At Sundown | Page 2

are one nation yet.
And still we trust the years to be?Shall prove his hope was destiny,?Leaving our flag, with all its added stars,?Unrent by faction and unstained by wars.
Lo! where with patient toil he nursed?And trained the new-set plant at first,?The widening branches of a stately tree?Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea.
And in its broad and sheltering shade,?Sitting with none to make afraid,?Were we now silent, through each mighty limb,?The winds of heaven would sing the praise of him.
Our first and best!--his ashes lie?Beneath his own Virginian sky.?Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave,?The storm that swept above thy sacred grave.
For, ever in the awful strife?And dark hours of the nation's life,?Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning word,?Their father's voice his erring children heard.
The change for which he prayed and sought?In that sharp agony was wrought;?No partial interest draws its alien line?'Twixt North and South, the cypress and the pine!
One people now, all doubt beyond,?His name shall be our Union-bond;?We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now.?Take on our lips the old Centennial vow.
For rule and trust must needs be ours;?Chooser and chosen both are powers?Equal in service as in rights; the claim?Of Duty rests on each and all the same.
Then let the sovereign millions, where?Our banner floats in sun and air,?From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's cold,?Repeat with us the pledge a century old?
THE CAPTAIN'S WELL.
The story of the shipwreck of Captain Valentine Bagley, on the coast of Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been familiar from my childhood. It has been partially told in the singularly beautiful lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford, an the occasion of a public celebration at the Newburyport Library. To the charm and felicity of her verse, as far as it goes, nothing can be added; but in the following ballad I have endeavored to give a fuller detail of the touching incident upon which it is founded.
From pain and peril, by land and main,?The shipwrecked sailor came back again;
And like one from the dead, the threshold cross'd?Of his wondering home, that had mourned him lost.
Where he sat once more with his kith and kin,?And welcomed his neighbors thronging in.
But when morning came he called for his spade.?"I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said.
"Why dig you here?" asked the passer-by;?"Is there gold or silver the road so nigh?"
"No, friend," he answered: "but under this sod?Is the blessed water, the wine of God."
"Water! the Powow is at your back,?And right before you the Merrimac,
"And look you up, or look you down,?There 's a well-sweep at every door in town."
"True," he said, "we have wells of our own;?But this I dig for the Lord alone."
Said the other: "This soil is dry, you know.?I doubt if a spring can be found below;
"You had better consult, before you dig,?Some water-witch, with a hazel twig."
"No, wet or dry, I will dig it here,?Shallow or deep, if it takes a year.
"In the Arab desert, where shade is none,?The waterless land of sand and sun,
"Under the pitiless, brazen sky?My burning throat as the sand was dry;
"My crazed brain listened in fever dreams?For plash of buckets and ripple of streams;
"And opening my eyes to the blinding glare,?And my lips to the breath of the blistering air,
"Tortured alike by the heavens and earth,?I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth.
"Then something tender, and sad, and mild?As a mother's voice to her wandering child,
"Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my head,?I prayed as I never before had prayed:
"Pity me, God! for I die of thirst;?Take me out of this land accurst;
"And if ever I reach my home again,?Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain,
"I will dig a well for the passers-by,?And none shall suffer from thirst as I.
"I saw, as I prayed, my home once more,?The house, the barn, the elms by the door,
"The grass-lined road, that riverward wound,?The tall slate stones of the burying-ground,
"The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill,?The brook with its dam, and gray grist mill,
"And I knew in that vision beyond the sea,?The very place where my well must be.
"God heard my prayer in that evil day;?He led my feet in their homeward way,
"From false mirage and dried-up well,?And the hot sand storms of a land of hell,
"Till I saw at last through the coast-hill's gap,?A city held in its stony lap,
"The mosques and the domes of scorched Muscat,?And my heart leaped up with joy thereat;
"For there was a ship at anchor lying,?A Christian flag at its mast-head flying,
"And sweetest of sounds to my homesick ear?Was my native tongue in the sailor's cheer.
"Now the Lord be thanked, I am back again,?Where earth has springs, and the skies have rain,
"And the well I promised by Oman's Sea,?I am digging for him in Amesbury."
His kindred wept, and