Interpreter in actions

Of the world's best thought;
Spurner of our factions,

Though we heeded not,

Thy faith was not for hire, thy patriotism unbought.

Alone, but not lonely.

Thou thy path hast trod,
Striving, ever, only,

For the right and good,

And won at last thy goal, thou iron man of God.

Like a lonely beacon

On a desert shore,

Breasting though forsaken,

Winds' and waters' roar,

Thou didst front the storm, and its rage in silence bore.

Like a true-born sailor,

Whom no perils check,
Didst thou faint or fail or

Quit the sinking wreck,

Or calm and unaffrayed tread still the shuddering deck?

Like a sentry lonely

At the foremost post,
Gazing forward only

On the hostile host,

While all behind were fleeing; thou wert doubly lost.

Living, thou wert singing

This life's sweetest strain

And all heaven bringing

To a world in pain

Through want of faith to see when prophets come

again.

Still we hear thee singing
Of the higher life,

Still thy true notes ringing

Through our jarring strife

Thrill us into action, though doubts and fears are rife,

The music of mountains

In still lutes may grow,
The melody of fountains

From fair lips may flow;

But when we hear thy song our hearts must overflow.

THE LOWERED FLAG.

SHE is outward bound; she has left the Sound;
She is far in the open sea;

And the Western gale, it has filled her sail;
Was never a bark more free.

The wind was strong, and it drave her along
Ten days and nights before it ;

And, gathering black on her silvery track,
The wrath of heaven fell o'er it.

All day through the wrack of that tempest black
Like a frighted hind she flew ;
Nor ever a gleam, ahead or abeam,
The sun on the wild waves threw.

Nor ever a sound, above or around,
Save of wind and waters frantic,

The sea-mew has fled from the storm, in dread
Of the wrathful mid-Atlantic.

Yet she hurries on through the storm alone;
She has laughed at its wrath before;
And in glee she leaps down the billowy steeps
A hundred feet or more.

And the dauntless crew laugh loud as they view
The white waves vainly chasing;

And she seems to spring, like a living thing,
From a monster's rude embracing.

'Tis the calm they dread, when the winds are dead,

And the skies are bright and fair,

And the misery of a glassy sea,

The sun and his steadfast stare.

For the skipper's form in the writhing storm
Was calm as a saint's might be;

And the leaping spray on the deck did play
Like children about his knee.

Rough-hewn and rude as the rock that stood
At the wind-swept foreland's base;

The hand of the storm had fashioned his form
And the skipper's rugged face..

The winds are gone, but the ship moves on
Like a white and sheeted ghost;

And a deep mist fell on the heaving swell,
Two days from the English coast.

The winds are gone, but the ship moves on
Two days in a weary dream,

She rose and fell on the heaving swell,
Like a weed on the warm Gulf Stream.

She drifted on in the mist alone,

Nor ever the sea-mew cried;

Like a sleeper distraught with a dominant thought
She obeyed the resistless tide.

Nor ever a sound, above or around,
Save from the lapping tide;

With a fearful oath and a sudden bound,
The skipper was at her side.

"Now, by my soul, 'tis the Dungeon Shoal,
Ten miles from the English land;

And never a ship has escaped from the grip
Of its soft but cruel sand.

"She is on the shoal, and, by my soul,
Like a hand upon her keel,

I feel its grip on the good old ship,
The deadly grip I feel.

"I prayed last night for the storm in its might To come on the southern wind;

And the distant gale, it has touched her sail, It is but a league behind.”

Then the mist behind was rent by the wind,

And the storm came struggling through; It tugged and strove with the sails above, And the sand with the keel below.

One hour and more the wild wind bore
The helpless ship before it;

Her sails were rent, and the mainmast bent
Till the crested foam flew o'er it.

From stern to stem, in a furious stream,
The following waves ran free;
But the skipper stood in the raging flood,
Alone at the helm stood he.

And the gentle hand of the cruel sand,
Like a vice beneath her lay;
The velvet hand of the deadly sand
Has closed upon its prey.

It draws her down to a depth unknown;
No power on earth can move her,
For the hand of Death is tugging beneath,
And the ruthless winds above her.

"Yo ho, Yo ho, on the starboard bow A good ship stands us by;

She lowers a boat, it is now afloat.”

From the cross-trees came the cry.