That grows by the Beautiful River; i Or the Sillery soft and creamy;7 SAT But Catawba wine Has a taste more divine, More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy, Drugged is their juice For foreign use, When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantie, To rack our brains With the fever pains, That have driven the Old World frantie. To the sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer;" For a poison malign Is such Borgia wine, Or at best but a Devil's Elixir. While pure as a spring Is the wine I sing, And to praise it, one needs but name it; For Catawba wine Has need of no sign, No tavern-bush to proclaim it. And this Song of the Vine, The winds and the birds shall deliver In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River.. SANTA FILOMENA. WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought, The tidal wave of deeper souls Out of all meaner cares. Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, Raise us from what is low! I Thus thought I, as by night I read The wounded from the battle-plain, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, Upon the darkening walls. As if a door in heaven should be. The light shone and was spent. That light its rays shall cast A Lady with a Lamp shall stand Heroic womanhood. Nor even shall be wanting here Saint Filomena bore. To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, His figure was tall and stately, But threads of a silvery gray Gleamed in his tawny beard, do I “ Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the color of oak; As unto the King he spoke. And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Into the Arctic seas. |