PARK BENJAMIN

1809-1864

THIS journalist, lecturer, and poet was born at Demerara, British Guiana, and died at New York, where he spent the greater part of his life. His sister was married to John Lothrop Motley, the author of The Rise of the Dutch Republic. Benjamin edited more than one magazine in New York, and also worked on the Tribune under Horace Greeley. His poems were never collected. Perhaps the best known is the one given below.

THE OLD SEXTON

NIGH to a grave that was newly made,
Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade;
His work was done, and he paused to wait
The funeral train at the open gate.

A relic of bygone days was he,

And his locks were white as the foamy sea;

And these words came from his lips so thin:
"I gather them in, I gather them in.

"I gather them in! for man and boy,
Year after year of grief and joy,
I've builded the houses that lie around,
In every nook of this burial ground;
Mother and daughter, father and son,
Come to my solitude, one by one:

But come they strangers or come they kin—
I gather them in, I gather them in.

throne

Many are with me, but still I'm alone,
I'm king of the dead- and I make my
On a monument slab of marble cold;
And my scepter of rule is the spade I hold :

Come they from cottage or come they from hall,
Mankind are my subjects, all, all, all !

Let them loiter in pleasure or toilfully spin

I gather them in, I gather them in.

"I gather them in, and their final rest

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Is here, down here, in the earth's dark breast!"

And the sexton ceased, for the funeral train

Wound mutely o'er that solemn plain !

And I said to my heart, when time is told,

A mightier voice than that sexton's old

Will sound o'er the last trump's dreadful din-
"I gather them in, I gather them in."

EPES SARGENT

1813-1880

SARGENT was a considerable figure in his day as editor, novelist, dramatist, biographer, and poet. In journalism he saw service on the staffs of both the New York Mirror and the Boston Transcript. He wrote popular plays, lives of Henry Clay and Benjamin Franklin, several works on spiritualism, and a volume of poems called Songs of the Sea. He was born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, and died at Boston.

A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE

A LIFE on the ocean wave,

A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!
Like an eagle caged, I pine

On this dull, unchanging shore :
Oh! give me the flashing brine,

The spray and the tempest's roar !

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THIS writer of graceful verses was born at Martinsburg, Virginia. He was educated at Princeton, where he was noted for his love of outdoor sports. He was admitted to the bar, but spent most of his time in writing verses and chasing foxes on his country estate in Virginia. His mind matured early, for he entered Princeton at fifteen and wrote for the Knickerbocker Magazine at seventeen. His talents, however, were obscured by frail health. He died at the age of thirtyfour. John Esten Cooke, the novelist, was his younger brother.

FLORENCE VANE

I LOVED thee long and dearly,

Florence Vane;

My life's bright dream and early

Hath come again;

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