THERE are gold-bright suns in worlds above,
And blazing gems in worlds below,
Our world has Love and only Love,
For living warmth and jewel glow;
God's love is sunlight to the good,
And Woman's pure as diamond sheen,
And Friendship's mystic brotherhood
In twilight beauty lies between.
BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK. - Longfellow.
ON sunny slope and beechen swell
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down
The glory that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its brazen leaves.
Far upward in the mellow light
Rose the blue hills.
One cloud of white,
Around a far-uplifted cone,
In the warm blush of evening shone;
An image of the silver lakes
By which the Indian's soul awakes.
But soon a funeral hymn was heard
Where the soft breath of evening stirred
The tall, gray forest; and a band
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.
BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK.
They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows had not yet shed
Their glory on the warrior's head;
But, as the summer fruit decays,
So died he in those naked days.
A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin
Covered the warrior, and within
Its heavy folds the weapons, made
For the hard toils of war, were laid;
The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds,
And the broad belt of shells and beads.
Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death-dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.
Stripped of his proud and martial dress,
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread,
And heavy and impatient tread,
He came; and oft that eye so proud
Asked for his rider in the crowd.
They buried the dark chief; they freed
Beside the grave his battle steed;
And swift an arrow cleaved its way
To his stern heart! One piercing neigh
Arose, and, on the dead man's plain,
The rider grasps his steed again.
Is heaven a place where pearly streams
Glide over silver sand?
Like childhood's rosy, dazzling dreams
Of some far fairy land?
Is heaven a clime where diamond dews
Glitter on fadeless flowers,
And mirth and music ring aloud
From amaranthine bowers?
Ah no; not such, not such is heaven!
Surpassing far all these;
Such cannot be the guerdon given
Man's wearied soul to please.
For saints and sinners here below,
Such vain to be have proved;
And the pure spirit will despise
What'er the sense has loved.
There shall we dwell with Sire and Son,
And with the Mother-maid,
And with the Holy Spirit, one,
In glory like arrayed;
And not to one created thing
Shall one embrace be given;
But all our joy shall be in God,
For only God is heaven.
ARNOLD WINKELRIED. — Montgomery.
"MAKE way for liberty!" he cried; Made way for liberty, and died!
It must not be; this day, this hour,
Annihilates the oppressor's power!
All Switzerland is in the field,
She will not fly, she cannot yield,
She must not fall; her better fate
Here gives her an immortal date.
Few were the numbers she could boast;
But
every freeman was a host,
And felt as though himself were he
On whose sole arm hung victory.
It did depend on one indeed;
Behold him, Arnold Winkelried!
There sounds not to the trump of fame
The echo of a nobler name.
Unmarked he stood amid the throng,
In rumination deep and long,
Till you might see, with sudden grace,
The very thought come o'er his face;
And, by the motion of his form,
Anticipate the rising storm;
And, by the uplifting of his brow,
Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.
But 't was no sooner thought than done!
The field was in a moment won:-
"Make way for liberty!" he cried,
Then ran, with arms extended wide,
As if his dearest friend to clasp;
Ten spears he swept within his grasp:
"Make way for liberty!" he cried,
Their keen points met from side to side;
He bowed amongst them like a tree,
And thus made way for liberty.
Swift to the breach his comrades fly;
"Make way for liberty!" they cry,
And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
As rushed the spears through Arnold's heart;
While, instantaneous as his fall,
Rout, ruin, panic, scattered all;
An earthquake could not overthrow
A city with a surer blow
Thus Switzerland again was free;
Thus death made way for liberty!
THIS only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honor I would have,
Not from great deeds, but good alone;
The unknown are better than ill known;
Rumor can ope the grave.
Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
Not on the number, but the choice, of friends.
Books should, not business, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night.
My house a cottage more
Than palace; and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury.
My garden painted o'er
With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine field.
|