The devil came up from hell
In a uniform of blue;
For he said, — They are doing well
The work that I love to do.
The Bashi Bazouk and Thug
Are worthy my friends to be;
But I long to clasp the hand
Of a captain of cavalry! —
Out from the land of sorrow
The Indian exiles fled,
And their trail through the wide frontier
Was strewn with their graveless dead:
Some where the threescore warriors
Turned at desperate bay;
Some where the feeble stragglers
Had fallen the borderer's prey.
Babes to their freezing mothers

I have wandered the wide world o'er,
I have sailed over many a sea,
But the land that I love more and more
Is Columbia, the land of the free.
From the east to the western shore,
From the north to the southern sea,
Columbia for me!

I have lingered in ivy-grown bowers,
In minsters and palaces vast,
Amid castles and crumbling towers
Whose shadows backward are cast;
But the longed-for Atlantis is ours,
And freedom interprets at last
The dream of the past.

The rivers of story and song,

'Twas in a fever-dream I saw and knew
Its mottled tiger-bloom of jaundiced gold,
Its fleshy leaves that dropped with clammy dew,
Its swarthy blotches hideous to behold.
In the black, noisome marsh that horror grew,
And slimy, snake-like weeds coiled round it, fold on fold.

The heavy, starless, cypress roof o'erhead
Left all below to fitful glare and gloom,
Where danced the wayward witch-fires of the dead
Like fiends carousing in a pillared tomb.
The sagging vines and knotted knees upspread

I.

The hill-tops are fair in the bright, cloudless day,
The valleys are sweet with the blossoms of May;
I gaze from the cliff where my Castle shall stand —
The grandest and proudest of all in the land;

With turrets and columns of Parian white,
Blocks seamless and clear as if quarried from light;
With portal wide open to high arching hall,
And threshold emblazoning welcome to all.

No outlook so varied, no structure so fair;
Neither Norman nor Moorish with mine can compare:

TO F. W. F .

Young men should not write sonnets, if they dream
Some day to reach the bright bare seats of fame:
To such, sweet thoughts and mighty feelings seem
As though, like foreign things, they rarely came.
Eager as men, when haply they have heard
Of some new songster, some gay-feathered bird,
That hath o'er blue seas strayed in hope to find
In our thin foliage here a summer home,
Fain would they catch the bright things in their mind,
And cage them into sonnets as they come.

Merrily shines the summer sun
Over the isle of Kent;
Merrily chasing, the ripples run,
Frolic the breezes in airy fun,
Robin, wren, mocking-bird every one
Join in the merriment.

But here in the oak-trees' solemn shade,
Where the sentinel cedars stand,
The old, old church that the fathers made
Looms forsaken and disarrayed,
Frowning on Maryland.

Where the voice of praise went ringing free,
The fox has made his home;
The wild-bee hives in the sacristy;
And the spectral moon looks in to see

Miranda mine, thy beauty is more rare
Than May-day flowers that deck the meadows green;
Thy lips are sweeter than the lily fair
Plucked fresh at dawn from out the glittering sheen;
The mantling color of thy cheek's bright hue
Makes pale and shames the blood of damask-rose;
Thine eye preserves the violet's pensive blue,
Which, born of light, with Heaven's own color glows;
Thy neck, full sweet, seems like a flowery lane,
Or garden pathway, to thy gentle breast,
Where love, that knows not passion's earthly stain,

Some hearts go hungering through the world,
And never find the love they seek;
Some lips with pride or scorn are curled
To hide the pain they may not speak.
The eye may flash, the mouth may smile,
The voice in gladdest music thrill,
And yet beneath them all the while
The hungry heart be pining still.

These know their doom, and walk their way
With level steps and steadfast eyes,
Nor strive with Fate, nor weep, nor pray;
While others, not so sadly wise,
Are mocked by phantoms evermore,
And lured by seemings of delight

I.

W E shall all meet again,
Not in the wood or plain,
Nor by the lake's green marge;
But we shall meet once more
By a far greener shore,
With our souls set at large.

II.

We all shall never stand
On Rothay's white-lipped strand,
And hear the far sheep-cries:
The Wansfell wind may blow,
But not to kindle now
The bright fire in our eyes.

III.

The three cleft mountains stand
In their own treeless land,
Where we all stood and wondered.
The black cliffs are the same

Deep loving, well knowing
His world and its blindness,
A heart overflowing
With measureless kindness,

Undaunted in labor
(And Death was a trifle),
Steel-true as a saber,
Direct as a rifle,

All Man in his doing,
All Boy in his laughter,
He fronted, unruing,
The Now and Hereafter,

A storm-battling cedar,
A comrade, a brother —
Oh, such was our leader,
Beloved as no other!

When weaker souls faltered
His courage remade us,
Whose tongue never paltered,
Who never betrayed us.