle,
"Wear this," the Angel said;
Take thou, O Freedom's priest, its sign-
The white, the blue, and red."
Then rose up John de Matha
In the strength the Lord Christ gave, And begged through all the land of France The ransom of the slave.
The gates of tower and castle
Before him open flew,
The drawbridge at his coming fell,
The door-bolt backward drew.
For all men owned his errand,
And paid his righteous tax;
And the hearts of lord and peasant
Were in his hands as wax.
At last, outbound from Tunis,
His bark her anchor weighed,
Freighted with seven score Christian souls
Whose ransom he had paid.
But, torn by Paynim hatred,
Her saiis in tatters hung;
And on the wild waves rudderless,
A shattered hulk she swung.
"God save us !" cried the captain,
"For naught can man avail:
O, woe betide the ship that lacks
Her rudder and her sail!
"Behind us are the Moormen ;
At sea we sink or strand:
There's death upon the water,
There's death upon the land !"
Then up spake John de Matha:
"God's errands never fail!
Take thou the mantle which I wear,
And make of it a sail."
They raised the cross-wrought mantle,
The blue, the white, the red;
And straight before the wind off-shore
The ship of Freedom sped.
"God help us!” cried the seamen,
"For vain is mortal skill;
The good ship on a stormy sea
Is drifting at its will.”
Then up spake John de Matha:
My mariners, never fear!
The Lord whose breath has filled her sail
May well our vessel steer!"
So on through storm and darkness
They drove for weary hours;
And lo! the third gray morning shone
On Ostia's friendly towers.
And on the walls the watchers
The ship of mercy knew—
They knew far off its holy cross,
The red, the white, the blue.
And the bells in all the steeples
Rang out in glad accord,
To welcome home to Christian soil
The ransomed of the Lord.
So runs the ancient legend
By bard and painter told;
And lo! the cycle rounds again,
The new is as the old!
With rudder foully broken,
And sails by traitors torn,
Our country on a midnight sea
Is waiting for the morn.
Before her, nameless terror;
Behind, the pirate foe;
The clouds are black above her,
The sea is white below.
The hope of all who suffer,
The dread of all who wrong,
She drifts in darkness and in storm,
How long, O Lord! how long?
But courage, O my mariners!
Ye shall not suffer wreck,
While up to God the freedman's prayers
Are rising from your deck.
Is not your sail the banner
Which God hath blest anew,
The mantle that de Matha wore,
The red, the white, the blue?
Its hues are all of heaven-
The red of sunset's dye,
The whiteness of the moonlit cloud,
The blue of morning's sky.
Wait cheerily, then, O mariners,
For daylight and for land;
The breath of God is on your sail,
Your rudder in His hand.
Sail on, sail on, deep freighted
With blessings and with hopes ;
The saints of old with shadowy hands
Are pulling at your ropes.
Behind ye, holy martyrs
Uplift the palm and crown ; Before ye, unborn ages send
Their benedictions down.
Take heart from John de Matha !-
God's errands never fail!
Sweep on through storm and darkness,
The thunder and the hail !
Sail on! The morning cometh,
The port ye yet shall win;
And all the bells of God shall ring
The good ship bravely in !
A PSALM OF LIFE.-H. W. Longfellow
TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!”
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem,
Life is real life is earnest !
And the grave is not its goal; "Dust thou art, to dust returnest," Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow,
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating,
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ↳
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act-act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead.
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
THE BELL OF THE "ATLANTIC."—Mrs. Sigourney
Toll, toll, toll !
Thou bell by billows swung,
And, night and day, thy warning words
Repeat with mournful tongue!
Toll for the queenly boat,
Wrecked on yon rocky-shore!
Sea-weed is in her palace halls-
She rides the surge no more.
Toll for the master bold,
The high-souled and the brave,
Who ruled her like a thing of life
Amid the crested wave!
Toll for the hardy crew,
Sons of the storm and blast,
Who long the tyrant ocean dared;
But it vanquished them at last.
Toll for the man of God,
Whose hallowed voice of prayer
Rose calm above the stifled groan
Of that intense despair!
How precious were those tones,
On that sad verge of life,
Amid the fierce and freezing storm,
And the mountain billows' strife!
Toll for the lover, lost
To the summoned bridal train
Bright glows a picture on his breast,
Beneath th' unfathomed main.
One from her casement gazeth
Long o'er the misty sea:
IIe cometh not, pale maiden-
His heart is cold to thee!
Toll for the absent sire,
Who to his home drew near,
To bless a glad, expecting group-
Fond wife, and children dear!
They heap the blazing hearth,
The festal board is spread,
But a fearful guest is at the gate;-
Room for the sheeted dead!
Toll for the loved and fair,
The whelmed beneath the tideThe broken harps around whose strings The dull sea-monsters glide!
Mother and nursling sweet,
Reft from the household throng; There's bitter weeping in the nest Where breathed their soul of song.
Toll for the hearts that bleed
'Neath misery's furrowing trace;
Toll for the hapless orphan left,
The last of all his race!
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