Crown Jewels: Or Gems of Literature, Art and Music ; Being Choice Selections ...

He stood there still with a drooping brow,

And clasped hands o'er it raised ;For his father lay before him low,

It was Cœur de Lion gazed!

And silently he strove

With the workings of his breast; But there's more in late repentant love

Than steel may keep suppressed!

And his tears brake forth at last like rain

Men held their breath in awe,

For his face was seen by his warrior-train, And he recked not that they saw.

He looked upon the dead,
And sorrow seemed to lie--

A weight of sorrow, even like lead,
Pale on the fast-shut eye.

He stooped-and kissed the frozen cheek,
And the heavy hand of clay,

Till bursting words-yet all too weak-
Gave his soul's passion way.

"Oh, father! is it vain,

This late remorse and deep? Speak to me, father! once again, I weep-behold, I weep!

Alas! my guilty pride and ire!

Were but this work undone,

I would give England's crown, my sire!
To hear thee bless thy son.

"Speak to me! mighty grief
Ere now the dust hath stirred!
Hear me, but hear me !-father, chief,
My king! I must be heard!
Hushed, hushed-how is it that I call,
And that thou answerest not?
When was it thus, woe, woe for all
The love my soul forgot!

"Thy silver hairs I see,

So still, so sadly bright!

And father, father! but for me,

They had not been so white!

I bore thee down, high heart! at last, No longer couldst thou strive ;

Oh, for one moment of the past,

To kneel and say-' Forgive!'

"Thou wert the noblest king On royal throne ere seen ;

And thou didst wear in knightly ring,

Of all, the stateliest mien;

And thou didst prove, where spears are proved, In war, the bravest heart

Oh, ever the renowned and loved

Thou wert-and there thou art!

"Thou that my boyhood's guide Didst take fond joy to be!

The times I've sported at thy side,

And climbed thy parent knee! And there before the blessed shrine, My sire! I see thee lieHow will that sad still face of thine Look on me till I die!"

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS

FARRAGUT.

FTER life's long watch and ward
Sleep, great sailor, while the bard
Chants your daring. When, of late,
Tempest shook the bark of State,
Fierce and deadly, throe on throe,
Horrid with a phosphor-glow,
And the mountains rearing gray
Smote her reeling on her way-

Day and night who stood a guard,
Steadfast aye for watch and ward?
You, great Pilot, who were made
Quick and cautious, bold and staid;
Like Decatur, Perry, Jones,
Mastering men with trumpet tones.
How you met your land's appeal
Knows New Orleans, knows Mobile.
Slumber, free from watch or ward,
Dweller deep in grassy yard
Of still billows! Keep your berth
Narrow in the quiet earth!
As of old the north star shines,
Heaven displays the ancient signs,
On the ship drives, sure and slow,
Though the Captain sleeps below.

Only sleeps upon his sword;

Slumbers earned by watch and ward;
For if timbers crack, and helm
Fail her, and a sea o'erwhelm,
Then His Spirit shall inform
Some new queller of the storm,
Who shall bring, though stars are pale,
The bark in safety through the gale.
CHARLES DE KAY.

ROBERT BURNS

TOP, mortal! Here thy brother lies-
The poet of the poor.

His books were rivers, woods, and skies
The meadow and the moor;

His teachers were the torn heart's wail,
The tyrant, and the slave,

The street, the factory, the jail,
The palace and the grave!

Sin met thy brother everywhere!
And is thy brother blamed?
From passion, danger, doubt, and care
He no exemption claimed.

The meanest thing, earth's feeblest worm,

He feared to scorn or hate;

But, honoring in a peasant's form

The equal of the great,

He blessed the steward, whose wealth makes
The poor man's little more;

Yet loathed the haughty wretch that takes
From plundered labor's store.

A hand to do, a head to plan,

A heart to feel and dare

Tell man's worst foes, here lies the man

Who drew them as they are.

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

NAPOLEON.

MORE or less than man-in high or low, Battling with nations, flying from the field: Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool,

now

More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield:
An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor
However deeply in men's spirits skilled,

Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war, Nor learn that tempted fate will leave the loftiest star.

Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide
With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.

When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,

To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled With a sedate and all-enduring eye

When fortune fled her spoiled and favorite child,
He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.

He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,

And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.
LORD BYRON.

BEN JONSON.

IS learning such, no author, old or new, Escaped his reading that deserved his view; And such his judgment, so exact his taste, Of what was best in books, or what books best, That had he joined those notes his labors took From each most praised and praise-deserving book, And could the world of that choice treasure boast, It need not care though all the rest were lost.

LUCIUS CARY (Lord Falkland).

DANTE.

EACE dwells not here this rugged face
Betrays no spirit of repose;

The sullen warrior sole we trace,
The marble man of many woes.
Such was his mien when first arose
The thought of that strange tale divine-
When hell he peopled with his foes,
The scourge of many a guilty line.

O time! whose verdicts mock our own
The only righteous judge art thou;
That poor, old exile, sad and lone,
Is Latium's other Virgil now.
Before his name the nations bow;
His words are parcel of mankind,
Deep in whose hearts, as on his brow,
The marks have sunk of Dante's mind.
THOMAS WILLIAM PARDON

JOHN MILTON.

'HREE poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.
JOHN DRYDEN

TO SHAKESPEARE.

T length, Olympian lord of morn,
The raven veil of night was torn,

When through golden clouds descending,
Thou didst hold thy radiant flight,

O'er nature's lovely pageant bending,

Till Avon rolled, all sparkling, to tny sight!

There, on its bank, beneath the mulberry's shade,
Wrapped in young dreams, a wild-eyed minstrel played,
Lighting there and lingering long,
Thou didst teach the bard his song;

Thy fingers strung his sleeping shell,
And round his brows a garland curled;
On his lips thy spirit fell,

And bade him wake and warm the worki

Then Shakespeare rose !
Across the trembling strings

His daring hand he flings,

And lo! a new creation flows!

There, clustering round, submissive to his wir
Fate's vassal train his high commands fulfill.-

O thou! to whose creative power
We dedicate the festal hour,

While grace and goodness round the altar stand, Learning's anointed train, and beauty's rose-lipped band

Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown,
Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own.

Deep in the West as independence roves,
His banners planting round the land he loves,
Where nature sleeps in Eden's infant grace,
In time's full hour shall spring a glorious race.
Thy name, thy verse, thy language, shall they bear,
And deck for thee the vaulted temple there.
Our Roman-hearted fathers broke
Thy parent empire's galling yoke;
But thou, harmonious master of the mind,
Around their sons a gentle chain shall bind ;
Once more in thee shall Albion's sceptre wave,

Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urges all by chance;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.

But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill-fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin : Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spencer, or bid Beaumont lie

A little further off, to make thee room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,

And what her monarch lost her monarch-bard shall And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

save.

CHARLES SPrague.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

HAT! Irving! thrice welcome, warm heart
and fine brain!

You bring back the happiest spirit from
Spain,

And the gravest sweet humor that ever was there
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair.
Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching,
I shan't run directly against my own preaching,
And, having just laughed at their Raphaëls and Dantes,
Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes;
But allow me to speak what I honestly feel;—
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,
Throw in all of Addison minus the chill,

That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,
I mean with great but disproportioned Muses:
For if I thought my judgement were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyle outshine,
Or sporting Kyd or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou had small Latin and less Greek,
From thence to honor thee I will not seek
For names; but call forth thundering Eschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,
To live again, to hear thy buskin tread,
And shake a stage: or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all, that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.

With the whole of that partnership's stock and good He was not of an age, but for all time!
will,

Mix well, and, while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell,
The "fine old English gentleman ;"--simmer it well:
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain :

Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives

And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury, to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,

From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
leaves;

And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving
A name either English or Yankee—just Irving.

TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED MASTER,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, AND WHAT HE

HATH LEFT US.

O draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such

The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,

Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please:
But antiquated and deserted lie,

As they were not of nature's family.
Yet must I not give nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvii; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame;

As neither man nor Muse can praise too Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn;

much.

'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these would light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;

For a good poet's made as well as born.
And such were thou! Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well turned and true filed lines:

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage
Which since thy flight from hence hath mourred like
night,

And despairs day, but for thy volume's light!

BEN JONSON.

EPITAPH ON SHAKESPEARE.

HAT needs my Shakespeare for his honored
bones,

The labor of an age in pilèd stones?

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a starry-pointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
JOHN MILTON.

MARIUS.

High thoughts may seem, 'mid passion's strife,
Like Carthage in decay.

And proud hopes in the human heart

May be to ruin hurled,

Like mouldering monuments of art
Heaped on a sleeping world.

Yet there is something will not die,

Where life hath once been fair;

Some towering thoughts still rear on high,
Some Roman lingers there!

LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

SUFFERINGS AND DESTINY OF THE
PILGRIMS.

ETHINKS I see it now, that one solitary, ad. venturous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wishedfor shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy wave. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing

Suggested by a painting by Vanderlyn, of Marius seated among their all but desperate undertaking, and landed, at last,

the ruins of Carthage.

ILLARS are fallen at thy feet,

Fanes quiver in the air,

A prostrate city is thy seat-
And thou alone art there.

No change comes o'er thy noble brow,
Though ruin is around thee;
Thine eye-beam burns as proudly now,
As when the laurel crowned thee.
It cannot bend thy lofty soul,

Though friends and fame depart;
The car of fate may o'er thee roll,
Nor crush thy Roman heart.

And genius hath electric power,

Which earth can never tame;

Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower—
Its flash is still the same.

The dreams we loved in early life

May melt like mist away;

after a few months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth-weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, without shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut, now, the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probabi ity, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers? Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this! Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labor and spare meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk ? was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching, in its last moments, at the recollection of the loved and

left, beyond the sea?-was it some or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope! Is it possible that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious! EDWARD EVERETT

LEATHER STOCKING."

These lines refer to the good wishes which Elizabeth, in Mr. Cooper's novel "The Pioneers," seems to have manifested, in the last chapter, for the welfare of "Leather Stocking," when he signified, at the grave of the Indian, his determination to quit the settlements of men for the unexplored forests of the West, and when, whistling to his dogs, with his rifle on his shoulder, and his pack on his back, he left the village of Templeton.

YAR away from the hillside, the lake and the hamlet,

The rock, and the brook, and yon meadow so gay;

From the footpath that winds by the side of the streamlet;

From his hut, and the grave of his friend, far awayHe is gone where the footsteps of men never ventured, Where the glooms of the wild-tangled forest are centred,

Where no beam of the sun or the sweet moon has entered,

No bloodhound has roused up the deer with his bay. Light be the heart of the poor lonely wanderer; Firm be his step through each wearisome mileFar from the cruel man, far from the plunderer, Far from the track of the mean and the vile.

And when death, with the last of its terrors, assails him,

And all but the last throb of memory fails him,
He'll think of the friend, far away, that bewails him,
And light up the cold touch of death with a smile.
And there shall the dew shed its sweetness and lustre;
There for his pall shall the oak-leaves be spread—
The sweet brier shall bloom, and the wild grape shall
cluster;

And o'er him the leaves of the ivy be shed,
There shall they mix with the fern and the heather;
There shall the young eagle shed its first feather;
The wolves, with his wild dogs, shall lie there together,
And moan o'er the spot where the hunter is laid.
JOHN G. C. Brainard.

THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ.

May 28, 1857.

T was fifty years ago,

In the pleasant month of May, In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,

A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took

The child upon her knee, Saying, "Here is a story-book

Thy Father has written for thee."

"Come, wander with me," she said,

"Into regions yet untrod,
And read what is still unread

In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day

The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,

She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.

So she keeps him still a child,
And will not let him go,
Though at times his heart beats wild
For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;

Though at times he hears in his dreams
The Ranz des Vaches of old,
And the rush of mountain streams
From glaciers clear and cold;

And the mother at home says, "Hark!
For his voice I listen and yearn.

It is growing late and dark,

And my boy does not return!"

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW,

A PANEGYRIC TO OLIVER CROMWELL.

HILE with a strong and yet a gentle hand,
You bridle faction, and our hearts command,
Protect us from ourselves, and from the foe,
Make us unite, and make us conquer too;

Let partial spirits still aloud complain,
Think themselves injured that they cannot reign,
And own no liberty, but where they may
Without control upon their fellows prey.

Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face,
To chide the winds, and save the Trojan race,
So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition tossing us repressed.

Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restored by you, is made a glorious state;
The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scots, to fetch their doom.

The sea's our own; and now all nations greet,
With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet;
Your power extends as far as winds can blow,
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.

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