But Memory blushes at the sneer, And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear, Laughs louder than the laughing giant:-- "An islet is a world," she said, "When glory with its dust has blended, And Britain keeps her noble dead Till earth and seas and skies are rended!" Beneath each swinging forest-bough Some arm as stout in death reposes,-- From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow Her valor's life-blood runs in roses; Nay, let our brothers of the West Write smiling in their florid pages, One-half her soil has walked the rest In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages! Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp, From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, The British oak with rooted grasp Her slender handful holds together;-- With cliffs of white and bowers of green, And Ocean narrowing to caress her, And hills and threaded streams between,-- Our little mother isle, God bless her! In earth's broad temple where we stand, Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us, We hold the missal in our hand, Bright with the lines our Mother taught us; Where'er its blazoned page betrays The glistening links of gilded fetters, Behold, the half-turned leaf displays Her rubric stained in crimson letters! Enough! To speed a parting friend 'Tis vain alike to speak and listen;-- Yet stay,--these feeble accents blend With rays of light from eyes that glisten. Good-bye! once more,--and kindly tell In words of peace the young world's story,-- And say, besides,--we love too well Our mother's soil, our fathers' glory! When my friend, the Professor, found that my friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this full-blown style, he got a little excited, as you may have seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up. The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has often tried, and now he was determined to try again. So when some professional friends of his called him up, one day, after a feast of reason and a regular "freshet" of soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read them these verses. He introduced them with a few remarks, he told me, of which the only one he remembered was this: that he had rather write a single line which one among them should think worth remembering than set them all laughing with a string of epigrams. It was all right, I don't doubt; at any rate, that was his fancy then, and perhaps another time he may be obstinately hilarious; however, it may be that he is growing graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said the other day. You must listen to this seriously, for I think the Professor was very much in earnest when he wrote it. THE TWO ARMIES. As Life's unending column pours, Two marshalled hosts are seen,-- Two armies on the trampled shores That Death flows black between.