"O go with me, the darkness nears, The first pale stars begin to gleam." The maid replied with bursting tears, "It is the stream! it is the stream!" ON THE DEFEAT OF A GREAT MAN FALLEN? How fallen? States and empires fall; O'er towers and rock-built walls, And perished nations, floods to tempests call With hollow sound along the sea of time: The great man never falls. He lives, he towers aloft, he stands sublime: They fall who give him not O Giant loud and blind! the great man's fame Is his own shadow, and not cast by thee, As down the heaven of time the sun de How the guns, as with cheer and shout Our tackle-men hurled them out, Brought up on the water-ways! First, as we fired at their flash, 'Twas lightning and black eclipse, With a bellowing roll and crash; either bow, But soon, upon What with forts, and fire-rafts, and ships, (The whole fleet was hard at it now, (Such you see in the Far South, As day draws nigh to even: The great black bow comes on, But, as we worked along higher, Just where the river enlarges, Down came a pyramid of fire It was one of your long coal barges (We had often had the like before). 'T was coming down on us to larboard, Well in with the eastern shore, And our pilot, to let it pass round, (You may guess we never stopped to sound) Giving us a rank sheer to starboard, Ran the Flag hard and fast aground! 'T was nigh abreast of the Upper Fort, And shoved it with spiteful strength (It was all of our ship's length, Well, for a little it looked bad; But these things are, somehow, shorter O'er the haze and the cannon-smoke, THE BURIAL OF THE DANE BLUE gulf all around us, It is but a Danish sailor, A common son of the forecastle, Grizzled with sun and storm. His name, and the strand he hailed from We know, and there's nothing more! But perhaps his mother is waiting In the lonely Island of Fohr. Still, as he lay there dying, Reason drifting awreck, ""Tis my watch," he would mutter, "I must go upon deck!" Aye, on deck, by the foremast! But watch and lookout are done; Slow the ponderous engine, Stand in order, and listen To the holiest page of prayer! Our captain reads the service, (A little spray on his cheeks) The grand old words of burial, And the trust a true heart seeks: "We therefore commit his body To the deep" - and, as he speaks, |