The silent wave below,

And bird-song then the morn awoke

Where towers a city now;

When the red man saw on every cliff,

Half seen and half in shade,

A tiny form, or a pearly skiff,
That sought the forest glade

An acorn fell from an old oak-tree,

And lay on the frosty ground: ,,Oh, what shall the fate of the acorn be?" Was whispered all around, By low-toned voices, chiming sweet,

Like a floweret's bell when swung And grasshopper steeds were gathering fleet, And the beetle's hoofs uprung;

For the woodland Fays came sweeping past In the pale autumnal ray,

Where the forest-leaves were falling fast, And the acorn quivering lay;

That its doom were quickly told.

But it needed not; for a blessed fate
Was the acorn's meant to be:

The spirits of earth should its birth-time wait,

And watch o'er its destiny.

TO HIM OF THE SHELL was the task assigned To bury the acorn deep,

Away from the frost and searching wind, When they through the forest sweep.

"T was a dainty sight, the small thing's toil,
As, bowed beneath the spade,
He balanced his gossamer wings the while
To peep in the pit he made.
And thimble's depth it was scarcely deep,
When the spade aside he threw,
And rolled the acorn away to sleep
In the bush of dropping dew.

Though life was unrevealed;

For life is a holy mystery,

Where'er it is concealed.

air,

And gush of woodland song;

The dew came down, and the rain was there,

And the sunshine rested long:

The dew and the living air

The bane that should work it deadly wo The little men had there.

The old leaf arching o'er,

And up, where the last year's leaf was dried,

Came the acorn-shell once more.

Like a giant mystery.

His heart beats quick to the squirrel's tread

On the withered leaf and dry,

And he lifts not up his awe-struck head
As the eddying wind sweeps by.

All regally the stout oak stood, In its vigor and its pride;

It told of the oak that once had bowed,
As feeble a thing to see;

But now, when the storm was raging loud,
It wrestled mightily.

With a sceptre spreading wide No more in the wintry blast to bow, Or rock in the summer breeze; But draped in green, or starlike snow, Reign king of the forest trees.

brow,

A new love at his heart;

And he ponders much, as with footsteps slow He turns him to depart.

A thousand blasts defied; And, mighty in strength, its boad arms

threw

A shadow dense and wide.

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Change came to the mighty things of earth
Old empires passed away;
Of the generations that had birth,
O Death! where, where are they?

Yet fresh and green the brave oak stood, Nor dreamed it of decay,

Though a thousand times in the autumn wood

Its leaves on the pale earth lay. It grew where the rocks were bursting out

From the thin and heaving soil Where the ocean's roar and the sailor's shout Were mingled in wild turmoil;

The chisel clicks, and the hammer rings,
The merry jest goes round;
While he who longest and loudest sings
Is the stoutest workman found.
With jointed rib and trunnelled plank
The work goes gaily on,

And light-spoke oaths, when the glass they drank,

Are heard till the task is done.

She sits on the stocks, the skeleton ship,

With her oaken ribs all bare,

And the child looks up with parted lip,

As it gathers fuel there:
With brimless hat, the barefoot boy
Looks round with strange amaze,

steep,

But it loved the tumult well.

Are mingling in that gaze.

With graceful waist and carvings brave The trim hull waits the sea

air,

And joined in the rude uproar;

For it loved the storm and the lightning's glare,

And the wave-lashed iron shore.

The bleaching bones of the sea-bird's prey
Were heaped on the rocks below;
And the bald head eagle, fierce and gray,
Looked off from its topmost bough.
Where the shadow lay on the quiet wave
The light boat often swung,
And the stout ship, saved from the ocean-

grave,

Her cable round it flung.

A sound comes down in the forest trees,
And echoing from the hill;

It floats far off on the summer breeze,
And the shore resounds it shrill.

Lo! the monarch tree no more shall stand

Like a watchtower of the main

A giant mark of a giant land

That may not come again.

While round go the cheerings three. Her prow swells up from the yesty deep, Where it plunged in foam and spray: And the glad waves gathering round her

sweep

And buoy her in their play.

Thou wert nobly reared, O heart of oak!
In the sound of the ocean roar,
Where the surging wave o'er the rough
rock broke,

And bellowed along the shore:
And how wilt thou in the storm rejoice,

With the wind through spar and shroud, To hear a sound like the forest voice, When the blast was raging loud!

With snow-white sail, and streamer gay,
She sits like an ocean-s
n-sprite,
Careering on her trackless way,

In sunshine or midnight:

Her course is laid with fearless skill,
For brave hearts man the helm;
And the joyous winds her canvass fill:
Shall the wave the stout ship whelm?

And the builder marked it out; He smiled its angled limbs to see, As he measured the trunk about. Already to him was a gallant bark Careering the rolling deep,

And in sunshine, calm, or tempest dark, Her way she will proudly keep.

Herrig, American. Literatur. II.

Like floating cities by;

Where meteors flash by the northern pole,

And the merry dancers fly;

Where the glittering light is backward flung
From icy tower and dome,

And the frozen shrouds are gaily hung
With gems from the ocean foam.

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