On that shore, dimly seen through the mist of the deep,
    Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
  What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
    As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? 
  Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
  In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: 
  ’Tis the Star-Spangled Banner; O, long may it wave
  O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

  And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore
    That the havoc of war, and the battle’s confusion,
  A home and a country should leave us no more? 
    Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution. 
  No refuge could save the hireling and slave
  From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;
  And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave
  O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

  O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
    Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation;
  Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
    Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! 
  Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just;
  And this be our motto, “In God is our trust;”
  And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
  O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

* * * * *

=_Washington Alston, 1779-1843._= (Manual, pp. 504. 510.)

From the “Sylphs of the Seasons.”

=_325._=

  Methought, within a desert cave,
  Cold, dark, and solemn as the grave,
      I suddenly awoke. 
  It seemed of sable night the cell
  Where, save when from the ceiling fell
  An oozing drop, her silent spell
      No sound had ever broke.

  There motionless I stood alone,
  Like some strange monument of stone
      Upon a barren wild;
  Or like (so solid and profound
  The darkness seemed that walled me round)
  A man that’s buried under ground,
      Where pyramids are piled.

* * * * *

  Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene,
  “’Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween. 
      With sympathy shall move: 
  For I with living melody
  Of birds in choral symphony,
  First waked thy soul to poesy,
      To piety and love.

  “When thou, at call of vernal breeze,
  And beckoning bough of budding trees,
      Hast left thy sullen fire;
  And stretched thee in some mossy dell,
  And heard the browsing wether’s bell,
  Blithe echoes rousing from their cell
      To swell the tinkling choir: 

  “Or lured by some fresh-scented gale
  That wooed the moored fisher’s sail
      To tempt the mighty main,
  Hast watched the dim, receding shore,
  Now faintly seen the ocean o’er,
  Like hanging cloud, and now no more
      To bound the sapphire plain.