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HARP OF THE NORTH.

ARP of the North! that mouldering long hast hung

On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring,

And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung, Till envious ivy did around thee cling, Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,

O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep? Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring,

Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep, Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid to weep? Not thus, in ancient days of Caledon,

Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd, When lay of hopeless love, or glory won, Aroused the fearful or subdued the proud.

At each according pause was heard aloud
Thine ardent symphony sublime and high!
Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bowed;
For still the burden of thy minstrelsy

Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's matchless eye.

O, wake once more! how rude soe'er the hand
That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray;

O, wake once more! though scarce my skill command
Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay:
Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away,
And all unworthy of thy nobler strain,

Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway,

The wizard note has not been touched in vain. Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake again! SIR WALTER SCOTT.

MARCO BOZZARIS.

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"Strike-till the last armed foe expires; Strike-for your altars and your fires; Strike-for the green graves of your sires, God, and your native land!"

They fought, like brave men, long and well; They piled the ground with Moslem slain; They conquered, but Bozzaris fell,

Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw

His smile, when rang their proud hurrah,

And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close,
Calmly, as to a night's repose,

Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
Which close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake's shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm
With banquet-song, and dance, and wine,
And thou art terrible: the tear,

The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear

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,
And in its hollow tones are heard

The thanks of millions yet to be.

Come when his task of fame is wrought;
Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought;
Come in her crowning hour-and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men;
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh

To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind, from woods of palm,
And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
Bozzaris! with the storied brave

Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee; there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume,
Like torn branch from death's leafless tree,
In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,
The heartless luxury of the tomb.

But she remembers thee as one
Long loved, and for a season gone.
For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday bells;
Of thee her babes' first lisping tells;
For thine her evening prayer is said
At palace couch and cottage bed.
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears.

And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys,—
And even she who gave thee birth,—
Will, by her pilgrim-circled hearth,

Talk of thy doom without a sigh;
For thou art freedom's now, and fame's,-
One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

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LOVE OF LIBERTY.

O

FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful and successful war,

Might never reach me more. My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man, the natural bond

Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own; and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else

Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she seees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave,

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
WILLIAM COWPER.

THE SOURCE OF PARTY WISDOM.

HAVE seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its smooth surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the level from which to measure all terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people when our enthusiasm has passed. When the emotions of this hour have subsided we shall find that calm level of public opinion below the storm, from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which their final action will be determined. Not here in this brilliant circle, where fifteen thousand men and women are assembled, is the destiny of the Republican party to be declared. Not here, where I see the faces of seven hundred and fifty-six delegates waiting to cast their votes in the urn and determine the choice of the republic, but by four million Republican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by the love of home and country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and a knowledge of the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by-there God prepares the verdict that shall determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heats of June, but in the sober quiet that comes to them between now and November; in the silence of deliberate judgment will the great question be settled.

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A CURSE ON THE TRAITOR.

FOR a tongue to curse the slave,

Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave,

And blasts them in their hour of might! May life's unblesséd cup for him Be drugged with treacheries to the brim, With hopes that but allure to fly,

With joys that vanish while he sips, Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye, But turn to ashes on the lips.

His country's curse, his children's shame,
Outcast of virtue, peace, and fame;
May he, at last, with lips of flame
On the parched desert, thirsting, die,—
While lakes, that shone in mockery nigh,
Are fading off, untouched, untasted,
Like the once glorious hopes he blasted!
And when from earth his spirit flies,
Just Prophet, let the damned one dwell
Full in the sight of Paradise,
Beholding heaven, and feeling hell!

THOMAS MOORE.

DOWNFALL OF POLAND.

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He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed
His trusty warriors, few, but undismayed;
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death!--the watchword and reply;
Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm!—
In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few!
From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew:-
O, bloodiest picture in the book of Time,
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime;
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!

Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,

Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career;
Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shrieked, as Kosciusko fell.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

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