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ts profound swims up with glittering scales; Through the delightsome sea he sails, With shoals of shining tiny things Frolic on every wave that flings Against the prow its showery spray; All creatures joying in the morn, Save them forever from joyance torn, Whose bark was lost where now the dolphins play; Save them that by the fabled shore, Down the pale stream are washed away, Far to the reef of bones are borne; And never revisits them the light, Nor sight of long-sought land and pilot more; Nor heed they now the lone bird's flight Round the lone spar where mid-sea surges pour. COMMEMORATIVE OF A NAVAL VICTORY Sailors there are of the gentlest breed, Yet strong, like every goodly thing; The discipline of arms refines, And the wave gives tempering. The damasked blade its beam can fling; It lends the last grave grace: The hawk, the hound, and sworded nobleman In Titian's picture for a king, Are of hunter or warrior race. In social halls a favored guest In years that follow victory won, How sweet to feel your festal fame In woman's glance instinctive thrown: Repose is yours--your deed is known, It musks the amber wine; It lives, and sheds a light from storied days Rich as October sunsets brown, Which make the barren place to shine. But seldom the laurel wreath is seen Unmixed with pensive pansies dark; There's a light and a shadow on every man Who at last attains his lifted mark-- Nursing through night the ethereal spark. Elate he never can be; He feels that spirit which glad had hailed his worth, Sleep in oblivion.--The shark Glides white through the phosphorus sea. A MEDITATION How often in the years that close, When truce had stilled the sieging gun, The soldiers, mounting on their works, With mutual curious glance have run From face to face along the fronting show, And kinsman spied, or friend--even in a foe. What thoughts conflicting then were shared, While sacred tenderness perforce Welled from the heart and wet the eye; And something of a strange remorse Rebelled against the sanctioned sin of blood, And Christian wars of natural brotherhood. Then stirred the god within the breast-- The witness that is man's at birth; A deep misgiving undermined Each plea and subterfuge of earth; They felt in that rapt pause, with warning rife, Horror and anguish for the civil strife. Of North or South they reek
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