SANTA FILOMENA. WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher levels rise. The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls, And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares. Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low! Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp, — The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, 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, As if a door in heaven should be Opened and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore. THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE. A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS. OTHERE, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, Which he held in his brown right hand. His figure was tall and stately, Like a boy's his eye appeared; His hair was yellow as hay, But threads of a silvery gray Gleamed in his tawny beard. Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the color of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach, As unto the King he spoke. And Alfred, King of the Saxons, And wrote down the wondrous tale Of him who was first to sail Into the Arctic seas. "So far I live to the northward, "So far I live to the northward, From the harbor of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day, With a fair wind all the way, More than a month would you sail. |