MARKHAM: Lincoln

REFERENCES

The Man of the People.

BYRON: Apostrophe to the Ocean. Thunder Storm in the Alps.

HALLECK: Marco Bozzaris.

ATHERSTONE: Last Days of Herculaneum.

CAMPBELL: The Downfall of Poland.

CARRINGTON: Description of a Storm at Sea.

N. P. WILLIS: Jephtha's Daughter.

JOHN WILSON: The Shipwreck.

KINDNESS

A little word in kindness spoken,

A motion or a tear,

Has often healed the heart that's broken,
And made a friend sincere.

A word

a look has crushed to earth

Full many a budding flower,

Which, had a smile but owned its birth,

Would bless life's darkest hour.

Then deem it not an idle thing

A pleasant word to speak;

The face you wear, the thoughts you bring,
A heart may heal or break.

- Colesworthy.

TH

OLD IRONSIDES

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

HE United States frigate, the Constitution, called "Old Ironsides" because her crew insisted that the shot of the enemy rebounded from her sides, was first commissioned in the United States navy in 1798. In 1804 she first became distinguished as leader of the brilliant naval attack on Tripoli. But her deathless glory rests on her signal victories in the War of 1812, chief of which was the complete destruction of the Guerrière in a fierce thirty-minute engagement, August 19, 1812. For this victory Captain Hull was given rousing ovations in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Congress awarded him a gold medal and appropriated fifty thousand dollars as a reward to him and his brave crew. Other victories followed in rapid succession and the Constitution became a veritable "eagle of the sea."

In 1828, after a glorious career, the old frigate was pronounced unseaworthy and the naval authorities. ordered that she be dismantled. This order met a general murmur of disapproval which burst into a storm of indignant protest after the fiery heart of the youthful Holmes had dictated the following remarkable lyric. His poet's eye sees the heroic old vessel sweeping proudly into port, her tattered flag at top mast, seemingly conscious of having lent herself to the protection of the bodies of heroes and to the preservation

of human liberty, but all unconscious of her impending fate at the hands of those who should be her friends. This impassioned appeal so charged the national heart that the poem was printed as a handbill and scattered broadcast in the streets of Washington. It is not remarkable that the order was rescinded and that after having been rebuilt in 1833, "Old Ironsides" kept her stately course as the historic queen of the American navy until 1855. Now full of honors, revered and loved, she rides in a safe anchorage in the Charlestown navy yard.

OLD IRONSIDES

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;
The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,

No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee,-
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea.

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,

And give her to the god of storms,

The lightning, and the gale!

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. What called forth this poem, and in what spirit was it

written?

2. Why not call the vessel by her real name?

3. What feeling seems to possess the soul of the poet in the first stanza? In the second?

4. What characteristic is given the ship in the first stanza? 5. How are you led to think of the ship, as a mass of spars and rigging, or as a living, feeling thing?

6. To what does the second stanza refer?

7. Why should the poet call her an "eagle"?

8. Is a "tattered ensign" one affected merely by action of the wind?

9. In what sense was the frigate's flag a "meteor”?

10. What kind of burial place is the sea?

11. Why is a flag ever "nailed" to the mast?

12. Why does he call the flag "holy"?

13. Why not capitalize the word "god" in the last stanza?

14. What feeling inspired Holmes as he wrote that last stanza!

15. What substitute for dismantling is suggested?

16. Why should such an alternative be preferred?

17. What in this protest has endeared it to the American heart? What higher patriotic sentiment pervades the poem?

REFERENCES

DWIGHT: Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.

DRAKE: American Flag.

CAMPBELL: Ye Mariners of England.

ROCHE: The "Constitution's" Last Fight.

TENNYSON: The Revenge.

LONGFELLOW: The Cumberland.

BROWNING: Hervé Riel.