Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains,—
A fallen angel’s pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies.
The man is dead!
Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!
J.G. WHITTIER.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
Southward with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and fast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his
breath.
His lordly ships of ice
Glisten in the sun;
On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets
run.
His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o’er
the main.
Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind
failed.
Alas! the land-wind failed,
And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the
light.
He sat upon the deck,
The Book was in his hand;
“Do not fear! Heaven is as
near,”
He said, “by water as
by land!”
In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal’s sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,
The fleet of Death rose all
around.
The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing
clouds.
They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.
Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace,
With mist and rain, o’er the open
main;
Yet there seems no change
of place.
Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and
day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf Stream
Sinking, vanish all away.
H.W. LONGFELLOW.
Concord Hymn.
Sung at the completion of the Battle Monument, April 19, 1836.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s
breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round
the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent
sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which
seaward creeps.