Drugged is their juice When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic, With the fever pains, That have driven the Old World frantic. To the sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer; 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; Has need of no sign, 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 And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares. Honor to those whose words or deeds Raise us from what is low! Thus thought I, as by night I read The trenches cold and damp, The wounded from the battle-plain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And slow, as in a dream of bliss, Upon the darkening walls. As if a door in heaven should be On England's annals, through the long A Lady with a Lamp shall stand A noble type of good, Nor even shall be wanting here THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS. OTHERE, the old sea-captain, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Which he held in his brown right hand. His figure was tall and stately, Hearty and hale was there, His cheek had the color of oak; And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Into the Arctic seas. "So far I live to the northward, To the east are wild mountain-chains, "So far I live to the northward, "I own six hundred reindeer, With sheep and swine beside; "I ploughed the land with horses, With their sagas of the seas; "Of Iceland and of Greenland, For thinking of those seas. sail. "To the northward stretched the desert, And three days sailed due north, "To the west of me was the ocean, For the walrus or the whale, Till after three days more. "The days grew longer and longer, Till they became as one, And southward through the haze Of the red midnight sun. "And then uprose before me, "The sea was rough and stormy, "Four days I steered to eastward, Four days without a night: Round in a fiery ring Went the great sun, O King, Here Alfred, King of the Saxons, But Othere, the old sea-captain, And wrote down every word. |