FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   623   624   625   626   627   628   629   630   631   632   633   634   635   636   637   638   639   640   641   642   643   644   645   646   647  
648   649   650   651   652   653   654   655   656   657   658   659   660   661   662   663   664   665   666   667   668   669   670   671   672   >>   >|  
e of brotherhood Unknown to other rivalries Than of the mild humanities, And gracious interchange of good, When closer strand shall lean to strand, Till meet, beneath saluting flags, The eagle of our mountain-crags, The lion of our Motherland! 1875. THE LIBRARY. Sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, November 11, 1875. "Let there be light!" God spake of old, And over chaos dark and cold, And through the dead and formless frame Of nature, life and order came. Faint was the light at first that shone On giant fern and mastodon, On half-formed plant and beast of prey, And man as rude and wild as they. Age after age, like waves, o'erran The earth, uplifting brute and man; And mind, at length, in symbols dark Its meanings traced on stone and bark. On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll, On plastic clay and leathern scroll, Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, And to! the Press was found at last! Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of men Whose bones were dust revived again; The cloister's silence found a tongue, Old prophets spake, old poets sung. And here, to-day, the dead look down, The kings of mind again we crown; We hear the voices lost so long, The sage's word, the sibyl's song. Here Greek and Roman find themselves Alive along these crowded shelves; And Shakespeare treads again his stage, And Chaucer paints anew his age. As if some Pantheon's marbles broke Their stony trance, and lived and spoke, Life thrills along the alcoved hall, The lords of thought await our call! "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN." An incident in St. Augustine, Florida. 'Neath skies that winter never knew The air was full of light and balm, And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew Through orange bloom and groves of palm. A stranger from the frozen North, Who sought the fount of health in vain, Sank homeless on the alien earth, And breathed the languid air with pain. God's angel came! The tender shade Of pity made her blue eye dim; Against her woman's breast she laid The drooping, fainting head of him. She bore him to a pleasant room, Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air, And watched beside his
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   623   624   625   626   627   628   629   630   631   632   633   634   635   636   637   638   639   640   641   642   643   644   645   646   647  
648   649   650   651   652   653   654   655   656   657   658   659   660   661   662   663   664   665   666   667   668   669   670   671   672   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

thoughts

 

strand

 

incident

 
STRANGER
 

alcoved

 

thrills

 

thought

 

crowded

 

Shakespeare

 
shelves

treads

 
marbles
 
trance
 

Pantheon

 
paints
 

Chaucer

 

Against

 

breast

 
languid
 
tender

drooping

 
watched
 

Flower

 

fainting

 
pleasant
 

breathed

 

Florida

 
Augustine
 

winter

 

Through


orange

 

sought

 

health

 

homeless

 

groves

 

stranger

 

frozen

 

silence

 

formless

 

Library


Haverhill

 

November

 
nature
 

formed

 

mastodon

 

opening

 

gracious

 
humanities
 

interchange

 

closer