I tried to cheer. I cannot say

Whether I swam or sank;

A blue mist closed around my eyes,
And everything was blank.

When I awoke, a soldier lad,
All dripping from the sea,

With two great tears upon his cheeks,
Was bending over me.

I tried to speak. He understood
The wish I could not speak.

He turned me. There, thank God! the flag
Still fluttered at the peak!

And there, while thread shall hang to thread,
Oh, let that ensign fly!

The noblest constellation set
Against the northern sky-

A sign that we who live may claim
The peerage of the brave;
A monument that needs no scroll,
For those beneath the wave.

GEORGE H. BOKER.

THE GREAT BELL ROLAND.

[Opportunity is here afforded for vigorous expression. Study variety.]

Toll! Roland, toll!

In old Saint Bavon's tower,

At midnight hour,

The great bell Roland spoke;

And all that slept in Ghent awoke!
What meant the thunder stroke?
Why trembled wife and maid?
Why caught each man his blade?

Why echoed every street
With tramp of thronging feet,

All flying to the city's wall?
It was the warning call

That Freedom stood in peril of a foe!

And even timid hearts grew bold
Whenever Roland tolled,

And every hand a sword could hold!
And every arm could bend a bow!
So acted men

Like patriots then-
Three hundred years ago!

Toll! Roland, toll!

Bell never yet was hung,
Between whose lips there swung
So grand a tongue!

If men be patriots still,
At thy first sound
True hearts will bound,

Great souls will thrill!

Then toll! and let thy test
Try each man's breast,

And let him stand confest.

Toll! Roland, toll!

Not now in old Saint Bavon's tower;
Not now at midnight hour;

Not now from river Scheldt to Zuyder Zee

But here, this side the sea!

Toll here, in broad, bright day!—

For not by night awaits

A noble foe without the gates,

But perjured friends within betray,
And do the deed at noon!

Toll! Roland, toll!

Thy sound is not too soon!

To Arms! Ring out the Leader's call!

Reëcho it from East to West,

Till every hero's breast

Shall swell beneath a soldier's crest!

Toll! Roland, toll!

Till cottager from cottage-wall

Snatch pouch and powder-horn and gun!

The heritage of sire to son

Ere half of Freedom's work was done!,

Toll! Roland, toll!

Till swords from scabbards leap!

Toll! Roland, toll!

What tears can widows weep

More Litter than when brave men fall!

Toll! Roland, toll!

In shadowed hut and hall

Shall lie the soldier's pall,

And hearts shall break while graves are filled!
Amen! so God hath willed!

And may His grace anoint us all!

Toll! Roland, toll!

The Dragon on thy tower
Stands sentry to this hour,

And Freedom now is safe in Ghent!
And merrier bells now ring,

And in the land's serene content,
Men shout "God save the King!"
Until the skies are rent!

So let it be!

A kingly king is he

Who keeps his people free!

Toll! Roland, toll!

Ring out across the sea!

No longer, they, but we,

Have now such need of thee!
Toll! Roland, toll!

Nor ever let thy throat

Keep dumb its warning note
Till Freedom's perils be outbraved!
Toll! Roland, toll!

Till Free lom's flag, wherever waved,
Shall shadow not a man enslaved!

Toll! Roland, toll!

From Northern lake to Southern strand 1
Toll! Roland, toll!

Till friend and foe, at thy command,
Shall clasp once more each other's hand,
And shout, one-voiced, "God save the land!"
And love the land that God hath saved!
Toll! Roland, toll!

THEODORE TILTON.

POETRY.

[Poetry may be considered in a twofold view, as a spirit and a manifestation. Perhaps the poetic spirit has never been more justly defined, than by Byron in his Prophecy of Dante,-a creation

"From overfeeling good or ill, an aim

At an eternal life beyond our fate."

This spirit may be manifested by language, metrical or prose, by declamation, by musical sounds, by expression, by gesture, by motion, and

by imitating forms, colors and shades; so that literature, oratory, music, physiognomy, acting, and the arts of painting and sculpture may all have their poetry; but that peculiar spirit, which alone gives the great life and charm to all the efforts of genuis, is as distinct from the measure and rhyme of poetical composition, as from the scientific principles cf drawing and perspective.]

The world is full of poetry-the air

Is living with its spirit; and the waves
Dance to the music of its melodies,

And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is veiled,
And mantled with its beauty; and the walls
That close the universe with crystal in,
Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim
The unseen glories of immensity,
In harmonies, too perfect, and too high,
For aught but beings of celestial mould,
And speak to man in one eternal hymn,
Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.

The year leads round the seasons in a choir
Forever charming, and forever new,
Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay,
The mournful, and the tender, in one strain,
Which steals into the heart, like sounds that rise

Far off, in moonlight evenings, on the shore
Of the wide ocean resting after storms;
Or tones that wind around the vaulted roof,
And pointed arches, and retiring aisles
Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand,
Skillful, and moved with passionate love of art,
Plays o'er the higher keys, and bears aloft
The peals of bursting thunder, and then calls,
By mellow touches, from the softer tubes,
Voices of melting tenderness, that blend
With pure and gentle musings, till the soul,
Commingling with the melody, is borne,
Rapt, and dissolved in ecstasy, to Heaven.

'Tis not the chime and flow of words, that move
In measured file, and metrical array;

'Tis not the union of returning sounds,
Nór all the pleasing artifice of rhyme,
And quantity, and accent, that can give
This all-pervading spirit to the ear,
Or blend it with the movings of the soul.
'Tis a mysterious feeling, which combines
Man with the world around him, in a chain
Woven of flowers, and dipped in sweetness, till
He taste the high communion of his thoughts;

With all existences, in earth and Heaven,
That meet him in the charm of grace and power.
'Tis not the noisy babbler, who displays,
In studied phrase, and ornate epithet,

And rounded period, poor and vapid thoughts,
Which peep from out the cumbrous ornaments
That overload their littleness. Its words
Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break
Fresh from the fount of feeling, and are full
Of all that passion, which, on Carmel, fired
The holy prophet, when his lips were coals,
His language winged with terror, as when bolts
Leap from the brooding tempest, armed with wrath,'
Commissioned to affright us and destroy.

Well I remember, in my boyish days,

How deep the feeling when my eye looked forth
On Nature, in her loveliness, and storms.
How my heart gladdened, as the light of spring
Came from the sun, with zephyrs, and with showers
Waking the earth to beauty, and the woods
To music, and the atmosphere to blow,
Sweetly and calmly, with its breath of balm.
O, how I gazed upon the dazzling blue

Of summer's Ileaven of glory, and the waves,
That rolled, in bending gold, o'er hill and plain;
And on the tempest, when it issued forth,
In folds of blackness, from the northern sky,
And stood above the mountains, silent, dark,
Frowning, and terrible; then sent abroad
The lightning, as its herald, and the peal,
That rolled in deep, deep volleys, round the hills,
The warning of its coming, and the sound
That ushered in its elemental war!

And, oh! I stood, in breathless longing fixed,
Trembling, and yet not fearful, as the clouds
Heaved their dark billows on the roaring winds,
That sent, from mountain top, and bending wood,
A long hoarse murmur, like the rush of waves,
That burst, in foam and fury, on the shore.

Nor less the swelling of my heart, when high Rose the blue arch of autumn, cloudless, pure As nature, at her dawning, when she sprang Fresh from the hand that wrought her; where the eye Caught not a speck upon the soft serene, To stain its deep cerulean, but the cloud, That floated, like a lonely spirit, there, White as the snow of Zemla, or the foam.