Now then, nine cheers for the Stay-at-home Ranger!
Blow the great fish-horn and beat the big pan!
First in the field that is farthest from danger,
Take your white-feather plume, sweet little man!

Union and Liberty.

FLAG of the heroes who left us their glory,

Borne through their battlefields' thunder and flame, Blazoned in song and illumined in story,

Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame!

Up with our banner bright,
Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation's cry,

UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE!

Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation,
Pride of her children, and honoured afar,
Let the wide beams of thy full constellation
Scatter each cloud that would darken a star!
Up with our banner bright, etc.

Empire unsceptred! what foe shall assail thee,
Bearing the standard of Liberty's van?
Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee,
Striving with men for the birthright of man!
Up with our banner bright, etc.

Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted,

Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw,

Then with the arms of thy millions united,

Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law!

Up with our banner bright, etc.

Lord of the Universe! shield us and guide us,

Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun! Thou hast united us, who shall divide us?

Keep us, O keep us the MANY IN ONE!

Up with our banner bright,

Sprinkled with starry light,

Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky

Loud rings the Nation's cry,

UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE!

POEMS

FROM THE

AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

1857-1858.

The Chambered Nautilus.

THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl !

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,-

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings :

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

Sun and Shadow.

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,
To the billows of foam-crested blue,

Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue :

Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;

Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,-
Of breakers that whiten and roar;

How little he cares, if in shadow or sun

They see him who gaze from the shore!

He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
To the rock that is under his lee,

As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where life and its ventures are laid,

The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves

May see us in sunshine or shade;

Yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,
We'll trim our broad sail as before,

And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask how we look from the shore !

One moves in silence by the stream,
With sad, yet watchful eyes,
Calm as the patient planet's gleam
That walks the clouded skies.

Along its front no sabres shine,
No blood-red pennons wave;
Its banner bears the single line,
"Our duty is to save."

For those no death-bed's lingering shade ;
At Honour's trumpet-call,

With knitted brow and lifted blade
In Glory's arms they fall.

For these no clashing falchions bright,
No stirring battle-cry;

The bloodless stabber calls by night,—
Each answers, "Here am I!"

For those the sculptor's laurelled bust,
The builder's marble piles,
The anthems pealing o'er their dust
Through long cathedral aisles.

For these the blossom-sprinkled turf
That floods the lonely graves
When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf
In flowery-foaming waves.

Two paths lead upward from below,
And angels wait above,

Who count each burning life-drop's flow,
Each falling tear of Love.

Though from the Hero's bleeding breast
Her pulses Freedom drew,

Though the white lilies in her crest
Sprang from that scarlet dew,-

While Valour's haughty champions wait
Till all their scars are shown,

Love walks unchallenged through the gate,
To sit beside the Throne !

Musa.

O MY lost beauty!-hast thou folded quite
Thy wings of morning light

Beyond those iron gates

Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates,
And Age upon his mound of ashes waits

To chill our fiery dreams,

Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams?

Leave me not fading in these weeds of care,
Whose flowers are silvered hair!

Have I not loved thee long,

Though my young lips have often done thee wrong,
And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song?
Ah, wilt thou yet return,

Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn?
Come to me!-I will flood thy silent shrine
With my soul's sacred wine,

And heap thy marble floors

As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores,
In leafy islands walled with madrepores

And lapped in Orient seas,

When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze
Come to me!-thou shalt feed on honeyed words,
Sweeter than song of birds;-

No wailing bulbul's throat,

No melting dulcimer's melodious note

When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float,
Thy ravished sense might soothe

With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth.
Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen,
Sought in those bowers of green

Where loop the clustered vines

And the close clinging dulcamara1 twines,-
Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines,
And Summer's fruited gems,

And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems.

Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,―

Or stretched by grass-grown graves,

Whose gray, high-shouldered stones,

Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns,
Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones

Still slumbering where they lay

While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away.
Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing!

Still let me dream and sing,-
Dream of that winding shore

Where scarlet cardinals bloom-for me no more,-
The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor,
And clustering nenuphars

Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars!
Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!-
Come while the rose is red,—

While blue-eyed Summer smiles

1 The bitter-sweet" of New England is the Celastrus scandens, — "Bourreau des arbres" of the Canadian French.