And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorch'd land, thou wanderer of the sea.

Nor I alone;--a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier at coming of the wind of night;
And languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretch'd beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,
Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,
Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange deep harmonies that haunt his breast;
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And where the o'er-shadowing branches sweep the grass.

The faint old man shall lean his silver head
To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moisten'd curls that overspread
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep;
And they who stand about the sick man's bed
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

Go,--but the circle of eternal change,
Which is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,
Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more;
Sweet odors in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the homesick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall dream
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

LVII.--DEATH OF THE PROTECTOR.[M]

THOMAS CARLYLE.--1795-1881.

_From_ OLIVER CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES.

And so we have now nothing more;--and Oliver has nothing more. His
Speakings, and also his Actings, all his manifold Strugglings, more or
less victorious, to utter the great God's-Message that was in him,--have
here what we call ended. This Summer of 1658, likewise victorious after
struggle, is his last in our World of Time. Thenceforth he enters the
Eternities; and rests upon his arms _there_.

Oliver's look was yet strong; and young for his years, which were
Fifty-nine last April. The "Three-score and ten years," the Psalmist's
limit, which probably was often in Oliver's thoughts and in those of
others there, might have bee