The bridal time of Law and Love, The gladness of the world's release, When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace The hawk shall nestle with the dove!-- The golden age of brotherhood Unknown to other rivalries Than of the mild humanities, And gracious interchange of good, When closer strand shall lean to strand, Till meet, beneath saluting flags, The eagle of our mountain-crags, The lion of our Motherland! 1875. THE LIBRARY. Sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, November 11, 1875. "Let there be light!" God spake of old, And over chaos dark and cold, And through the dead and formless frame Of nature, life and order came. Faint was the light at first that shone On giant fern and mastodon, On half-formed plant and beast of prey, And man as rude and wild as they. Age after age, like waves, o'erran The earth, uplifting brute and man; And mind, at length, in symbols dark Its meanings traced on stone and bark. On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll, On plastic clay and leathern scroll, Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, And to! the Press was found at last! Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of men Whose bones were dust revived again; The cloister's silence found a tongue, Old prophets spake, old poets sung. And here, to-day, the dead look down, The kings of mind again we crown; We hear the voices lost so long, The sage's word, the sibyl's song. Here Greek and Roman find themselves Alive along these crowded shelves; And Shakespeare treads again his stage, And Chaucer paints anew his age. As if some Pantheon's marbles broke Their stony trance, and lived and spoke, Life thrills along the alcoved hall, The lords of thought await our call! "I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN." An incident in St. Augustine, Florida. 'Neath skies that winter never knew The air was full of light and balm, And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew Through orange bloom and groves of palm. A stranger from the frozen North, Who sought the fount of health in vain, Sank homeless on the alien earth, And breathed the languid air with pain. God's angel came! The tender shade Of pity made her blue eye dim; Against her woman's breast she laid The drooping, fainting head of him. She bore him to a pleasant room, Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air, And watched beside his bed, for whom His far-off sisters might not care. She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed Its lines of pain with tenderest touch. With holy hymn and prayer she soothed The trembling soul that feared so much. Through her the peace that passeth sight Came to him, as he lapsed away As one whose troubled dreams of night Slide slowly into tranquil day. The sweetness of the Land of Flowers Upon his lonely grave she laid The jasmine dropped its golden showers, The orange lent its bloom and shade. And something whispered in her thought, More sweet than mortal voices be "The service thou for him hast wrought O daughter! hath been done for me." 1875. CENTENNIAL HYMN.