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UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF MILTON.

The British oak with rooted grasp

Her slender handful holds together;
With cliffs of white and bowers of green,
And Ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams between,-
Our little mother isle, God bless her!

In earth's broad temple where we stand,
Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us,
We hold the missal in our hand,

Bright with the lines our Mother taught us;
Where'er its blazoned page betrays

The glistening links of gilded fetters,
Behold, the half-turned leaf displays
Her rubric stained in crimson letters!

Enough! To speed a parting friend
'Tis vain alike to speak and listen;
Yet stay, these feeble accents blend

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With rays of light from eyes that glisten. Good by! once more, - and kindly tell peace the young world's story,—

In words of

And say, besides, we love too well

Our mothers' soil, our fathers' glory!

277

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Under the Portrait of Milton.

HREE Poets, in three distant ages born,

THRE

Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go:
To make a third she joined the former two.

JOHN DRYDEN.

The Atlantic.

How in Heaven's name did Columbus get over,

Is a pure wonder to me, I protest,

Cabot and Raleigh too, that well-read rover,
Frobisher, Dampier, Drake, and the rest ;
Bad enough all the same,
For them that after came;
But, in great Heaven's name,

How he should ever think
That, on the other brink

Of this wild waste, Terra Firma should be,
Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.

How a man ever should hope to get thither,

E'en if he knew there was another side!
But to suppose he should come anywhither,
Sailing straight on into chaos untried,
In spite of the motion,
Across the whole ocean,

To stick to the notion

That in some nook or bend

Of a sea without end,

He should find North and South America,

Was a pure madness, indeed I must say.

What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy,

Judged that the earth, like an orange, was round;

None of them ever said, Come along, follow me,
Sail to the West, and the East will be found.

Many a day before

Ever they'd come ashore,

Sadder and wiser men,

They'd have turned back again;

And that he did not, and did cross the sea,

Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

LOVERS, AND A REFLECTION.

279

IN

Lovers, and a Reflection.

N moss-pranked dells which the sunbeams flatter (And heaven it knoweth what that may mean; Meaning, however, is no great matter),

Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween ;

Through God's own heather we wonned together,
I and my Willie (O love my love):

I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitterbats wavered alow, above;

Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing
(Boats in that climate are so polite),
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And oh, the sun-dazzle on bark and bight!

Through the rare red heather we danced together,
(O love my Willie!) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was gorgeous weather,
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:

By rises that flushed with their purple favors,

Through becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen, We walked or waded, we two young shavers, Thanking our stars we were both so green.

We journeyed in parallels, I and Willie,
In fortunate parallels! Butterflies,
Hid in weltering shadows of daffodilly
Or marjoram, kept making peacock-eyes:

Song-birds darted about, some inky

As coal, some snowy (I ween) as curds; Or rosy as pinks, or as roses pinky –

They reck of no eerie To-come, those birds!

But they skim over bents which the mill-stream washes, Or hang in the lift 'neath the white cloud's hem; They need no parasols, no goloshes;

And good Mrs. Trimmer she feedeth them.

Then we thrid God's cowslips (as erst his heather)
That endowed the wan grass with their golden blooms;
And snapt (it was perfectly charming weather)—
Our fingers at Fate and her goddess-glooms:

And Willie 'gan sing — (oh, his notes were fluty;
Wafts fluttered them out to the white-winged sea) –
Something made up of rhymes that have done much duty,
Rhymes (better to put it) of "ancientry."

Bowers of flowers encountered showers

In William's carol (O love my Willie !)
Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe to-morrow
I quite forget what say a daffodilly:

A nest in a hollow, "with buds to follow,"

I think occurred next in his nimble strain;
And clay that was "kneaden" of course in Eden-
A rhyme most novel, I do maintain:

Mists, bones, the singer himself, love-stories,
And all least furlable things got “furled";
Not with any design to conceal their glories,
But simply and solely to rhyme with "world. "

Oh, if billows and pillows and hours and flowers,
And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together, this genial weather,
And carted, or carried, on wafts away,

Nor ever again trotted out

- ay me!

How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be!

CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

281

I

Saturday Afternoon.

LOVE to look on a scene like this,
Of wild and careless play,

And persuade myself that I am not old,

And my locks are not yet gray;

For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart,
And makes his pulses fly,

To catch the thrill of a happy voice,
And the light of a pleasant eye.

I have walked the world for fourscore years,
And they say that I am old

That my heart is ripe for the reaper Death,
And my years are wellnigh told.

It is very true it is very true

I am old, and I “bide my time”;

But my heart will leap at a scene like this,
And I half renew my prime.

Play on! play on! I am with you there,
In the midst of your merry ring;
I can feel the thrill of the daring jump,
And the rush of the breathless swing.
I hide with you in the fragrant hay,

And I whoop the smothered call,
And my feet slip up on the seedy floor,
And I care not for the fall.

I am willing to die when my time shall come,

And I shall be glad to go

For the world, at best, is a weary place,

And my pulse is getting low;

But the grave is dark, and the heart will fail
In treading its gloomy way;

And it wiles my heart from its dreariness

To see the young so gay.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

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