Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend,
And help me to the vales below,
(In truth, I have not far to go,)
Where sweet with flowers the fields extend.
Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm,
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm?
Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm?
A ship whose keel is of palm beneath,
Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark sheath,
And a rudder of palm it steereth with.
Branches of palm are its spars and rails,
Fibres of palm are its woven sails,
And the rope is of palm that idly trails!
What does the good ship bear so well?
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell,
And the milky sap of its inner cell.
What are its jars, so smooth and fine,
But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and wine,
And the cabbage that ripens under the Line?
Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm ?
The master, whose cunning and skill could charm
Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm.
In the cabin, he sits on a palm-mat soft,
From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed,
And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft!
His dress is woven of palmy strands,
And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands,
Traced with the Prophet's wise commands!
The turban folded about his head
Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf braid, And the fan that cools him of palm was made.
Of threads of palm was the carpet spun
Whereon he kneels when the day is done,
And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as one!
To him the palm is a gift divine,
Wherein all uses of man combine,-
House, and raiment, and food, and wine!
And, in the hour of his great release,
His need of the palm shall only cease
With the shroud wherein he lieth in peace.
“Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm,
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm;
“Thanks to Allah who gives the palm !"
READ AT THE BOSTON CELEBRATION OF THE HUNDREDTH ANIVER SARY OF THE BIRTH OF ROBERT BURNS, 25TH 1ST мo., 1859.
How sweetly come the holy psalms
From saints and martyrs down.
The waving of triumphal palms
Above the thorny crown!
The choral praise, the chanted prayers
From harps by angels strung,
The hunted Cameron's mountain airs,
The hymns that Luther sung!
LINES FOR THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 379
Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes,
The sounds of earth are heard,
As through the open minster floats
The song of breeze and bird!
Not less the wonder of the sky
That daisies bloom below;
The brook sings on, though loud and high
The cloudy organs blow!
And, if the tender ear be jarred
That, haply, hears by turns
The saintly harp of Olney's bard,
The pastoral pipe of Burns,
No discord mars His perfect plan
Who gave them both a tongue;
For he who sings the love of man
The love of God hath sung!
To day be every fault forgiven
Of him in whom we joy!
We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven
And leave the earth's alloy.
Be ours his music as of spring,
His sweetness as of flowers,
The songs the bard himself might sing
In holier ears than ours.
Sweet airs of love and home, the hum
Of household melodies,
Come singing, as the robins come
To sing in door-yard trees.
And, heart to heart, two nations lean,
No rival wreaths to twine,
But blending in eternal green
The holly and the pine!
OUT and in the river is winding
The links of its long, red chain
Through belts of dusky pine-land
And gusty leagues of plain.
Only, at times, a smoke-wreath
With the drifting cloud-rack joins,—
The smoke of the hunting-lodges
Of the wild Assiniboins!
Drearily blows the north wind
From the land of ice and snow;
The eyes that look are weary,
And heavy the hands that row.
And with one foot on the water,
And one upon the shore,
The Angel of Shadow gives warning
That day shall be no more.
Is it the clang of wild-geese?
Is it the Indian's yell,
That lends to the voice of the north wind
The tones of a far-off bell?
The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace;
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.
The bells of the Roman Mission,
That call from their turrets twain,
To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain!
Even so in our mortal journey
The bitter north winds blow,
And thus upon life's Red River
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row.
And when the Angel of Shadow
Rests his feet on wave and shore,
And our eyes grow dim with watching
And our hearts faint at the oar,
Happy is he who heareth
The signal of his release
In the bells of the Holy City,
The chimes of eternal peace!
As Adam did in Paradise,
To-day the primal right we claim :
Fair mirror of the woods and skies,
We give to thee a name.
Lake of the pickerel !-let no more
The echoes answer back "Great Pond,”
But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore
And watching hills beyond,
Let Indian ghosts, if such there be
Who ply unseen their shadowy lines,
Call back the ancient name to thee,
As with the voice of pines.
The shores we trod as barefoot boys,
The nutted woods we wandered through,
To friendship, love, and social joys
We consecrate anew.
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