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THE MAYFLOWERS.

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Touched by some strain of thine, perchance may

take

The hand he proffers all, and thank him for thy sake

THE MAYFLOWERS.

The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows abundantly in the vicinity of Plymouth, and was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims after their fearful winter.

SAD Mayflower! watched by winter stars,
And nursed by winter gales,
With petals of the sleeted spars,

And leaves of frozen sails!

What had she in those dreary hours,
Within her ice-rimmed bay,

In common with the wild-wood flowers,
The first sweet smiles of May?

Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said,
Who saw the blossoms peer
Above the brown leaves, dry and dead,
"Behold our Mayflower here!"

"God wills it: here our rest shall be,
Our years of wandering o'er,

For us the Mayflower of the Sea,
Shall spread her sails no more.

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Oh! sacred flowers of faith and hope
As sweetly now as then

Ye bloom on many a birchen slope,
In many a pine-dark glen.

Behind the sea-wall's rugged length,
Unchanged, your leaves unfold,

Like love behind the manly strength
Of the brave hearts of old.

So live the fathers in their sons,
Their sturdy faith be ours,
And ours the love that overruns
Its rocky strength with flowers.

The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day
Its shadow round us draws;
The Mayflower of his stormy bay,
Our Freedom's struggling cause.

But warmer suns ere long shall bring
To life the frozen sod;

And, through dead leaves of hope, shall spring
Afresh the flowers of God!

BURIAL OF BARBOUR.

BEAR him, comrades, to his grave;
Never over one more brave

Shall the prairie grasses weep,

In the ages yet to come,
When the millions in our room,
What we sow in tears, shall reap.

Bear him up the icy hill,
With the Kansas, frozen still
As his noble heart, below,

And the land he came to till
With a freeman's thews and will,

And his poor hut roofed with snow!

One more look of that dead face,
Of his murder's ghastly trace!

BURIAL OF BARBOUR.

One more kiss, oh, widowed one! Lay your left hands on his brow, Lift your right hands up, and vow

That his work shall yet be done.

Patience, friends! The eye of God
Every path by Murder trod

Watches, lidless, day and night;
And the dead man in his shroud,
And his widow weeping loud,

And our hearts, are in his sight.

Every deadly threat that swells
With the roar of gambling hells,
Every brutal jest and jeer,
Every wicked thought and plan
Of the cruel heart of man,

Though but whispered, He can hear!

We in suffering, they in crime,
Wait the just award of time,

Wait the vengeance that is due;
Not in vain a heart shall break,
Not a tear for Freedom's sake
Fall unheeded: God is true.

While the flag with stars bedecked
Threatens where it should protect,

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And the Law shakes hands with Crime, What is left us but to wait,

Match our patience to our fate,

And abide the better time?

Patience, friends! The human heart
Everywhere shall take our part,
Everywhere for us shall pray;
On our side are nature's laws,
And God's life is in the cause
That we suffer for to-day.

Well to suffer is divine;

Pass the watchword down the line,
Pass the countersign: "ENDURE.”
Not to him who rashly dares,
But to him who nobly bears,

Is the victor's garland sure.

Frozen earth to frozen breast,
Lay our slain one down to rest;
Lay him down in hope and faith,
And above the broken sod,
Once again, to Freedom's God,
Pledge ourselves for life or death—

That the State whose walls we lay,
In our blood and tears, to-day,

Shall be free from bonds of shame,
And our goodly land untrod
By the feet of Slavery, shod
With cursing as with flame!

Plant the Buckeye on his grave,
For the hunter of the slave

In its shadow cannot rest;
And let martyr mound and tree
Be our pledge and guarantee
Of the freedom of the West!

TO PENNSYLVANIA

On State prayer-founded! never hung
Such choice upon a people's tongue,
Such power to bless or ban,
As that which makes thy whisper Fate,
For which on thee the centuries wait,
And destinies of man!

THE PASS OF THE SIERRA.

Across thy Alleghanian chain,
With groanings from a land in pain,
The west wind finds its way:
Wild-wailing from Missouri's flood
The crying of thy children's blood
Is in thy ears to-day!

And unto thee in Freedom's hour
Of sorest need God gives the power
To ruin or to save;

To wound or heal, to blight or bless
With fertile field or wilderness,

A free home or a grave!

Then let thy virtue match the crime,
Rise to a level with the time;
And, if a son of thine
Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like
For Fatherland and Freedom strike
As Justice gives the sign.

Wake sleeper, from thy dream of ease,
The great occasion's forelock seize;
And, let the North wind strong,

And golden leaves of Autumn, be
Thy coronal of victory

And thy triumphal song.

10th mo. 1856.

THE PASS OF THE SIERRA

ALL night above their rocky bed
They saw the stars march slow;

The wild Sierra overhead,

The desert's death below.

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