The story of his strife; Better than funeral pomp or passing bell! What tale of peril and self-sacrifice! With hunger howling o'er the wastes of snow! Crunching the massive ships, as the white bear The lethargy of famine; the despair Urging to labor, nervelessly pursued ; Toil done with skinny arms, and faces hued Like pallid masks, while dolefully behind Glimmered the fading embers of a mind! That awful hour, when through the prostrate band Delirium stalked, laying his burning hand Upon the ghastly foreheads of the crew; The whispers of rebellion, faint and few At first, but deepening ever till they grew Into black thoughts of murder, such the throng Of horrors bound the hero. High the song Should be that hymns the noble part he played! Sinking himself, yet ministering aid To all around him. By a mighty will He stands, until spring, tardy with relief, And the pale prisoners thread the world once more, Time was when he should gain his spurs of gold From royal hands, who wooed the knightly state; The knell of old formalities is tolled, And the world's knights are now self-consecrate. No grander episode doth chivalry hold In all its annals, back to Charlemagne, Than that lone vigil of unceasing pain, Faithfully kept through hunger and through cold, By the good Christian knight, Elisha Kane ! FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN. THE OLD ADMIRAL. ADMIRAL STEWART, U. S. N. GONE at last, That brave old hero of the past! His spirit has a second birth, An unknown, grander life ; All of him that was earth Lies mute and cold, Like a wrinkled sheath and old Thrown off forever from the shimmering blade That has good entrance made Upon some distant, glorious strife. From another generation, A simpler age, to ours Old Ironsides came; The morn and noontide of the nation Alike he knew, nor yet outlived his fame, O, not outlived his fame! The dauntless men whose service guards our shore Lengthen still their glory-roll With his name to lead the scroll, As a flagship at her fore Carries the Union, with its azure and the stars, Symbol of times that are no more And the old heroic wars. He was the one Whom Death had spared alone Of all the captains of that lusty age, Who sought the foeman where he lay, On sea or sheltering bay, Nor till the prize was theirs repressed their rage. They are gone, - all gone: They rest with glory and the undying Powers; Only their name and fame, and what they saved, are ours! It was fifty years ago, Upon the Gallic Sea, He bore the banner of the free, And fought the fight whereof our children know, — The frigate squared, and yawed to left and right. Neither foe replying more. All in silence, when the night-breeze cleared the air, Old Ironsides rested there, Locked in between the twain, and drenched with blood. Then homeward, like an eagle with her prey! That fight in Biscay Bay! Fearless the captain stood, in his youthful hardi hood: He was the boldest of them all, Our brave old Admiral! And still our heroes bleed, Taught by that olden deed. One the grisly King of Terrors; one a Bourbon, with his errors, late to conscience-clearing set. Well his fevered pulse may flutter, and the priests their mass may mutter with such fervor as they may: Cross and chrysm, and genuflection, mop and mow, and interjection, will not frighten Death away. By the dying despot sitting, at the hard heart's portals hitting, shocking the dull brain to work, Death makes clear what life has hidden, chides what life has left unchidden, quickens truth life tried to burke. He but ruled within his borders after Holy Church's orders, did what Austria bade him do ; By their guidance flogged and tortured; highborn men and gently nurtured chained with crime's felonious crew. What if summer fevers gripped them, what if winter freezings nipped them, till they rotted in their chains? He had word of Pope and Kaiser; none could holier be or wiser; theirs the counsel, his the reins. So he pleads excuses eager, clutching, with his fingers meagre, at the bedclothes as he speaks; But King Death sits grimly grinning at the Bourbon's cobweb-spinning, -as each cobweb-cable breaks. And the poor soul, from life's eylot, rudderless, without a pilot, drifteth slowly down the dark; While 'mid rolling incense vapor, chanted dirge, and flaring taper, lies the body, stiff and stark. PUNCH. BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE. NOT a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly, at dead of night, No useless coffin inclosed his breast, Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay, like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. GEORGE VILLiers, duke oF BUCKINGHAM. 1682. SOME of their chiefs were princes of the land; That every man with him was God or Devil. WHITEFIELD. FROM "HOPE." The man that mentioned him at once dismissed Now, truth, perform thine office; waft aside The curtain drawn by prejudice and pride, Reveal (the man is dead) to wondering eyes This more than monster in his proper guise. He loved the world that hated him; the tear That dropped upon his Bible was sincere ; Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife, His only answer was a blameless life; And he that forged and he that threw the dart Had each a brother's interest in his heart. Paul's love of Christ and steadiness unbribed Were copied close in him, and well transcribed. He followed Paul; his zeal a kindred flame, His apostolic charity the same. Like him crossed cheerfully tempestuous seas, Forsaking country, kindred, friends, and ease; Like him he labored, and like him, content To bear it, suffered shame where'er he went. Blush, Calumny! and write upon his tomb, If honest Eulogy can spare thee room, Which, aimed at him, has pierced the offended Thy deep repentance of thy thousand lies, skies; To name his works, "Wat Tyler," "Waterloo." he would but cite a few, "Rhymes on Blenheim," He had written praises of a regicide; He had written praises of all kings whatever; He had written for republics far and wide, And then against them bitterer than ever; For pantisocracy he once had cried OG. SHADWELL, THE DRAMATIST. Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, Aloud, a scheme less moral than 't was clever; For every inch that is not fool is rogue; Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin, A monstrous mass of foul, corrupted matter, Had turned his coat, and would have turned As all the devils had spewed to make the batter. his skin. Sporus, that mere white curd of asses' milk? Satire of sense, alas! can Sporus feel? P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. And he himself one vile antithesis. ALEXANDER POPE. The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull, A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull ODE TO RAE WILSON, ESQUIRE. I guess the features:- in a line to paint -- Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod, Commending sinners not to ice thick-ribbed, But endless flames, to scorch them like flax, Yet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribbed | Who looks on erring souls as straying pigs, The impression of St. Peter's keys in wax! Of such a character no single trace In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky; A face profane, that would not do at all To make a face at Exeter Hall, That Hall where bigots rant and cant and pray, Conceives itself a great gaslight of grace! Well!-be the graceless lineaments confest! I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest - "Within the limits of becoming mirth "; I've no ambition to enact the spy I do not hash the Gospel in my books, I honestly confess that I would hinder That must be lashed by law, wherever found, How much a man can differ from his neighbor; Spontaneously to God should tend the soul, But what were that intrinsic virtue worth, Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowl. edge Fresh from St. Andrew's college, It will not own a notion so unholy One place there is, beneath the burial-sod, The humble records of my life to search, Dear bells how sweet the sounds of village bells |