Rise with the river, with the torrent swell, And at the cataract's dizzy, headlong leap, Break forth in solemn and deep bursts of song.

Yet what is all this deep, perpetual sound, These voices of the earth, and sea, and air,

That make it seem to us, as if our Earth,
Into the silent and unruffled deep
Led forth, with thunder-step, the choir of
worlds?

All these, what are they?-in the boundless void,

An insect's whisper in the ear of night,
A voice in that of death, — in thine, O God,
A faint symphony to Heaven ascending
Amid ten thousand, thousand songs of
praise.

Break forth, ye Winds !

That in the impalpable deep caves of air,

Moving your silent plumes, in dreams of flight,

Tumultuous lie, and from your halfstretched wings

Beat the faint zephyrs that disturb the air;

Break forth, ye fiercer harmonies, ye
Storms

That in the cavernous and unquiet sea
Lie pent, and like imprisoned thunders
beat
Your azure

moan;

confines, making endless

All sounds, all harmonies, break forth! and be

To these my thoughts and aspirations, voice;

Rise, rise, not bearing, but upborne by them,

-

Rise through the golden gates uplift and wide!

In, through the everlasting doors! and join The multitude of multitudes whose praise With mighty burst of full accordant sound Moves Heaven's whole fabric vast,

move the clouds

as

That from their swinging censers upward pour,

By wings of hovering seraphim disturbed, A sound so deep and loud, that at its might

The pillared heavens would fail, and all their frame

Of ancient strength and grandeur sink at

FROM AN "ODE TO ENGLAND"

And worthy art thou wind

- whether like the

KEATS

O GOLD Hyperion, love-lorn Porphyro, Ill-fated from thine orbed fire struck back

Just as the parting clouds began to glow,

And stars, like sparks, to bicker in thy track!

Alas! throw down, throw down, ye mighty dead,

The leaves of oak and asphodel That ye were weaving for that honored head,

In vain, in vain, your lips would seek a spell

In the few charmëd words the poet sung, To lure him upward in your seats to dwell,

As vain your grief! Oh! why should one so young

Sit crowned midst hoary heads with wreaths divine?

Though to his lips Hymettus' bees had clung,

His lips shall never taste the immortal

wine,

Who sought to drain the glowing cup too

soon,

For he hath perished, and the moon
Hath lost Endymion - but too well

The shaft that pierced him in her arms was sped:

Into that gulf of dark and nameless dread,

Star-like he fell, but a wide splendor

shed

Through its deep night, that kindled as he

fell.

WORDSWORTH

And Thou! whom earth still holds, and will not yield

To join the mighty brotherhood of ghosts,

Who, when their lips upon the earth are sealed,

Sing in the presence of the Lord of
Hosts:

Thou that, when first my quickened ear
Thy deeper harmonies might hear,
I imaged to myself as old and blind,
For so were Milton and Mæonides!

Rousing its might among the forest

trees,

Thou sing of mountain and of flood,
The voiceful thunder of the seas,
With all their inland symphonies,

Their thousand brooks and rills;
The vale's deep voice, the roaring wood,
The ancient silence of the hills,
Sublimer still than these;
Or in devotion's loftier mood,

Like a solemn organ tone

In some vast minster heard alone, Feelings that are thoughts inspire; Or, with thy hand upon the lyre High victories to celebrate,

Summon from its strings the throng Of stately numbers intricate

That swell the impetuous tide of song.
O Bard, of soul assured and high,
And god-like calm! we look on thee
With like serene and awful eye,

As when, of such divinity
Still credulous, the multitude
One in the concourse might behold,
Whose statue in his life-time stood
Among the gods. O Poet, old

In all the years of future time!
But young in the perpetual youth
And bloom of love, and might of truth,
To these thy least ambitious rhyme

Is faithful, and partakes their worth; Yea, true as is the starry chime

To the great strains the sun gives
forth.

Bard of our Time! thy name we see,
By golden-haired Mnemosyne,

-

First graved upon its full-writ page, "Thee last relinquished, whom the Age

Doth yield to Immortality.

Though blind, a never silent guide
Flowed with her timid feet along;
And down she wandered by its side
To hear the running song.

And sometimes it was soft and low,
A creeping music in the ground;
And then, if something checked its flow,
A gurgling swell of sound.

And now, upon the other side,

She seeks her mother's cot;
And still the noise shall be her guide,
And lead her to the spot.

For to the blind, so little free

To move about beneath the sun, Small things like this seem liberty, Something from darkness won.

But soon she heard a meeting stream,
And on the bank she followed still,
It murmured on, nor could she tell
It was another rill.

"Ah! whither, whither, my little maid? And wherefore dost thou wander here?" "I seek my mother's cot," she said, "And surely it is near.'

"There is no cot upon this brook,

In yonder mountains dark and drear, Where sinks the sun, its source it took, Ah, wherefore art thou here?"

"O sir, thou art not true nor kind!

It is the brook, I know its sound.
Ah! why would you deceive the blind?
I hear it in the ground."

And on she stepped, but grew more sad,
And weary were her tender feet,
The brook's small voice seemed not so
glad,

Its song was not so sweet.

"Ah! whither, whither, my little maid? And wherefore dost thou wander here?" "I seek my mother's cot," she said,

"And surely it is near."

"There is no cot upon this brook." "I hear its sound," the maid replied, With dreamlike and bewildered look, "I have not left its side."

"O go with me, the darkness nears,

The first pale stars begin to gleam." The maid replied with bursting tears,

"It is the stream! it is the stream!"

ON THE DEFEAT OF A GREAT MAN

FALLEN? How fallen? States and empires fall;

O'er towers and rock-built walls, And perished nations, floods to tempests call

With hollow sound along the sea of time: The great man never falls.

He lives, he towers aloft, he stands sublime:

They fall who give him not

The honor here that suits his future name,
They die and are forgot.

O Giant loud and blind! the great man's fame

Is his own shadow, and not cast by thee,A shadow that shall grow

As down the heaven of time the sun de

How the guns, as with cheer and shout
Our tackle-men hurled them out,
Brought up on the water-ways!

First, as we fired at their flash,

'T was lightning and black eclipse, With a bellowing roll and crash; But soon, upon either bow,

What with forts, and fire-rafts, and ships,

(The whole fleet was hard at it now,
All pounding away!) and Porter
Still thundering with shell and mortar,
'T was the mighty sound and form
Of an equatorial storm!

(Such you see in the Far South,
After long heat and drouth,
As day draws nigh to even:
Arching from North to South,
Blinding the tropic sun,

The great black bow comes on,
Till the thunder-veil is riven,
When all is crash and levin,
And the cannonade of heaven
Rolls down the Amazon!)

But, as we worked along higher,
Just where the river enlarges,
Down came a pyramid of fire-

It was one of your long coal barges (We had often had the like before). 'T was coming down on us to larboard, Well in with the eastern shore, And our pilot, to let it pass round, (You may guess we never stopped to sound)

Giving us a rank sheer to starboard,

Ran the Flag hard and fast aground!

"T was nigh abreast of the Upper Fort, And straightway a rascal Ram (She was shaped like the devil's dam) Puffed away for us with a snort,

And shoved it with spiteful strength Right alongside of us, to port.

(It was all of our ship's length,
A huge crackling Cradle of the Pit,
Pitch-pine knots to the brim,
Belching flame red and grim)
What a roar came up from it!

Well, for a little it looked bad;

But these things are, somehow, shorter

In the acting than the telling.
There was no singing-out nor yelling,
Nor any fussing and fretting,
No stampede, in short;
But there we were, my lad,

All afire on our port quarter,
Hammocks ablaze in the netting,

Flames spouting in at every port,
Our Fourth Cutter burning at the davit,
No chance to lower away and save it.

In a twinkling the flames had risen
Halfway to maintop and mizzen,

Darting up the shrouds like snakes.
Ah, how we clanked at the brakes!
And the deep steam-pumps throbbed
under,

Sending a ceaseless flow.

Our topmen, a dauntless crowd,
Swarmed in rigging and shroud -
There, ('t was a wonder!)

The burning ratlines and strands
They quenched with their bare hard hands;
But the great guns below
Never silenced their thunder!

At last, by backing and sounding,
When we were clear of grounding,

And under headway once more,
The whole rebel fleet came rounding
The point. If we had it hot before,
"T was now, from shore to shore,
One long, loud thundering roar -
Such crashing, splintering, and pounding,
And smashing as you never heard be-
fore!

But that we fought foul wrong to wreck, And to save the Land we loved so well,

You might have deemed our long gun deck

Two hundred feet of hell!

For all above was battle,
Broadside, and blaze, and rattle,
Smoke and thunder alone;
But, down in the sick-bay,
Where our wounded and dying lay,
There was scarce a sob or a moan.

And at last, when the dim day broke,
And the sullen sun awoke,
Drearily blinking