Waiting, watching Nor the red Mustang, Whose clusters hang For a well-known footstep in the O'er the waves of the Colorado, And the fiery flood Of whose purple blood Has a dash of Spanish bravado. There grows no vine Drugged is their juice When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic, To rack our brains That have driven the Old World frantic. To the sewers and sinks And after them tumble the mixer ; Or at best but a Devil's Elixir. While pure as a spring And to praise it, one needs but name it; For Catawba wine Has need of no sign, And this Song of the Vine, This greeting of mine, The winds and the birds shall deliver To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River. SANTA FILOMENA.1 WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, "At Pisa the church of San Francisco contains a chapel dedicated lately to Santa Filomena; over the altar is a picture, by Sabatelli, representing the Saint as a beautiful, nymph-like figure, floating down from heaven, attended by two angels bearing the lily, palm, and javelin, and beneath, in the foreground, the sick and maimed, who are healed by her intercession."-MRS JAMESON, Sacred and Legendary Art, II. 298. The tidal wave of deeper souls Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low ! Thus thought I, as by night I read The trenches cold and damp, The wounded from the battle-plain, The cheerless corridors, Lo in that house of misery Pass through the glimmering And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, As if a door in heaven should be The vision came and went, On England's annals, through the A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood. Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore. |