English

Slowly the sad night, like a mournful wraith,
Treads out the daylight, quenching hope and faith;
Under the pine-tree we linger, you and I,
While the sky darkens and the winds go by.
Baby, my baby! shake the blossoms from your hair;
Baby, my baby! there be thorns to wear!

Shrouding the shut eyes, keeping out the light,
Cold, cold and heavy, press the sods to-night,
Freezing the still heart, whence all the warmth is gone, —

What mean the gladsome bells to-day,
Which on our natal morning wait,
And greet the sunrise on its way
From Boston to the Golden Gate?
What mean yon flags that rustle free
From staff and spire and lofty dome,
And proudly float o'er every sea,
From tropic waste to Saxon home?

They mean the triumph of a race —
A race that made old England new,
Which far from kindred sought a place
To worship God with conscience true —
A handful tossed by wintry waves,
A struggle on a desert strand;

I.

Angels and Thrones and holy Powers
And Ministers of light —
God's primal sons and mystic bands
In various orders bright,
And hidden Splendors wheeling round
In circles infinite —

II.

Celestial priests and seraph kings
In links of glory twine:
And spirits of departed men
In saintly lustre shine,
With Angels dear that fold their wings

Far from the land of your boyhood's wild pleasure,
Sorrowing exiles, ah, why do you rest?
Beautiful Erin, your heart's long-lost treasure,
Welcomes her wanderers home to her breast.
Over the sea comes her voice softly flowing,
Wafted by breezes triumphantly blowing,
Telling that soon on her fields shall be glowing
Erin's bright sunburst, the flag of the free.
Erin's bright sunburst, the glorious sunburst,
Erin's bright sunburst, the flag of the free.

What though Britannia's insolent minions

I.

'Tis when we suffer gentlest thoughts
Within the bosom spring:
Ah! who shall say that pain is not
A most unselfish thing?

II.

Long ere I knew thee, men had said
That I must be thy friend,
While thou by Itchin's grassy bank
Thy summer hours did spend.

III.

So it came natural to me
To have thee for my brother:
And more and more each passing day

I.

The storm is past: the green hill-side
Is streaked with evening gleams,
Let out through rents in yon dark cloud,
Day's last and loveliest beams.

II.

Still clings the tempest's fleecy skirt
Round Fairfield's hollow crest,
Where glorious mists in many a fold
Of wavy silver rest.

III.

Deep imaged in the lake serene
The shadowy mountains lie:

Last summer, when athwart the sky
Shone the immeasurable days,
We wandered slowly, you and I,
Adown these leafy forest-ways,

With laugh and song and sportive speech,
And mirthful tales of earlier years,
Though deep within the soul of each
Lay thoughts too sorrowful for tears,

Because — I marked it many a time —
Your feet grew slower day by day,
And where I did not fear to climb
You paused to find an easier way.

And all the while a boding fear
Pressed hard and heavy on my heart;

Softly, softly through the air
Down the snow-flakes flutter,
Down, down,
Down upon the hill-sides bare
And brown.
Over field and over town
Spreads the mantle far and wide,
And upon the feathery tide
We, musing, gaze and think,
And fain would try, but shrink,
Dismayed, from the endeavor
To fix the thoughts that ever
Float with each falling flake
Down to our hearts, and wake
Emotions there which we can never utter.
O'er the dusky sky
Spread the curtains dun,

1.

THE GATHERING OF THE DEAD.

The day is cloudy;—it should be so:
And the clouds in flocks to the eastward go;
For the world may not see the glory there,
Where Christ and His Saints are met in the air.
There is a stir among all things round,
Like the shock of an earthquake underground,
And there is music in the motion,
As soft and deep as a summer ocean.
All things that sleep awake to-day,
 For the Cross and the crown are won;
  The winds of spring
  Sweet songs may bring

Makes Nature maps? since that in thee
She's drawn an university;
Or strives she in so small a piece
To sum the arts and sciences?
Once she writ only text-hand, when
She scribbled giants and no men:
But now in her decrepid years
She dashes dwarfs in characters,
And makes one single farthing bear
The creed, commandments, and Lord's prayer.
Would she turn Art, and imitate
Monte-regio's flying gnat?
Would she the Golden Legend shut
Within the cloister of a nut;
Or else a musket bullet rear