When man provoked his mortal doom, When blossoms sighed their last perfume, One sucker crept beneath the gate, And far o'er many a distant zone Yes, by our own unstoried stream The pink-white apple-blossoms burst That saw the young Euphrates gleam, That Gihon's circling waters nursed. For us the ambrosial pear displays And here, where beauty's cheek of flame - What though in some unmoistened vale The summer leaf grow brown and sere, Say, shall our star of promise fail That circles half the rolling sphere. From beaches salt with bitter spray, To rocks that shade the stormless main ? If by our slender-threaded streams The blade and leaf and blossom die, See, with her swelling bosom bare, We saw the August sun descend, Day after day, with blood-red stain, And the blue mountains dimly blend With smoke-wreaths from the burning plain; Beneath the hot Sirocco's wings We sat and told the withering hours, Till Heaven unsealed its hoarded springs, And bade them leap in flashing showers. Yet in our Ishmael's thirst we knew The mercy of the Sovereign hand Would pour the fountain's quickening dew No flaming swords of wrath surround God keep the tempter from its gate! God shield the children, lest they fall A SENTIMENT. TRIPLE health to Friendship, Science, From heads and hands that own a com- Each in its turn the others' willing slave, — Friendship's blind service, in the hour of need, Wipes the pale face - and lets the victim bleed. Science must stop to reason and explain; ART claps his finger on the streaming vein. But Art's brief memory fails the hand at last; Then SCIENCE lifts the flambeau of the past. When both their equal impotence deplore,— When Learning sighs, and Skill can do no more, — The tear of FRIENDSHIP pours its heavenly balm, And soothes the pang no anodyne may calm! May 1, 1855. SEMICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 287. SEMICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, NEW YORK, DEC. 22, 1855. EW England, we love thee; no time can erase From the hearts of thy children the smile on thy face. "T is the mother's fond look of affection and pride, As she gives her fair son to the arms of his bride. His bride may be fresher in beauty's young flower; She may blaze in the jewels she brings with her dower. But passion must chill in Time's pitiless blast; You have left the dear land of the lake and the hill, But its winds and its waters will talk with you still. "Forget not," they whisper, "your love is our debt," And echo breathes softly, "We never forget." The banquet's gay splendors are gleaming around, But your hearts have flown back o'er the waves of the Sound; They have found the brown home where their pulses were born; They are throbbing their way through the trees and the corn. There are roofs you remember, their glory is fled; There are mounds in the church-yard, for the dead. one sigh There are wrecks, there are ruins, all scattered around; But Earth has no spot like that corner of ground. To-night, we harm nothing,—we love in the lump; Here's a bumper to Maine, in the juice of the pump! Here's to all the good people, wherever they be, Who have grown in the shade of the liberty-tree; We all love its leaves, and its blossoms and fruit, But pray have a care of the fence round its root. We should like to talk big; it's a kind of a right, When the tongue has got loose and the waistband grown tight; But, as pretty Miss Prudence remarked to her beau, On its own heap of compost, no biddy should crow. Enough! There are gentlemen waiting to talk, Whose words are to mine as the flower to the stalk. Stand by your old mother whatever befall; God bless all her children! Good night to you all! |