Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,

And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp,

! The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be
Opened and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,

The light shone and was spent.

On England's annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore.

THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE.

A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS.

OTHERE, the old sea-captain,
Who dwelt in Helgoland,

To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right
hand.

His figure was tall and stately,

Like a boy's his eye appeared; His hair was yellow as hay, But threads of a silvery gray

Gleamed in his tawny beard.

Hearty and hale was Othere,

His cheek had the color of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach,

As unto the King he spoke.

And Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Had a book upon his knees,
And wrote down the wondrous tale
Of him who was first to sail
Into the Arctic seas.

"So far I live to the northward,
No man lives north of me;
To the east are wild mountain-chains,
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.

"And there we hunted the walrus, The narwhale, and the seal; Ha! 't was a noble game!

And hurried landward far away,
Crying, "Awake! it is the day."

It said unto the forest, "Shout!
Hang all your leafy banners out!"

It touched the wood-bird's folded wing,
And said, "O bird, awake and sing.'
And o'er the farms, "O chanticleer,
Your clarion blow; the day is near.'

It whispered to the fields of corn, "Bow down, and hail the coming morn."

It shouted through the belfry-tower, "Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour."

It crossed the churchyard with a sigh, And said, "Not yet! in quiet lie.'

For the beautiful Pays de Vaud ;