Close wedded by that mystic cord,
Its continents are one.

"And one in heart, as one in blood, Shall all her peoples be;

The hands of human brotherhood

Are clasped beneath the sea.

"Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain

And Asian mountains borne, The vigor of the Northern brain

Shall nerve the world outworn.

"From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
Shall thrill the magic thread;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead."

Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
From answering beach to beach;

Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,

And melt the chains of each!

Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tame and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,
Thy errands to and fro.

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,

Beneath the deep so far,

The bridal robe of earth's accord,

The funeral shroud of war!

For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall
Space mocked and time outrun;
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one!

The poles unite, the zones agree,

The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee

The Christ is whispering, Peace!

John Greenleaf Whittier.

THE OCEAN.

OLL on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!

ROLL

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin; his control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths; thy fields
Are not a spoil for him; thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee: Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play; Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow; Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed; in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of Eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers; they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror, 't was a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here.

Lord Byron.

TRAVELLING.

NEASE to persuade, my loving Proteus;

CEA

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits:
Were 't not affection chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honored love,
I rather would entreat thy company

To see the wonders of the world abroad,
Than living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
William Shakespeare.

R

THE TRAVELLER.

EMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po; Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor Against the houseless stranger shuts the door; Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,

A weary waste expanding to the skies;
Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee,
Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.
Oliver Goldsmith.

'TIS

THE WORLD AT A DISTANCE.

IS pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
To peep at such a world; to see the stir

Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd;
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates,
At a safe distance, where the dying sound
Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear.
Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced
To some secure and more than mortal height,
That liberates and exempts me from them all.
It turns submitted to my view, turns round
With all its generations; I behold

The tumult, and am still. The sound of war
Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me;
Grieves, but alarms me not. I mourn the pride
And avarice that make man a wolf to man,
Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats,
By which he speaks the language of his heart,
And sigh, but never tremble at the sound.
He travels and expatiates, as the bee

From flower to flower, so he from land to land: