Stream of my sleeping Fathers! when the sound
Of coming war echoed thy hills around,
How did thy sons start forth from every glade,
Snatching the musket where they left the spade!
How did their mothers urge them to the fight,
Their sisters tell them to defend the right,-
How bravely did they stand, how nobly fall,
The earth their coffin and the turf their pall!
How did the aged pastor light his eye,
When, to his flock, he read the purpose high
And stern resolve, whate'er the toil may be,
To pledge life, name, fame, all-for Liberty.
Cold is the hand that penned that glorious page-
Still in the grave the body of that sage
Whose lip of eloquence and heart of zeal,
Made Patriots act and listening Statesmen feel-
Brought thy Green Mountains down upon their foes,
And thy white summits melted of their snows-
While every vale to which his voice could come,
Rang with the fife and echoed to the drum.
Bold river! better suited are thy waves
To nurse the laurels clustering round their graves,
Than many a distant stream, that soaks the mud,
Where thy brave sons have shed their gallant blood,
And felt, beyond all other mortal pain,
They ne'er should see their happy home again.
Thou hadst a Poet once,-and he could tell,
Most tunefully, whate'er to thee befell,
Could fill each pastoral reed upon thy shore-
But we shall hear his classic lays no more!
He loved thee, but he took his aged way,
By Erie's shore, and PERRY's glorious day,
To where Detroit looks out amidst the wood,
Remote beside the dreary solitude.
Yet for his brow thy ivy leaf shall spread,
Thy freshest myrtle lift its berried head,
And our gnarled Charter-Oak put forth a bough,
Whose leaves shall grace thy TRUMBULL'S honored brow.
Four lamps were burning o'er two mighty graves-
GODFREY'S and BALDWIN'S*-Salem's Christian kings;
And holy light glanced from HELENA's naves,
Fed with the incense which the Pilgrim brings,-
While through the pannelled roof the cedar flings
Its sainted arms o'er choir, and roof, and dome,
And every porphyry-pillared cloister rings
To every kneeler there its "welcome home,"
As every lip breathes out, "O LORD, thy kingdom come."
A mosque was garnished with its crescent moons,
And a clear voice called Mussulmans to prayer.
There were the splendors of Judea's thrones-
There were the trophies which its conquerors wear-
All but the truth, the holy truth, was there:
For there, with lip profane, the crier stood,
And him from the tall minaret you might hear,
Singing to all whose steps had thither trod,
That verse misunderstood, "There is no GoD but GOD."
Hark! did the Pilgrim tremble as he kneeled?
And did the turbaned Turk his sins confess?
Those mighty hands the elements that wield,
That mighty Power that knows to curse or bless,
Is over all; and in whatever dress
His suppliants crowd around him, He can see
Their heart, in city or in wilderness,
And probe its core, and make its blindness flee,
Owning Him very GoD, the only Deity.
* GODFREY and BALDWIN were the first Christian kings at Jerusalem. The Empress HELENA, mother of CONSTANTINE the Great, built the Church of the Sepulchre on Mount Calvary. The walls are of stone and the roof of cedar. The four lamps which light it are very costly. It is kept in repair by the offerings of pilgrims who resort to it. The Mosque was originally a Jewish Temple. The Emperor JULIAN undertook to re-build the temple of Jerusalem at very great expense, to disprove the prophecy of our Saviour, as it was understood by the Jews; but the work and the workmen were destroyed by an earthquake. The pools of Bethesda and Gihon-the tomb of the Virgin MARY, and of King JEHOSHAPHAT-the pillar of ABSALOM-the tomb of ZACHARIAH-and the campo santo, or holy field, which is supposed to have been purchased with the price of JUDAS' treason, are, or were lately, the most interesting parts of Jerusalem
There was an earthquake once that rent thy fane,
Proud JULIAN; when, (against the prophecy
Of Him who lived, and died, and rose again,
"That one stone on another should not lie,")
Thou wouldst re-build that Jewish masonry,
To mock the eternal Word. The earth below
Gushed out in fire; and from the brazen sky,
And from the boiling seas such wrath did flow,
As saw not Shinar's plain, nor Babel's overthrow.
Another earthquake comes! Dome, roof, and wall
Tremble; and, headlong to the grassy bank,
And in the muddied stream, the fragments fall,
While the rent chasm spread its jaws, and drank
At one huge draft, the sediment, which sank
In Salem's drainéd goblet. Mighty Power!
Thou whom we all should worship, praise and thank,
Where was thy mercy in that awful hour,
When hell moved from beneath, and thine own heaven did lower?
Say, PILATE's palaces-proud HEROD's towers-
Say, gate of Bethlehem, did your arches quake?
Thy pool, Bethesda, was it filled with showers?
Calm Gihon, did the jar thy waters wake?
Tomb of thee, MARY-Virgin-did it shake?
Glowed thy bought field, Aceldema, with blood?
Where were the shudderings Calvary might make?
Did sainted Mount Moriah send a flood,
To wash away the spot where once a God had stood?
Lost Salem of the Jews-great sepulchre
Of all profane and of all holy things
Where Jew, and Turk, and Gentile yet concur
To make thee what thou art! thy history brings
Thoughts mixed of joy and woe. The whole earth rings
With the sad truth which He has prophesied,
Who would have sheltered with his holy wings
Thee and thy children. You his power defied:
You scourged him while he lived, and mocked him as he died!
There is a star in the untroubled sky,
That caught the first light which its Maker made ;
It led the hymn of other orbs on high;
"T will shine when all the fires of heaven shall fade.
Pilgrims at Salem's porch, be that your aid!
For it has kept its watch on Palestine!
Look to its holy light, nor be dismayed,
Though broken is each consecrated shrine,
Though crushed and ruined all-which men have called divine.
QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET.*
The warrior may twine round his temples the leaves
Of the laurel that victory throws him;
The Lover may smile as he joyously weaves
The Myrtle that beauty bestows him.
The Poet may gather his ivy, and gaze
On its evergreen honors enchanted;
But what are their ivys, their myrtles, and bays,
To the vine that our forefathers planted!
Let France boast the lily-let Britain be vain
Of her thistles, and shamrocks, and roses;
Our shrubs and our blossoms sprout out from the main,
And our bold shore their beauty discloses.
With a home and a country, a soul and a GOD,
What freeman with terrors is haunted!
Bedecked with the dew-drops and washed with the flood
Is the vine that our forefathers planted.
Then a health to the brave and the worthy, that bore
The vine whose rich clusters o'ershade us;
They planted its root by the rocks of the shore,
And called down His blessing who made us.
And a health to the Fair, who will raise up a brave
Generation of Yankees undaunted,
To nourish, to cherish, to honor, and save
The vine that our forefathers planted.
Motto of the Arms of Connecticut.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT SEA.*
A mother stood by the pebbled shore,
In her hand she held a bowl-
"Now I'll drink a draught of the salted seas
That broadly to me roll!
On them I have an only son,
Can he forget me quite ?
Oh! if his week away has run,
He'll think of me this night;
And may he never on the track
Of ocean in its foam,
Fail to look gladly-kindly back
To those he left at home.
I pledge him in the ocean-brine,
Let him pledge me in ruddy wine.”
A sister stood where the breakers fall
In thunders, on the beach,
And out were stretched her eager arms,
For one she could not reach.
"I'll dip my hand, my foot, my lip,
Into the foaming white,
For sure as this sand the sea doth sip,
He'll think of me this night.
And may he never on the deck,
Or on the giddy mast,
In gale or battle, storm or wreck,
Forget the happy past.
I pledge him in the ocean-brine,
Let him pledge me in ruddy wine."
A wife went down to the water's brink,
And thither a goblet brought:
"Here will I drink and here I'll think
As once we two have thought.
It is well known that naval officers, as well as their seamen, appropriate Saturday night at sea to the subject of their "domestic relations," over a glass of wine, or of grog, as the case may be. It may not be so notorious that their female friends drink salt water in celebration of this nautical vigil.
|