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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers — John Shaqi

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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
      And blench not at thy chosen lot;
    The timid good may stand aloof,
      The sage may frown――yet faint thou not,

    Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
      The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
    For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
      The victory of endurance born.

    Truth, crush’d to earth, shall rise again;
      The eternal years of God are hers;
    But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
      And dies among his worshippers.

    Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
      When they who help’d thee flee in fear,
    Die full of hope and manly trust,
      Like those who fell in battle here.

    Another hand thy sword shall wield,
      Another hand the standard wave,
    Till from the trumpet’s mouth is peal’d
      The blast of triumph o’er thy grave.

                   *       *       *       *       *


                         THE CROWDED STREETS.

    LET me move slowly through the street,
      Filled with an ever-shifting train,
    Amid the sound of steps that beat
      The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

    How fast the flitting figures come;
      The mild, the fierce, the stony face――
    Some bright, with thoughtless smiles, and some
      Where secret tears have left their trace.

    They pass to toil, to strife, to rest――
      To halls in which the feast is spread――
    To chambers where the funeral guest
      In silence sits beside the bed.

    And some to happy homes repair,
      Where children pressing cheek to cheek,
    With mute caresses shall declare
      The tenderness they cannot speak.

    And some who walk in calmness here,
      Shall shudder as they reach the door
    Where one who made their dwelling dear,
      Its flower, its light, is seen no more.

    Youth, with pale cheek and tender frame,
      And dreams of greatness in thine eye,
    Go’st thou to build an early name,
      Or early in the task to die?

    Keen son of trade, with eager brow,
      Who is now fluttering in thy snare,
    Thy golden fortunes tower they now,
      Or melt the glittering spires in air?

    Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
      The dance till daylight gleams again?
    To sorrow o’er the untimely dead?
      Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?

    Some, famine struck, shall think how long
      The cold, dark hours, how slow the light;
    And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
      Shall hide in dens of shame to night.

    Each where his tasks or pleasure call,
      They pass and heed each other not;
    There is one who heeds, who holds them all
      In His large love and boundless thought.

    These struggling tides of life that seem
      In wayward, aimless course to tend,
    Are eddies of the mighty stream
      That rolls to its appointed end.

                   *       *       *       *       *


                    NOTICE OF FITZ-GREEN HALLECK.

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