But now should my guests be merry, the house is in holiday guise, Looking out, through its burnished windows like a score of welcoming eyes. Come hither, my brothers who wander in saintliness and in sin! Come hither, ye pilgrims of Nature! my heart doth invite you in. My wine is not of the choicest, yet bears it an honest brand; And the bread that I bid you lighten I break with no sparing hand; But pause, ere you pass to taste it, one act must accomplished be: Salute the flag in its virtue, before ye sit down with me. The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed: Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed; 'Twas red with the blood of freemen, and white with the fear of the foe, And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols know. Come hither, thou son of my mother! we were reared in the selfsame arms; Thou hast many a pleasant gesture, thy mind hath its gifts and charms, But my heart is as stern to question as mine eyes are of sorrows full: Salute the flag in its virtue, or pass on where others rule. Thou lord of a thousand acres, with heaps of uncounted gold, The steeds of thy stall are haughty, thy lackeys cunning and bold: I envy no jot of thy splendor, I rail at thy follies none: Salute the flag in its virtue, or leave my poor house alone. Fair lady with silken trappings, high waving thy stainless plume, We welcome thee to our numbers, a flower of costliest bloom: Let a hundred maids live widowed to furnish thy bridal bed; But pause where the flag doth question, and bend thy triumphant head. "What make we, murmur'st thou, and what are we? When empires must be wound, we bring the shroud, The time-old web of the implacable Three: Is it too coarse for him, the young and proud? Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it; why not he?" "Is there no hope?" I moaned. "So strong, so fair! Our Fowler, whose proud bird would brook erewhile No rival's swoop in all our western air! Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file For him, life's morn-gold bright yet in his hair! Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas! Ye are at peace in the troubled stream. Ho! brave land! with hearts like these, Thy flag, that is rent in twain, And without a seam! LONGFELLOW. SUNTHIN IN A PASTORAL LINE. ONCE git a smell o' musk into a draw, An' it clings hold like precerdents in law: Your gra'ma'am put it there, when, goodness knows, To jes' this-worldify her Sundayclo'es; But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's wife, (For, thout new funnitoor, wut good in life?) An' so ole clawfoot, from the precinks dread O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed, Where, dim with dust, it fust or last subsides To holdin' seeds, an' fifty things besides; But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, An' all you keep in't gits a scent o' musk. Jes' so with poets: wut they've airly read Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head, So's't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers With furrin countries or played-out ideers, Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back: This makes 'em talk o' daises, larks, an' things, Ez though we'd nothin' here that blows an' sings, · (Why, I'd give more for one live bobolink Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink,) This makes 'em think our fust 'o May is May, Which't ain't, for all the almanicks can say. O little city-gals! don't never go-it Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet! They're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom looks Up in the country ez it doos in books; They're no more like than hornets' nests an' hives, Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. I, with my trouses perched on cowhide boots, Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse Your muslin nosegays from the milliner's, Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to choose, An' dance your throats sore in morocker shoes: I've seen ye, an' felt proud, thet, come wut would, Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood. Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' winch, Ez though 'twuz sunthin' paid for by the inch; But yit we du contrive to worry thru, But these are jes' Spring's pickets; sure ez sin, The rebble frosts'll try to drive 'em in; For half our May's so awfully like Mayn't, 'Twould rile a Shaker or an evrige saint; Though I own up I like our back'ard springs Thet kind o' haggle with their greens an' things, An' when you 'most give up, 'ithout more words Toss the fields full o' blossoms, leaves, an' birds: Thet's Northun natur', slow, an' apt to doubt, But when it doos git stirred, ther's no gin-out! Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees, An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned Ef all on 'em don't head against the wind. 'Fore long the trees begin to show belief, The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, Then saffern swarms swing off from all the willers So plump they look like yaller caterSo pillars, Then gray hoss-ches' nuts leetle hands unfold Softer'n a baby's be at three days old: Thet's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows Thet arter this ther's only blossom snows; So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house. Then seems to come a hitch, things lag behind, Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up her mind, An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh their dams Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' jams, A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole cleft, |