On its briny deck perchance is borne Great news, that by to-morrow's morn May wake our land, and let it know That family blood, though it may flow Thousands of miles away o'er the main,

Is not perforce our natural foe,

Taking delight in its kindred's pain; Or it may tell of the hungry growl Of the jealous sea-lion; well, let him howl.

The bird that sits on our cliffs by the

sea

Is as wakeful and watchful a guardian as he;

The time will come, when, through natural laws,

The teeth will be lost from his leonine jaws;

Then the king in his lair, In the depth of his dotage, as well as despair,

With his head dropped over his powerless paws,

Will feel the hoof and hear the bray Of the smallest power he awes to-day.

In that hour, forgetting injustice uncivil,

His menacing stand, and his great exultation,

When destruction was waving her torch o'er our nation; Then we, ere he sinks to his ruinous level,

Ere his great mart becomes the sacked Rome of the sea, An embryo Nineveh yet to be, In magnanimous might may return good for evil,

And drive the foul robbers, who now are his slaves,

From the island made dear by our ancestors' graves.

Here, in the bay, lies a Union ship, Which the billow scarce causes to rise or to dip,

So grandly she looms, lying under the fort,

And so heavy the war-dog that snarls at each port.

A thousand defenders like this, huge and grim,

On the watery highway in triumph shall swim,

She believes that Love, in the roughest highway,

Would sanctify all with his delicate feet;

That the weariest road where his wings unfold

Is suddenly paved with amber and gold,

And thickly strewn through the sultriest hours

With roses, and cooled with the dew of flowers!

A beautiful faith, gentle priestess, in sooth,

To breathe at the garlanded altar of youth,

From which flows the crystalline fountain of Truth;

And you, standing so near, May see and may hear What the time-veiled sense of the eye and the ear

Of

the world-weary pilgrim might fail to make clear.

On this bowery headland an altar stands,

Carved from the granite by invisible hands,

A mantle across, Made of the delicate many-hued moss, And here, with the rainbow arching above,

Making a dome to their temple of Love;

With listening wild flowers, and with witnessing sun,

While the sudden gush of the woodland throng

Rises like a hymeneal song; And along the rocks the swift waves

Let a hallowed glory forever shine Around this consecrated shrine; Breathe you a ban on the ambient air,

To admit no wing but the singer's there;

And draw a circle around the spot, That nothing less pure than the violet,

The sweet-brier, and the forget-menot,

Shall near this sacred shrine be set; Let naught unholy be seen or heard At the altar where you have ministered.

III.

A SUMMER STORY.

My beautiful Ralph and Rosalie,

There is tumult in your leafy town; A tumult, swinging like waves of the

sea,

For the swift winds of Rumor thereon have blown,

And the spray of its startled wrath is thrown

Back to the threatening thunderwrack,

Looming to southward, heavy and black.

The very bells o'er this turbulent

ocean

Have caught the tempest's billowy motion,

Like storm-bells rocking to and fro,
Rung by the passionate waves below;
Even those in their Sabbath towers,
Only meant for prayer-time hours,
Or bridal scenes, or measured calls
To slow and solemn funerals,
With unrestrained and fiery clangor
Ring out their fierce indignant anger,
As might some priest, who long had
given

The guiding words that lead to
Heaven,

Proclaim, with his denouncing tongue,

The fiercest sentence ever flung

At the iconoclastic band;
Should he behold the fiendish frown,

And see the demon-lighted eye,
And hear the desecrating cry
Of one who strove, with lifted
hand,

To strike his dearest image down.

Speak out, wild bells, with swifter swing!

Ye patriot hearts of iron mould, Ye men, whom danger never awed; Whose courage hath the old-time ring, This is no hour to stand and hark!

The black, unnatural deed is done; The traitor, springing from the dark, Would tear the stars from yonder fold,

And mar the flag your fathers won! The braggart, courting new disgrace,

Has flung his glove into the faceThe sainted face-of Washington.

Let every tongue in anger swing

The anathematizing word abroad, Even though revenge should fiercely wing

The fiery arrows of your wrath, To stay the traitor in his path: The angel Freedom, sitting near to God,

Whose tearful eyes her anxious soul betray,

Will look into His face and plead the

sin away.

The town is full of fifes and drums; From every home a patriot comes; You can hear them shouting on every hill,

Like spring-time brooks, with resistless will,

Swelling the sea on Freedom's coast, To o'erthrow and drown the insolent

host.

The yeoman, who knows to hew and delve,

Driving the axe or the spade to its helve,

Now bears the gun that his father

bore

By the side of Scott in the "War of Twelve;"

Or the glorious sword his grandsire wore;

The flash of whose good steel still predicts

Defeat to the foe, as in "seventy-six." All ranks of life, the desk and plough, Send out their teeming legions now.

Those patriots old, when their wars were done,

And they hung on the wall the sword and gun,

Ne'er dreamed what future treasonous breath,

Breathed from the hot plains of the
South,

Out of the stolen cannon's mouth, Threat'ning Freedom with sudden death,

Should call those sacred weapons forth
From the cottage wall,
Or ancestral hall,

To fields that fester beneath the sun, In defence of Liberty and the North,The North and Liberty being one.

On every homestead, on every church, Where it shines like Heaven's apOur eagle banner is seen to perch, proving mark

A covenant over our Union ark.

My beautiful Ralph and Rosalie, There's a glorious sight for you to see;

And could I picture the vision of The wondrous pile, so high and broad, gold, Aflush with the eternal light of God, And full of His harmonies mani

s;

Its fluted form o'ertops the cloud; It covers the land between the seas While an angel, greater than prophet e'er saw, Flashes his hands along the keys, Holding the world with his symphonies,

A wonderful music, deep and loud, Filling the nations with marvelling awe.

But see, the angel recoils apace,

And thrill through the cities, and startle the farms,

Till the North is all lit with the flashing of arms.

And still, as he plays, the other recoils,

Relinquishing keys that his touching but spoils,

Till on his last octaves, with rage and affright,

He franticly strikes a wild maniac blow,

startled face,

For a fiend, with a fierce and murderous mien,

Has stolen suddenly in unseen, And, with a mingled rage and glee,

Is dashing his madness from key to key,

Making horrible discord down the bass;

And as from the jargon a maniac mutters,

May be gathered some clue to his fell disease,

Thus, from the jar of those tortured keys,

I catch the meaning he wildly ut

ters:

native night,

The realm of the king of all traitors below.

Anew the great Union organ awakes, And the grand anthem swings from the Gulf to the Lakes, Announcing the stigma that darkened our land

Is swept at the waving of Liberty's hand.

Still, still may that music go widely abroad,

Proclaiming our realm is the chosen of God.

The world is all joy, my Rosalie,
And yet one pleasure remains for

me:

triots built,

Whose aisles are strewn with Union flowers,

The glorious red, and white, and blue,

While that wonderful organ, from lofty towers,

Is pouring its jubilant notes anew, Come, kneel at the altar, and over

And ye, who in the harvest of your years

Were stricken when the sun was in mid-air,

And left the earth bedewed at noon with tears,

Ye have known all of life that is most fair,

The laugh of April, and the summer bloom.

Ye with the orange-blossoms in your hair,

Who sleep in bridal chambers of the tomb;

Or ye, who with the sickle in the hand

Have bowed amid the sheaves the manly head,

And left the toil unto a mournful band,

Ye all are numbered in yon resting land,

The blessed dead.