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See! to the breaking mast the sailor clings;
Ye scoop the ocean to its briny springs,
And take the mountain billow on your wings,
And pile the wreck of navies round the bay.

Why rage ye thus ?—No strife for liberty

Has made you mad; no tyrant, strong through fear, Has chained your pinions, till ye wrenched them free, And rushed into the unmeasured atmosphere: For ye were born in freedom wherc ye blow; Free o'er the mighty deep to come and go;

Earth's solemn woods were yours, her wastes of snow,
Her isles where summer blossoms all the year.

O ye wild winds! a mightier power than yours
In chains upon the shores of Europe lies;
The sceptred throng, whose fetters he endures,
Watch his mute throes with terror in their eyes :
And armed warriors all around him stand,
And, as he struggles, tighten every band,
And lift the heavy spear, with threatening hand,
To pierce the victim, should he strive to rise.

Yet Oh, when that wronged spirit of our race
Shall break, as soon he must, his long-worn chains,
And leap in freedom from his prison-place,

Lord of his ancient hills and fruitful plains,
Let him not rise, like these mad winds of air,
To waste the loveliness that time could spare,
To fill the earth with woe, and blot her fair

Unconscious breast with blood from human veins.

But may he, like the spring-time, come abroad,
Who crumbles winter's gyves with gentle might,
When in the genial breeze, the breath of God,

Come spouting up the unsealed springs to light;
Flowers start from their dark prisons at his feet,
The woods, long dumb, awake to hymnings sweet,
And morn and eve, whose glimmerings almost meet,
Crowd back to narrow bounds the ancient night.

O MOTHER OF A MIGHTY RACE.

Ò MOTHER of a mighty race,
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!
The elder dames, thy haughty peers,
Admire and hate thy blooming years.
With words of shame

And taunts of scorn they join thy name.

For on thy cheeks the glow is spread
That tints the morning hills with red;
Thy step-the wild deer's rustling feet
Within thy woods are not more fleet;
Thy hopeful eye

Is bright as thine own sunny sky.

Ay, let them rail-those haughty ones-
While safe thou dwellest with thy sons.
They do not know how loved thou art-
How many a fond and fearless heart
Would rise to throw

Its life between thee and the foe!

They know not, in their hate and pride,
What virtues with thy children bide ;
How true, how good, thy graceful maids
Make bright, like flowers, the valley-shades;
What generous men

Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen :

What cordial welcomes greet the guest
By the lone rivers of the west;
How faith is kept, and truth revered,
And man is loved, and God is feared,
In woodland homes,

And where the solemn ocean foams!

There's freedom at thy gates, and rest
For earth's down-trodden and oppressed,
A shelter for the hunted head,

For the starved labourer toil and bread.
Power, at thy bounds,

Stops and calls back his baffled hounds.

O fair young mother! on thy brow
Shall sit a nobler grace than now.
Deep in the brightness of thy skies
The thronging years in glory rise,
And, as they fleet,

Drop strength and riches at thy feet.

Thine eye, with every coming hour,
Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower;
And when thy sisters, elder born,

Would brand thy name with words of scorn,
Before thine eye,

Upon their lips the taunt shall die!

THE RIVULET.

THIS little rill that from the springs
Of yonder grove its current brings,
Plays on the slope a while, and then
Goes prattling into groves again,
Oft to its warbling waters drew
My little feet, when life was new.
When woods in early green were dressed,
And from the chambers of the west
The warmer breezes, travelling out,
Breathed the new scent of flowers about,
My truant steps from home would stray,
Upon its grassy side to play,

List the brown thrasher's vernal hymn,
And crop the violet on its brim,
With blooming cheek and open brow,
As young and gay, sweet rill, as thou.

And when the days of boyhood came,
And I had grown in love with fame,

Duly I sought thy banks, and tried.
My first rude numbers by thy side.
Words cannot tell how bright and gay
The scenes of life before me lay.
Then glorious hopes, that now to speak
Would bring the blood into my cheek,
Passed o'er me; and I wrote, on high,
A name I deemed should never die.

Years change thee not. Upon yon hill
The tall old maples, verdant still,
Yet tell, in grandeur of decay,
How swift the years have passed away,
Since first, a child and half-afraid,
I wandered in the forest-shade.
Thou, ever-joyous rivulet,

Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet;
And sporting with the sands that pave
The windings of thy silver wave,
And dancing to thy own wild chime,
Thou laughest at the lapse of time.
The same sweet sounds are in my ear
My early childhood loved to hear;
As pure thy limpid waters run,
As bright they sparkle to the sun;
As fresh and thick the bending ranks
Of herbs that line thy oozy banks;
The violet there, in soft May dew,
Comes up, as modest and as blue;
As green amid thy current's stress
Floats the scarce-rooted water-cress;
And the brown ground-bird, in thy glen,
Still chirps as merrily as then.

Thou changest not-but I am changed, Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged; And the grave stranger, come to see The play-place of his infancy,

Has scarce a single trace of him

Who sported once upon thy brim.

The visions of my youth are past—
Too bright, too beautiful to last.
I've tried the world-it wears no more
The colouring of romance it wore.
Yet well has Nature kept the truth
She promised to my earliest youth:
The radiant beauty, shed abroad
On all the glorious works of Cod,
Shows freshly, to my sobered eye,
Each charm it wore in days gone by.

A few brief years shall pass away, And I, all trembling, weak, and grey, Bowed to the earth, which waits to fold My ashes in the embracing mould, (If haply the dark will of fate Indulge my life so long a date) May come for the last time to look Upon my childhood's favourite brook. Then dimly on my eye shall gleam The sparkle of thy dancing stream; And faintly on my ear shall fall Thy prattling current's merry call; Yet shalt thou flow as glad and bright As when thou met'st my infant sight.

And I shali sleep-and on thy side, As ages after ages glide.

Children their early sports shall try,
And pass to hoary age, and die.

But thou, unchanged from year to year,
Gayly shalt play and glitter here;
Amid young flowers and tender grass
Thy endless infancy shalt pass;
And, singing down thy narrow glen,
Shalt mock the fading race of men.

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