Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides
Thy glorious flag, our brave Old Ironsides!

From yon lone attic, on a summer's morn,

Thus mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn.

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

And

Long has it waved on high,

many an eye

has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

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,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,

No more shall feel the victor's tread,

Or know the conquered knee ;

The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

O better that her shattered hulk

Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;

Nail to the mast her holy flag,

Set every threadbare sail,

And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

III.

When florid Peace resumed her golden reign, And arts revived, and valleys bloomed again; While War still panted on his broken blade, Once more the Muse her heavenly wing essayed. Rude was the song; some ballad, stern and wild, Lulled the light slumbers of the soldier's child; Or young romancer with his threatening glance And fearful fables of his bloodless lance, Scared the soft fancy of the clinging girls, Whose snowy fingers smoothed his raven curls. But when long years the stately form had bent, And faithless memory her illusions lent,

So vast the outlines of Tradition grew,
That History wondered at the shapes she drew,
And veiled at length their too ambitious hues
Beneath the pinions of the Epic Muse.

Far swept her wing; for stormier days had brought With darker passions deeper tides of thought.

The camp's harsh tumult and the conflict's glow,
The thrill of triumph and the gasp of woe,
The tender parting and the glad return,
The festal banquet and the funeral urn, -
And all the drama which at once uprears
Its spectral shadows through the clash of spears,
From camp and field to echoing verse transferred,
Swelled the proud song that listening nations heard.

Why floats the amaranth in eternal bloom
O'er Ilium's turrets and Achilles' tomb?
Why lingers fancy, where the sunbeams smile
On Circe's gardens and Calypso's isle ?
Why follows memory to the gate of Troy
Her plumed defender and his trembling boy?
Lo the blind dreamer, kneeling on the sand,
To trace these records with his doubtful hand;

In fabled tones his own emotion flows,
And other lips repeat his silent woes;

In Hector's infant see the babes that shun
Those deathlike eyes, unconscious of the sun,
Or in his hero hear himself implore,

"Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more!"

Thus live undying through the lapse of time The solemn legends of the warrior's clime; Like Egypt's pyramid, or Pæstum's fane, They stand the heralds of the voiceless plain; Yet not like them, for Time, by slow degrees, Saps the gray stone, and wears the chiselled frieze, And Isis sleeps beneath her subject Nile, And crumbled Neptune strews his Dorian pile; But Art's fair fabric, strengthening as it rears Its laurelled columns through the mist of years, As the blue arches of the bending skies Still gird the torrent, following as it flies, Spreads, with the surges bearing on mankind, Its starred pavilion o'er the tides of mind!

In vain the patriot asks some lofty lay
To dress in state our wars of yesterday.
The classic days, those mothers of romance,
That roused a nation for a woman's glance;

The

age

of mystery

with its hoarded power,

That girt the tyrant in his storied tower,

Have past and faded like a dream of youth,
And riper eras ask for history's truth.

On other shores, above their mouldering towns, In sullen pomp the tall cathedral frowns,

Pride in its aisles, and paupers at the door,

Which feeds the beggars whom it fleeced of yore.

Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw

Their slender shadows on the paths below;

Scarce steal the winds, that sweep his woodland tracks,

The larch's perfume from the settler's axe,

Ere, like a vision of the morning air,

His slight-framed steeple marks the house of prayer; Its planks all reeking, and its paint undried,

Its rafters sprouting on the shady side,

It sheds the raindrops from its shingled eaves,

Ere its green brothers once have changed their leaves.

Yet Faith's pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude,
Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood,
As where the rays through blazing oriels pour
On marble shaft and tessellated floor; ·

Heaven asks no surplice round the heart that feels,
And all is holy where devotion kneels.