For richest and best Is the wine of the West, That grows by the Beautiful River;Whose sweet perfume Fills all the room With a benison on the giver.
And as hollow trees Are the haunts of bees, For ever going and coming;So this crystal hive Is all alive With a swarming and buzzing and humming.
Very good in its way Is the Verzenay, Or the Sillery soft and creamy;But Catawba wine Has a taste more divine, More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.
There grows no vine By the haunted Rhine, By Danube or Guadalquivir, Nor on island or cape, That bears such a grape As grows by the Beautiful River.
Drugged is their juice For foreign use, When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic, To rack our brains With the fever pains, That have driven the Old World frantic.
To the sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer;For a poison malign Is such Borgia wine, Or at best but a Devil's Elixir.
While pure as a spring Is the wine I sing, And to praise it, one needs but name it;For Catawba wine Has need of no sign, No tavern-bush to proclaim it.
And this Song of the Vine, This greeting of mine, The winds and the birds shall deliver To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River.
SANTA FILOMENA
Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts, in glad surprise, To higher levels rise.
The tidal wave of deeper souls Into our inmost being rolls, And lifts us unawares Out of all meaner cares.
Honor to those whose words or deeds Thus help us in our daily needs, And by their overflow Raise us from what is low!
Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,--The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls.
As if a door in heaven should be Opened and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, The light shone and was spent.
On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast From portals of the past.
A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.
Nor even shall be wanting here The palm, the lily, and the spear, The symbols that of yore Saint Filomena bore.
THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE
A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS
Othere, the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland, To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, Which he held in his brown right hand.
His figure was tall and stately, Like a boy's his eye appeared;His hair was yellow as hay, But threads of a silvery gray Gleamed in his tawny beard.
Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the color of oak;With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach, As unto the King he spoke.
And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Had a book upon his knees, And wrote down the wondrous tale Of him who was first to sail Into the Arctic seas.
"So far I live to the northward, No man lives north of me;To the east are wild mountain-chains;
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.
"So far I live to the northward, From the harbor of Skeringes-hale, If you only sailed by day, With a fair wind all the way, More than a month would you sail.
"I own six hundred reindeer, With sheep and swine beside;I have tribute from the Finns, Whalebone and reindeer-skins, And ropes of walrus-hide.
"I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the old seafaring men Came to me now and then, With their sagas of the seas;--"Of Iceland and of Greenland, And the stormy Hebrides, And the undiscovered deep;--I could not eat nor sleep For thinking of those seas.
"To the northward stretched the desert, How far I fain would know;So at last I sallied forth, And three days sailed due north, As far as the whale-ships go.
"To the west of me was the ocean, To the right the desolate shore, But I did not slacken sail For the walrus or the whale, Till after three days more.
"The days grew longer and longer, Till they became as one, And southward through the haze I saw the sullen blaze Of the red midnight sun.
"And then uprose before me, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge.
"The sea was rough and stormy, The tempest howled and wailed, And the sea-fog, like a ghost, Haunted that dreary coast, But onward still I sailed.
"Four days I steered to eastward, Four days without a night:
Round in a fiery ring Went the great sun, O King, With red and lurid light."Here Alfred, King of the Saxons, Ceased writing for a while;And raised his eyes from his book, With a strange and puzzled look, And an incredulous smile.
But Othere, the old sea-captain, He neither paused nor stirred, Till the King listened, and then Once more took up his pen, And wrote down every word.
"And now the land," said Othere, "Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore And ever southward bore Into a nameless sea.
"And there we hunted the walrus, The narwhale, and the seal;Ha! 't was a noble game!
And like the lightning's flame Flew our harpoons of steel.
"There were six of us all together, Norsemen of Helgoland;In two days and no more We killed of them threescore, And dragged them to the strand!"Here Alfred the Truth-Teller Suddenly closed his book, And lifted his blue eyes, With doubt and strange surmise Depicted in their look.
And Othere the old sea-captain Stared at him wild and weird, Then smiled, till his shining teeth Gleamed white from underneath His tawny, quivering beard.
And to the King of the Saxons, In witness of the truth, Raising his noble head, He stretched his brown hand, and said, "Behold this walrus-tooth!"DAYBREAK