OLD IRONSIDES. BY O. W. HOLMES. AYE, tear her tattered ensign down! 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 No more shall feel the victor's tread, O better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, Nail to the mast her holy flag, And give her to the god of storms, THEY never fail who die In a great cause: the block may soak their gore, They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts The world at last to freedom. MONUMENT TO THE PILGRIMS. FROM THE NEW YORK MIRROR. SUBSCRIPTIONS are accumulating, and arrangements are rapidly progressing for the erection of a monument to the Pilgrims. The rock-ribbed earth is to be smitten, and from the quarry the snowy marble, or the grey granite is to be evoked, to swell from a durable base into a sky-piercing column, whose sides shall bear record of the peerless band, who, daring the wintry sea and the wilderness, landed centuries agone on that rock of Plymouth, which has since become a more than Caaba to millions of their descendants-millions of proud and happy freemen. Worthy object for a national monument— column, obelisk, pyramid, or temple !-worthy theme for an epic in granite or marble, in which the heroism of the truest of heroes shall be sung while the earth lasts. Let the monument go up, to the chorus of hammer and trowel, ringing their hymn of grateful industry—a strain caught from the national pulse and heart--until, crowned with its cap-stone, it shall catch the morning's smile with a music of hallowed reminiscence, sweeter than the song of Memnon. A monument to the Pilgrims! fit associate of Bunker's column, and of that temple-based shaft rising to the memory of him who led the children of the Pilgrims through the perils of revolution, to the altar of freedom. Glorious trio of triumphal piles !—triumphal, though the Pilgrims, and the day of victorious battle, and the peerless chief who led the host to victory, are past—triumphal, in that they quicken not nor brighten the names, and deeds, and memories of the illustrious deadthe living and immortal dead--but that they will stand there on Bunker's height, on Plymouth's Rock, and at the Republic's Capital, linking generations of grateful children to the heroic Fathers making them, through their gratitude, worthy of the name and fame of the Pilgrims! And yet, why should the marble rise to such as these? Why-save to honor the living, rather than the dead? Of what avail are "Storied urn and animated bust," to embalm or glorify the memories of the immortal? The rock on which they landed; the wilderness they subdued; the continent they planted; the hemisphere and world they have overspread with the splendor of their achievements--these. are the Pilgrims' monuments. The history of a New World piles their time-defying column of perils dared, of sacrifices made, of the battle fought and the victory won, until it overtops Grecian or Roman fame. A monument to the Pilgrims!--it rises from a nation's heart, spreads through a nation's proud memory, and points on and up in a nation's present pulsings and mighty future. And their name and spirit are written all over it—written in the industry and enterprise that survive them; honoring their example in the free schools, on the free altars, in the free thought and speech, and on the free soil which they bequeathed, as our priceless inheritance; and in the institutions by which they triumphed, and which are our glory and the admiration of the world, the Pilgrims have their monument, more durable than marble or granite. They will be glorified when the pyramids shall have crumbled, and the rock-piles builded to their memory are powdered under the heel of time. It is only we, their children, whom special monuments can serve. These will testify our gratitude, to our own honor, more than they can add to the immortality of our Pilgrim Fathers. FREE DO M. By the hope within us springing, By that sun, whose light is bringing Chains of freedom, death or life— O remember, life can be No charm for him who lives not free! |