92. The American Flag.
When Freedom from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there!
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle-bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.
J. R. Drake, New York, 1795-1820.
93. Small Beginnings.
A nameless man, amid a crowd that thronged the daily mart,
Let fall a word of hope and love, unstudied from the heart;
A whisper on the tumult thrown,-a transitory breath,
It raised a brother from the dust; it saved a soul from death.
O germ! O fount! O word of love! O thought at random cast!
Ye were but little at the first, but mighty at the last. Chas. Mackay, Scotland, 1814—.
Gold gold! gold! gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammered and rolled;
Heavy to get and light to hold;
Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold,
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled:
Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the church-yard mould;
Price of many a crime untold;
Gold! gold! gold! gold!
Good or bad a thousand-fold!
How widely its agencies vary,
To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,—
As ever its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of good Queen Bess,
And now of a bloody Mary.
Thos. Hood, England, 1798-1845.
The smallest bark on life's tumultuous ocean
Will leave a track behind for evermore;
The lightest wave of influence, set in motion,
Extends and widens to the eternal shore.
We should be wary, then, who go before
A myriad yet to be, and we should take
Our bearing carefully where breakers roar
And fearful tempests gather: one mistake
May wreck unnumbered barks that follow in our
96. What Gives Strength.
For strength is born of struggle, faith of doubt,
Of discord, law, and freedom of oppression:
We hail from Pisgah, with exulting shout,
The promised land below us, bright with sun,
And deem its pastures won,
Ere toil and blood have earned us the possession!
Each aspiration of our human earth
Becomes an act through keenest pangs of birth;
Each force, to bless, must cease to be a dream,
And conquer life through agony supreme;
Each inborn right must outwardly be tested
By stern material weapons, ere it stand
In the enduring fabric of the land,
Secured for those who yielded it, and those who
Bayard Taylor, Penn., 1825-.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent as more suitable:
A vile conceit in pompous words expressed,
Is like a clown in regal purple dressed;
For different styles with different subjects sort,
As several garbs, with country, town, and court.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
A. Pope, England, 1688-1744.
The heights by great men gained and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upwards in the light.
H. W. Longfellow, Maine, 1807-.
99. How to Live.
He liveth long who liveth well;
All else is life but flung away;
He livest longest who can tell
Of true things truly done each day.
Then fill each hour with what will last;
Buy up the moments as they go;
The life above, when this is past,
Is the ripe fruit of life below.
H. Bonar, Scotland, 1808-.
Who meekly folds his hand in Jesus' palm,
And foliows Him through dusty lane and street,
Through store and market-place, at home, abroad,
And in the busy haunts of men, as much
As in the lonely stillness of the night,
Clings ever nearer to the Lord's close touch,
To me is Christ's disciple if, with mine,
His heartbeats do but throb in unison,
Though eye see not to eye, will waiting stand,
Till, when the thin disguise of speech shall fall,
On his brow shall be written, CHRIST MY ALL.
Wm. L. Gage, N. H., 1832-.
Think not that strength lies in the big round word, Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak. To whom can this seem true, that once has heard The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak When want, or woe, or fear is in the throat,
So that each word gasped out is like a shriek Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note, Sung by some foe or fiend. There is a strength Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine, Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length.
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine, And he that will may take the sleek fat phrase, Which glows and burns not, though it gleam and shineLight, but not heat,-a flash, but not blaze.
J. A. Alexander, Penn., 1809-1860.
O, happiest he, whose riper years retain
The hopes of youth, unsullied by a stain!
His eve of life in calm content shall glide,
Like the still streamlet to the ocean tide:
No gloomy cloud hangs o'er his tranquil day;
No meteor lures him from his home astray;
For him there glows with glittering beam on high
Love's changeless star that leads him to the sky;
Still to the past he sometimes turns to trace
The mild expression of a mother's face,
And dreams, perchance, as oft in earlier years,
The low, sweet music of her voice he hears.
J. T. Fields, New Hampshire, 1820—.
|