THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

* * * * *

II.

FREEDOM.

THE PLACE WHERE MAN SHOULD DIE.

How little recks it where men lie,
When once the moment's past
In which the dim and glazing eye
Has looked on earth its last,--
Whether beneath the sculptured urn
The coffined form shall rest,
Or in its nakedness return
Back to its mother's, breast!

Death is a common friend or foe,
As different men may hold,
And at his summons each must go,
The timid and the bold;
But when the spirit, free and warm,
Deserts it, as it must,
What matter where the lifeless form
Dissolves again to dust?

The soldier falls 'mid corses piled
Upon the battle-plain,
Where reinless war-steeds gallop wild
Above the mangled slain;
But though his corse be grim to see,
Hoof-trampled on the sod,
What recks it, when the spirit free
Has soared aloft to God?

The coward's dying eyes may close
Upon his downy bed,
And softest hands his limbs compose,
Or garments o'er them spread.
But ye who shun the bloody fray,
When fall the mangled brave,
Go--strip his coffin-lid away,
And see him in his grave!

'Twere sweet, indeed, to close our eyes,
With those we cherish near,
And, wafted upwards by their sighs,
Soar to some calmer sphere.
But whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle's van,
The fittest place where man can die
Is where he dies for man!

MICHAEL JOSEPH BARRY.

* * * * *

LIBERTY.

What man is there so bold that he should say,
"Thus, and thus only, would I have the Sea"?
For whether lying calm and beautiful,
Clasping the earth in love, and throwing back
The smile of Heaven from waves of amethyst;
Or whether, freshened by the busy winds,
It bears the trade and navies of the world
To ends of use or stern activity;
Or whether, lashed by tempests, it gives way
To elemental fury, howls and roars
At all its rocky barriers, in wild lust
Of ruin drinks the blood of living things,
And strews its wrecks o'er leagues of desolate shore,--
Always it is the Sea, and men bow down
Before its vast and varied majesty.

So all in vain will timorous ones essay
To set the metes and bounds of Liberty.
For Freedom is its own eternal law:
It makes its own conditions, and in storm
Or calm alike fulfils the