When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still Soul of the just! companion of the dead! And doomed, like thee, to travel and return.— On bickering wheels and adamantine car; CAMPBELL. YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. YE Mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years The battle and the breeze, Your glorious standard launch again And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long, The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave! For the deck it was their field of fame, Britannia needs no bulwark, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, With thunders from her native oak, She quells the floods below, As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow; The meteor-flag of England Till danger's troubled night depart, Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow; And the storm has ceased to blow. CAMPBELL. GERTRUDE'S CHILDHOOD. A LOVED bequest-and I may half impart That living flower uprose beneath his eye. From hours when she would round his garden play, To time when as the ripening years went by, Her lovely mind could culture well repay, And more engaging grew from pleasing day to day. I may not paint those thousand infant charms, (Unconscious fascination, undesigned!) The orison repeated in his arms, For God to bless her sire and all mankind; The book, the bosom on his knee reclined, Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con (The playmate ere the teacher of her mind); All uncompanioned else her years had gone, Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone. And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour, The red wild flowers on his brow were blent, And bracelets bound the arm that helped to light A boy, who seemed, as he beside him went, Of Christian vesture and complexion bright, Led by his dusty guide, like morning brought by night. CAMPBELL. THE LAST MAN. ALL worldly shapes shall melt in gloom, The Sun himself must die, Before this mortal shall assume Its immortality! I saw a vision in my sleep, That gave my spirit strength to sweep Adown the gulf of Time! I saw the last of human mould, The Sun's eye had a sickly glare, Around that lonely man! Some had expired in fight-the brands In plague and famine some! Earth's cities had no sound nor tread; Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood That shook the sere leaves from the wood As if a storm passed by, Saying, We are twins in death, proud Sun, Thy face is cold, thy race is run, 'Tis Mercy bids thee go; For thou ten thousand thousand years Hast seen the tide of human tears, What though beneath thee man put forth His pomp, his pride, his skill; And arts that made fire, flood, and earth, Yet mourn I not thy parted sway, And triumphs that beneath thee sprang, Entailed on human hearts. Go-let oblivion's curtain fall Upon the stage of men, Nor with thy rising beams recall Life's tragedy again. Its piteous pageants bring not back, Of pain anew to writhe; Stretched in disease's shapes abhorred, Or mown in battle by the sword, Like grass beneath the scythe. Even I am weary in yon skies, To watch thy fading fire; |