The American Union Speaker Part 37

The sea! the sea! the open sea!

The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

Without a mark, without a bound, It runneth the earth's wide regions round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies; Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!

I am where I would ever be; With the blue above, and the blue below, And silence wheresoever I go; If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, O how I love to ride On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, When every mad wave drowns the moon, Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the sou'west blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull, tame sh.o.r.e, But I loved the great sea more and more, And backward flew to her billowy breast, Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; And a mother she was and is to me; For I was born on the open sea!

The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed to life the ocean-child!

I've lived since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers a sailor's life, With wealth to spend and a power to range, But never have sought nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he comes to me, Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!

B. W. Proctor.

CCVI.

NAPOLEON.

His falchion flashed along the Nile; His hosts he led through Alpine snows; O'er Moscow's towers, that blazed the while, His eagle flag unrolled,--and froze.

Here sleeps he now, alone! Not one Of all the kings, whose crowns he gave, Bends o'er his dust;--nor wife, nor son, Has ever seen or sought his grave.

Behind this sea-girt rock, the star That led him on from crown to crown, Has sunk; and nations from afar Gazed as it faded and went down.

High is his couch;--the ocean flood, Far, far below, by storms is curled; As round him heaved, while high he stood A stormy and unstable world.

Alone he sleeps! The mountain cloud That night hangs round him, and the breath Of morning scatters, is the shroud That wraps the conqueror's clay in death.

Pause here! The far-off world, at last, Breathes free; the hand that shook its thrones, And to the earth its mitres cast, Lies powerless now beneath these stones.

Hark! comes there, from the pyramids, And from Siberian wastes of snow, And Europe's hills, a voice that bids The world he awed to mourn him? No:

The only, the perpetual dirge That's heard there, is the sea-bird's cry,-- The mournful murmur of the surge,-- The cloud's deep voice, the wind's low sigh.

J. Pierpont.

CCVII.

WARREN'S ADDRESS AT BUNKER HILL.

Stand! the ground's your own, my braves!

Will ye give it up to slaves?

Will ye look for greener graves?

Hope ye mercy still?

What's the mercy despots feel?

Hear it in that battle peal!

Read it on yon bristling steel!

Ask it--ye who will.

Fear ye foes who kill for hire?

Will ye to your homes retire?

Look behind you! they're a-fire!

And, before you, see-- Who have done it!--from the vale On they come!--and will ye quail?-- Leaden rain and iron hail Let their welcome be!

In the G.o.d of battles trust!

Die we may, and die we must;-- But, O! where can dust to dust Be consigned so well, As where heaven its dews shall shed On martyred patriot's bed, And the rocks shall raise their head, Of his deeds to tell!

J. Pierpont.

CCVIII.

THANATOPSIS.

To him who, in the love of Nature, holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. For his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty; and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And gentle sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart,-- Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-- Comes a still voice:--Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet if the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again; And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world,--with kings, The powerful of the earth,--the wise, the good, Fair forms, and h.o.a.ry seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.--The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods; rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-- Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are dining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, and traverse Barca's desert sands; Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound Save his own das.h.i.+ngs,--yet--the dead are there, And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep;--the dead reign there alone.-- So shalt thou rest--and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glides away, the sons of men The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man-- Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side, By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

W. C. Bryant.

CCIX.

THE AFRICAN CHIEF.

Chained in the market-place he stood, A man of giant frame, Amid the gathering mult.i.tude That shrunk to hear his name,-- All stern of look and strong of limb, His dark eye on the ground; And silently they gazed on him, As on a lion bound.

Vainly, but well, that chief had fought-- He was a captive now; Yet pride, that fortune humbles not, Was written on his brow: The scars his dark broad bosom wore Showed warrior true and brave: A prince among his tribe before, He could not be a slave.

Then to his conqueror he spake-- "My brother is a king: Undo this necklace from my neck, And take this bracelet ring, And send me where my brother reigns, And I will fill thy hands With store of ivory from the plains, And gold dust from the sands."

--"Not for thy ivory nor thy gold Will I unbind thy chain; That b.l.o.o.d.y hand shall never hold The battle-spear again.

A price thy nation never gave Shall yet be paid for thee; For thou shalt be the Christian's slave, In land beyond the sea."

Then wept the warrior chief, and bade To shred his locks away, And, one by one, each heavy braid Before the victor lay.

Thick were the platted locks, and long, And deftly hidden there Shone many a wedge of gold among The dark and crisped hair.

"Look, feast thy greedy eye with gold, Long kept for sorest need: Take it--thou askest sums untold-- And say that I am freed.

Take it--my wife, the long, long day, Weeps by the cocoa-tree, And my young children leave their play, And ask in vain for me."

--"I take thy gold,--but I have made Thy fetters fast and strong, And ween that by the cocoa shade Thy wife shall wait thee long."

Strong was the agony that shook The captive's frame to hear, And the proud meaning of his look Was changed to mortal fear.

His heart was broken,--crazed his brain-- At once his eye grew wild: He struggled fiercely with his chain, Whispered,--and wept,--and smiled; Yet wore not long those fatal bands, And once, at shut of day, They drew him forth upon the sands,-- The foul hyena's prey.

W. C. Bryant.

CCX.