Calmly, as to a night's repose, Come to the bridal-chamber, Death! That close the pestilence are broke, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, Of agony, are thine. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; Of sky and stars to prisoned men ; Thy summons welcome as the cry To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange groves, and fields of balm, Bozzaris! with the storied brave Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Her marble wrought, her music breathed; Talk of thy doom without a sigh; That were not born to die. 5 10 15 20 235 30 JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE 1795-1820 DRAKE was a New Yorker, born and bred. After his first early struggles with poverty, life seemed to open up with shining prospects. He was graduated in medicine, and then traveled abroad for a year or two. He was happily married and he was rising in his profession. He was, Halleck said, the handsomest man in New York. Buoyant spirits brought him many friends, and he was beginning to make a name for himself in letters. But he was smitten with consumption, and died at the age of twenty-five. Drake began to write verse at a very early age; but it was The Croaker Pieces, which he and Halleck wrote together, that first brought him into literary notice. They first appeared anonymously in the Evening Post, which later on William Cullen Bryant was to edit so long and so brilliantly. These witty verses, with their sly thrusts at well-known men and women of the day, soon became the talk of the town, and created much curiosity as to their authorship. The longest poem that Drake wrote was The Culprit Fay. It is a conventional tale of some tiny fairies that were supposed to haunt the Hudson River. Drake's purpose in writing the poem was to try to prove to his friends that American streams lent themselves to poetic treatment as readily as the streams of the Old World. It was reserved for Irving, however, at a later day, to show more conclusively in his Sketch Book than Drake did in The Culprit Fay that the spirit of romance really does hover about the Hudson. But Drake's poem contains some pleasing fancies, more or less gracefully told. To-day the best-remembered poem of Drake's is The American Flag. This may be pitched in too high a key to please the most rigid taste, but its patriotic appeal will probably be lasting. THE AMERICAN FLAG WHEN Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes And striped its pure celestial white Majestic monarch of the cloud, Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, To hear the tempest trumpings loud And see the lightning lances driven, When strive the warriors of the storm, To guard the banner of the free, Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, And gory sabers rise and fall Then shall thy meteor glances glow, Each gallant arm that strikes below Flag of the seas! on ocean wave Shall look at once to heaven and thee, In triumph o'er his closing eye. Flag of the free heart's hope and home! And all thy hues were born in heaven. Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us? EDWARD COATE PINKNEY 1802-1828 PINKNEY was born in London while his father, William Pinkney of Baltimore, a lawyer and public speaker of distinction, was United States minister to Great Britain. On his return to America, he was put to school in Baltimore, but later entered the navy as a midshipman. He resigned from the navy to enter upon the practice of the law, but his |