Loud wail the dwellers on the myrtled coasts,

The green savannahs swell the maddened cry,
And with a yell from all the demon hosts

Falls the great star called Wormwood from the sky!

Bitter it mingles with the poisoned flow

Of the warm rivers winding to the shore,
Thousands must drink the waves of death and woe,

But the star Wormwood stains the heavens no more!

Peace smiles at last; the Nation calls her sons
To sheathe the sword; her battle-flag she furls,
Speaks in glad thunders from unshotted guns,
No terror shrouded in the smoke-wreath's curls.
O ye that fought for Freedom, living, dead,
One sacred host of God's anointed Queen,
For every holy drop your veins have shed

We breathe a welcome to our bowers of green!
Welcome, ye living! from the foeman's gripe
Your country's banner it was yours to wrest,—
Ah, many a forehead shows the banner-stripe,
And stars, once crimson, hallow many a breast.
And ye, pale heroes, who from glory's bed

Mark when your old battalions form in line,
Move in their marching ranks with noiseless tread,
And shape unheard the evening countersign,
Come with your comrades, the returning brave;
Shoulder to shoulder they await you here;
These lent the life their martyr-brothers gave,—
Living and dead alike for ever dear!

Edward Everett.

"OUR FIRST CITIZEN."1

WINTER'S cold drift lies glistening o'er his breast;
For him no spring shall bid the leaf unfold:
What Love could speak, by sudden grief oppressed,
What swiftly summoned Memory tell, is told.

Even as the bells, in one consenting chime,
Filled with their sweet vibrations all the air,
So joined all voices, in that mournful time,
His genius, wisdom, virtues, to declare.

What place is left for words of measured praise,
Till calm-eyed History, with her iron pen,

1 Read at the meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, January 30, 1865.

Grooves in the unchanging rock the final phrase
That shapes his image in the souls of men?
Yet while the echoes still repeat his name,

While countless tongues his full-orbed life rehearse, Love, by his beating pulses taught, will claim

The breath of song, the tuneful throb of verse,—

Verse that, in ever-changing ebb and flow,

Moves, like the labouring heart, with rush and rest, Or swings in solemn cadence, sad and slow,

Like the tired heaving of a grief-worn breast.
-This was a mind so rounded, so complete;
No partial gift of Nature in excess;
That, like a single stream where many meet,
Each separate talent counted something less.
A little hillock, if it lonely stand,

Holds o'er the fields an undisputed reign;
While the broad summit of the table-land
Seems with its belt of clouds a level plain.

Servant of all his powers, that faithful slave,
Unsleeping Memory, strengthening with his toils,
To every ruder task his shoulder gave,

And loaded every day with golden spoils.

Order, the law of Heaven, was throned supreme
O'er action, instinct, impulse, feeling, thought;
True as the dial's shadow to the beam,

Each hour was equal to the charge it brought.

Too large his compass for the nicer skill

That weighs the world of science grain by grain ; All realms of knowledge owned the mastering will That claimed the franchise of its whole domain.

Earth, air, sea, sky, the elemental fire,

Art, history, song,-what meanings lie in each Found in his cunning hand a stringless lyre,

And poured their mingling music through his speech.

Thence flowed those anthems of our festal days,
Whose ravishing division held apart

The lips of listening throngs in sweet amaze,
Moved in all breasts the self-same human heart.

Subdued his accents, as of one who tries

To press some care, some haunting sadness down ; His smile half shadow; and to stranger eyes The kingly forehead wore an iron crown.

He was not armed to wrestle with the storm,

To fight for homely truth with vulgar power;

Grace looked from every feature, shaped his form,—
The rose of Academe, -the perfect flower!

Such was the stately scholar whom we knew
In those ill days of soul-enslaving calm,
Before the blast of Northern vengeance blew

Her snow-wreathed pine against the Southern palm.
Ah, God forgive us! did we hold too cheap

The heart we might have known, but would not see, And look to find the nation's friend asleep

Through the dread hour of her Gethsemane ?
That wrong is past; we gave him up to Death
With all a hero's honours round his name ;
As martyrs coin their blood, he coined his breath,
And dimmed the scholar's in the patriot's fame.
So shall we blazon on the shaft we raise,—

Telling our grief, our pride, to unborn years,— "He who had lived the mark of all men's praise Died with the tribute of a nation's tears."

Shakespeare.

TERCENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

APRIL 23, 1864.

"WHO claims our Shakespeare from that realm unknown,
Beyond the storm-vexed islands of the deep,
Where Genoa's roving mariner was blown?
Her twofold Saint's-day let our England keep;
Shall warring aliens share her holy task?"
The Old World echoes ask.

O land of Shakespeare! ours with all thy past,
Till these last years that make the sea so wide,
Think not the jar of battle's trumpet-blast
Has dulled our aching sense to joyous pride
In every noble word thy sons bequeathed
The air our fathers breathed!

War-wasted, haggard, panting from the strife,
We turn to other days and far-off lands,
Live o'er in dreams the Poet's faded life,

Come with fresh lilies in our fevered hands

To wreathe his bust, and scatter purple flowers,
Not his the need, but ours!

We call those poets who are first to mark

Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,-

Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark,

While others only note that day is gone;

For him the Lord of light the curtain rent
That veils the firmament.

The greatest for its greatness is half known,
Stretching beyond our narrow quadrant-lines,—
As in that world of Nature all outgrown
Where Calaveras lifts his awful pines,
And cast from Mariposa's mountain-wall
Nevada's cataracts fall.

Yet heaven's remotest orb is partly ours,
Throbbing its radiance like a beating heart;
In the wide compass of angelic powers

The instinct of the blindworm has its part ;
So in God's kingliest creature we behold
The flower our buds infold.

With no vain praise we mock the stone-carved name Stamped once on dust that moved with pulse and breath,

As thinking to enlarge that amplest fame

Whose undimmed glories gild the night of death: We praise not star or sun; in these we see

Thee, Father, only Thee!

Thy gifts are beauty, wisdom, power, and love:
We read, we reverence on this human soul,-
Earth's clearest mirror of the light above,—
Plain as the record on Thy prophet's scroll,
When o'er his page the effluent splendours poured,
Thine own, "Thus saith the Lord!"

This player was a prophet from on high,
Thine own elected. Statesman, poet, sage,
For him Thy sovereign pleasure passed them by ;
Sidney's fair youth, and Raleigh's ripened age,
Spenser's chaste soul, and his imperial mind
Who taught and shamed mankind.

Therefore we bid our hearts' Te Deum rise,

Nor fear to make Thy worship less divine,
And hear the shouted choral shake the skies,
Counting all glory, power, and wisdom Thine;
For Thy great gift Thy greater name adore,
And praise Thee evermore !

In this dread hour of Nature's utmost need,

Thanks for these unstained drops of freshening dew! Oh, while our martyrs fall, our heroes bleed, Keep us to every sweet remembrance true, Till from this blood-red sunset springs new-born Our Nation's second morn!

In Memory of John and Robert Ware.

READ AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS

MEDICAL SOCIETY, MAY 25, 1864.

No mystic charm, no mortal art,
Can bid our loved companions stay;
The bands that clasp them to our heart
Snap in death's frost and fall apart;
Like shadows fading with the day,
They pass away.

The young are stricken in their pride,
The old, long tottering, faint and fall;
Master and scholar, side by side,
Through the dark portals silent glide,
That open in life's mouldering wall
And close on all.

Our friend's, our teacher's task was done,
When Mercy called him from on high;
A little cloud had dimmed the sun,
The saddening hours had just begun,
And darker days were drawing nigh:
'Twas time to die.

A whiter soul, a fairer mind,

A life with purer course and aim,
A gentler eye, a voice more kind,
We may not look on earth to find.
The love that lingers o'er his name
Is more than fame.

These blood-red summers ripen fast;
The sons are older than the sires;
Ere yet the tree to earth is cast,

The sapling falls before the blast;

Life's ashes keep their covered fires,―
Its flame expires.

Struck by the noiseless, viewless foe,

Whose deadlier breath than shot or shell

Has laid the best and bravest low,

His boy, all bright in morning's glow,

That high-souled youth he loved so well,
Untimely fell.

Yet still he wore his placid smile,

And, trustful in the cheering creed

That strives all sorrow to beguile,
Walked calmly on his way awhile :
Ah, breast that leans on breaking reed
Must ever bleed !