She holds her even way the same,

Though navies sink or cities flame;

A snowdrop is a snowdrop still, despite the nation's joy or shame.

When blood her grassy altar wets,

She sends the pitying violets,

To heal the outrage with their bloom, and cover it with soft regrets.

WASHINGTON.

Virginia gave us this imperial man

Cast in the massive mould

Of those high-statured ages old

Which into grander forms our mortal metal ran;

She gave us this unblemished gentleman:

What shall we give her back but love and praise

As in the dear old unestranged days

Before the inevitable wrong began?

Mother of States and undiminished men,

Thou gavest us a country, giving him,

And we owe always what we owed thee then:

The boon thou wouldst have snatched from us again
Shines as before with no abatement dim.

A great man's memory is the only thing

With influence to outlast the present whim

And bind us as when here he knit our golden ring.

All of him that was subject to the hours

Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours:

Across more recent graves,

Where unresentful Nature waves

Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod,

Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God,

We from this consecrated plain stretch out
Our hands as free from afterthought or doubt
As here the united North

Poured her embrowned manhood forth

In welcome of our saviour and thy son.

SPRINGFIELD, MASS.

(The Arsenal at Springfield.)
THIS is the arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the village with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies!

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,

Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, And loud, amid the universal clamor,

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis

Beat the wild war-drum made of serpent's skin;

The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns.

CANADA.

LAND of mighty lake and forest!
Where the winter's locks are hoarest;
Where the summer's leaf is greenest,
And the winter's bite the keenest:
Where the autumn's leaf is searest,
And her parting smile the dearest ;
Where the tempest rushes forth
From his caverns in the north,
With the lightnings of the wrath
Sweeping forests from his path;
Where the cataract stupendous
Lifteth up his voice tremendous;

Where uncultivated Nature

Rears her pines of giant stature,—
Sows her jagged hemlocks o'er,
Thick as bristles on the boar,-
Plants the stately elm and oak
Firmly in the iron rock;

Where the crane her course is steering,

And the eagle is careering;

Where the gentle deer are bounding,
And the woodsman's axe resounding.
Land of mighty lake and river,

To our hearts thou'rt dear forever!

MONTREAL, CANADA.
Mount Royal.

MOUNT ROYAL rises proudly up the blue,
A royal mount indeed, with verdure crowned,
Adorned with regal dwelling not a few,
Sparkling like gems set in the mighty mound.
St. Helen's too, that seems enchanted ground;
A stately isle in gleaming guise bedight;
In the fond river's saintly arms enwound,
Blushing, and graceful as some witching sprite;
Fair contrast to the gloom of Hochelaga's height.

With what an undissembled pride of mien
Jacques Cartier stood upon yon mountain's brow!
Beneath him, the deep wilderness of green,
Where the vast city gleams and sparkles now;
Around him lordly tree and gnarly bough
Rose in primeval grandeur; leagues away,
The rolling hills untouched by axe or plough;
The glowing river; lakes and islands gay;
Another Mirza's dream of some remoter day.

OTTAWA, CANADA.

Imperium in Imperio.

In Ottawa, the lord of Lorne,

Young Campbell, clansman of Argyll,

A court shall hold to put to scorn

All courts but that of Britain's isle; Strange chief's through many an hundred mile Of trackless woods, will seek Louise,

To change their welcome for her smile,
Who comes their Princess over seas.

Of Saxon aspect, proud of mien,
Bearing high name in days of yore,
Some gay with tartan red and green,

Stern as their Caledonian shore,
With voices like Corbrechtan's roar,-

What men are these in furred array? These be the lords of Labrador,

And these the dukes of Hudson's Bay.

The dwellers where the waters fall
Down Montmorency's woody steep,
The merchant-kings of Montreal,

And they who Durham uplands reap,
Shall join that rule to guard and keep,

Whose large dominion shall outgrow The imperial island in the deep,

Though Time her empire should o'erthrow.

QUEBEC, CANADA.

(Memories of Quebec.)

A FAR Quebec exalts her crest on high,
Her rocks and battlements invade the sky;
While on the Bay's broad bosom far and wide,

The anchored fleets of commerce proudly ride.

Huge cliffs above precipitous that frown,
Like Atlas, bent beneath another town,