To arms! to arms! the trumpet is summoning.
What heart is cold, when glory awakens us!
When youth, for hearth and shrine contending,
Rush to the shock, and in death are happy!

A holy feeling stirs, as the signal sounds.
To die for home, how high and how glorious!
The recreant only hears and trembles.
Give me my sword,—I will haste and meet them!

Raise high the song,—the foe is discomfited!
Our sacred soil untouched and unsullied!
With laurel wreathed, by loved ones greeted,
Proudly we move, as the pæan echoes.

Ah , did we live the poems that we write,
What heroes, saints, a wondering world would see!
And how, for every poet, there would be
A spirit clad in panoply of light,—
Courageous, calm, divining Truth at sight,
To follow her, come rout or victory!
And such there are whose lives and songs agree;
Like tropic growths where flower and fruit unite,
On the same bough, to sweeten all the air.
O, poets! let your fruited deeds be fair
As are your blossoming words; for, thus allied,
Each of the other shall be justified;

You call them “beasts that perish,” and you say
That we, God's higher children, have the right
To trample our dumb brothers in the clay,
And use against them all our greater might;

To force the horses on their weary way,
Urged by the stinging whip and tight-drawn rein;
To take the slow, dull cattle for our prey,
And slay the furry creatures for our gain.

They may not reach the heaven we hope to win,
And so ten thousand of their lives are naught
Against one human life, though dark with sin—
Their soulless sufferings are not worth a thought.

Jingle for nickels; twangle twice for dimes
(The caller hearkens in his humid grot),
But, oh, the rich and grave cathedral chimes
Of quarters tolling in their appointed slot!

Unloved I love, unwept I weep,
Grief I restrain, hope I repress;
Vain is this anguish, fixed and deep,
Vainer desires or means of bliss.

My life is cold, love's fire being dead;
That fire self-kindled, self-consumed;
What living warmth erewhile it shed,
Now to how drear extinction doomed!

Devoid of charm how could I dream
My unasked love would e'er return?
What fate, what influence lit the flame
I still feel inly, deeply burn?

Alas! there are those who should not love;
I to this dreary band belong;

The soul of music slumbers in the shell,
Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts—touch them but rightly—pour
A thousand melodies unheard before.

I fear me lest our tears Veil-renders for our woe be,
Our pain the talking-stock Of all men, high and low, be.

Stones in the stead (they say) Of patience turn to rubies:
In liver's blood alone Can they transfigured so be.

In strait amaze am I For th' arrogance of rivals;
Honoured, o Lord, I pray, Let not the rascal foe be!

Seeing the stubborn pride That in thy cypress-head is,
How in this girdlestead Shall my short hand e'ermo be?

From every nook I launch The shafts of supplication,
So one effective may, Of all that leave the bow, be.

I cannot write, my tears are flowing fast,
Yet weeping is unnatural to me;
Oh! that this hour of bitterness was past—
The parting hour with all I love and thee.

If I had never met or loved thee so,
To part would not have caused me this sharp pain;
Parting so oft occurring here below,
And they who part so seldom meet again.

Yet over land or sea, where'er I go,
My home, my friends, shall flit before my eyes—
And oft I anxiously shall wish to know,
If in thy bosom thoughts of me arise.

Oh, I will think of bygone days of glee,

It's of a crafty miller and he
Had able sons one, two and three.
He called them all to make his will
To see which one should take the mill.

With me wack fol the riddle ol
The riddle ol the dee

The miller called for his eldest son,
Said he, ‘My days are almost done,
And if the will to you I make
What toll dost thou intend to take?’

‘Father,’ he said, ‘my name is Jack,
From every bushel I'll take a peck,
And every bushel that I grind
The profits they'll be large I'll find.’

‘Thou art a fool,’ the old man said,

Above a world entrapped by fear
There shone a silver Star.
The doubters saw it not, nor cared;
The men of faith, from far,
Knew that the Lord of Love looked down,
And followed it through field and town.

Through desert lands they found their way,
Past mountains, bleak and wild;
They came to humble Bethlehem
And found a little Child.
Their hearts rejoiced—their feet had trod
Through desert wastes to learn of God.

Our hearts are broken by the years,
But still there shines the Star
Above a little manger home.
O that we might, from far,