He dives the hollow, climbs the steep. 
  The youth reads omens where he goes,
  And speaks all languages, the rose. 
  The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise
  The far halloo of human voice;
  The perfumed berry on the spray
  Smacks of faint memories far away. 
  A subtle chain of countless rings
  The next unto the farthest brings,
  And, striving to be man, the worm
  Mounts through all the spires of form.

* * * * *

From “Voluntaries II.”

=_359._= INSPIRATION OF DUTY.

  In an age of joys and toys,
  Wanting wisdom, void of right,
  Who shall nerve heroic boys
  To hazard all in Freedom’s fight,—­
  Break shortly off their jolly games,
  Forsake their comrades gay,
  And quit proud homes and youthful dames,
  For famine, toil, and fray? 
  Yet on the nimble air benign
  Speed nimbler messages,
  That waft the breath of grace divine
  To hearts in sloth and ease. 
  So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
  So near is God to man,
  When duty whispers low, Thou must,
  The youth replies, I can.
       * * * * *
  Stainless soldier on the walls,
  Knowing this,—­and knows no more,—­
  Whoever fights, whoever falls
  Justice conquers evermore,
  Justice after as before.—­

* * * * *

=_Thomas C. Upham,[82] 1799-1873._=

=_360._= ON A SON LOST AT SEA.

  Boy of my earlier days and hopes!  Once more,
    Dear child of memory, of love, of tears! 
  I see thee, as I saw in days of yore,
    As in thy young, and in thy lovely, years.

  The same in youthful look, the same in form;
    The same the gentle voice I used to hear;
  Though many a year hath passed, and many a storm
    Hath dashed its foam around thy cruel bier.

  Deep in the stormy ocean’s hidden cave
    Buried, and lost to human care and sight,
  What power hath interposed to rend thy grave? 
    What arm hath brought thee thus to life and light?

  I weep,—­the tears my aged cheek that stain,
    The throbs that once more swell my aching breast,
  Embodying one of anxious thought and pain,
    That wept and watched around that place of rest.

  O leave me not, my child!  Or, if it be,
    That coming thus, thou canst not longer stay,
  Yet shall this kindly visit’s mystery
    Give rise to hopes that never can decay.

  Dear cherished image from thy stormy bed! 
    Child of my early woe, and early joy! 
  ’Tis thus at last the sea shall yield her dead,
    And give again my loved, my buried boy.

[Footnote 82:  A philosophical and religious writer of much merit and earnestness; author of a volume of poems; for a long time professor of moral and mental philosophy in Bowdoin College.  A native of New Hampshire.]