Loud and sudden there was heard,
All around them and below,
The sound of hammers, blow on blow,
Knocking away the shores and spurs.
And see! she stirs !

She starts,--she moves,-she seems to feel
The thrill of life along her keel,

And, spurning with her foot the ground,
With one exulting, joyous bound,
She leaps into the ocean's arms!

And lo! from the assembled crowd
There rose a shout, prolonged and loud,
That to the ocean seemed to say,
"Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray,
Take her to thy protecting arms,
With all her youth and all her charms!

Through wind and wave, right onward steer!
The moistened eye, the trembling lip,
Are not the signs of doubt or fear.

Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;

And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
"T is of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,-are all with thee!

CHRYSAOR.

JUST above yon sandy bar,

As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely, a single star

Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.

Into the ocean faint and far

Falls the trail of its golden splendor, And the gleam of that single star

Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender

Chrysaor, rising out of the sea,

Showed thus glorious and thus emulous, Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe,

Forever tender, soft, and tremulous

Thus o'er the ocean faint and far

Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly; Is it a God, or is it a star

That, entranced, I gaze on nightly!

THE SECRET OF THE SEA.

AH! what pleasant visions haunt me As I gaze upon the sea!

All the old romantic legends,

All my dreams, come back to me.

Sails of silk and ropes of sandal,
Such as gleam in ancient lore;
And the singing of the sailors,

And the answer from the shore!

Most of all, the Spanish ballad Haunts me oft, and tarries long, Of the noble Count Arnaldos

And the sailor's mystic song.

Like the long waves on a sea-beach,
Where the sand as silver shines,
With a soft, monotonous cadence,
Flow its unrhymed lyric lines;-

Telling how the Count Arnaldos,
With his hawk upon his hand,
Saw a fair and stately galley,
Steering onward to the land ;-

How he heard the ancient helmsman
Chant a song so wild and clear,
That the sailing sea-bird slowly
Poised upon the mast to hear,
Till his soul was full of longing
And he cried, with impulse strong,-
Helmsman for the love of heaven,
Teach me, too, that wondrous song!"

..

Wouldst thou,' -so the helmsman answered,
"Learn the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery!

In each sail that skims the horizon,
In each landward-blowing breeze,

I behold that stately galley,

Hear those mournful melodies;

Till my soul is full of longing
For the secret of the sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

TWILIGHT.

THE twilight is sad and cloudy, The wind blows wild and free, And like the wings of sea-birds

Flash the white caps of the sea.

Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace,
With mist and rain, o'er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.

RESIGNATION.

THERE is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying,
And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps,

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps.

There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,

Whose portal we call Death.

She is not dead, -the child of our affection,-
But gone unto that school

Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led,

Safe frem temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air,

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance,
spoken,

May reach her where she lives.

Nothing useless is, or low;

Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;

Our to-days and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between,
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,

Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain

To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild

in our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child;

Lut a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean,
That cannot be at rest,-

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
The grief that must have way.

THE BUILDERS.

ALL are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme,

GLASS.

A HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime Of Arab deserts brought,

Within this glass becomes the spy of Time, The minister of Thought.

How many weary centuries has it been
About those deserts blown!

How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
How many histories known!

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite
Trampled and passed it o'er,
When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
His favorite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,
Crushed it beneath their tread;

Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth
Held close in her caress,

Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith
Illumed the wilderness;

Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms
Pacing the Dead Sea beach,

And singing slow their old Armenian psalms
In half articulate speech;