And Honor joined the patriot ring

Low on their wooden bench.

O bounteous seas that never fail!
O day remembered yet!

O happy port that spied the sail
Which wafted Lafayette!

Pole-star of light in Europe's night,

That never faltered from the right.

Kings shook with fear, old empires crave

The secret force to find

Which fired the little State to save

The rights of all mankind.

But right is might through all the world;
Province to province faithful clung,

Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled,

Till Freedom cheered and the joy-bells rung.

The sea returning day by day

Restores the world-wide mart;

So let each dweller on the Bay

Fold Boston in his heart,

Till these echoes be choked with snows,

Or over the town blue ocean flows.

Let the blood of her hundred thousands
Throb in each manly vein;

And the wit of all her wisest,

Make sunshine in her brain.

For you can teach the lightning speech,
And round the globe your voices reach.

And each shall care for other,

And each to each shall bend,

To the poor a noble brother,
To the good an equal friend.

A blessing through the ages thus
Shield all thy roofs and towers!
God with the fathers, so with us,
Thou darling town of ours!

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

April 18, 1775.

L

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

This poem is the "Landlord's Tale," the first of the "Tales of a Wayside Inn."

ISTEN, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal-light,
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said, Good night! and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison-bar,

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

To the belfry-chamber overhead,

And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,-
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went

Creeping along from tent to tent,

And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"

A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;

For suddenly all his thoughts are bent