"Once more;--the strife is ended, The solemn issue tried, The Lord of Hosts, his mighty arm Has helped our Israel's side; Gray stone and grassy hillock Tell where our martyrs died, But peaceful smiles the harvest, And stainless flows the tide. "A crash, as when some swollen cloud Cracks o'er the tangled trees With side to side, and spar to spar, Whose smoking decks are these? I know Saint George's blood-red cross, Thou Mistress of the Seas, But what is she whose streaming bars Roll out before the breeze? "Ah, well her iron ribs are knit, Whose thunders strive to quell The bellowing throats, the blazing lips, That pealed the Armada's knell! The mist was cleared,--a wreath of stars Rose o'er the crimsoned swell, And, wavering from its haughty peak, The cross of England fell! "O trembling Faith! though dark the morn, A heavenly torch is thine; While feebler races melt away, And paler orbs decline, Still shall the fiery pillar's ray Along thy pathway shine, To light the chosen tribe that sought This Western Palestine. "I see the living tide roll on; It crowns with flaming towers The icy capes of Labrador, The Spaniard's 'land of flowers'! It streams beyond the splintered ridge That parts the northern showers; From eastern rock to sunset wave The Continent is ours!" He ceased, the grim old soldier-saint, Then softly bent to cheer The Pilgrim-child, whose wasting face Was meekly turned to hear; And drew his toil-worn sleeve across To brush the manly tear From cheeks that never changed in woe, And never blanched in fear. The weary Pilgrim slumbers, His resting-place unknown; His hands were crossed, his lips were closed, The dust was o'er him strown; The drifting soil, the mouldering leaf, Along the sod were blown; His mound has melted into earth, His memory lives alone. So let it live unfading, The memory of the dead, Long as the pale anemone Springs where their tears were shed, Or, raining in the summer's wind In flakes of burning red, The wild rose sprinkles with its leaves The turf where once they bled! Yea, when the frowning bulwarks That guard this holy strand Have sunk beneath the trampling surge In beds of sparkling sand, While in the waste of ocean One hoary rock shall stand, Be this its latest legend,-- HERE WAS THE PILGRIM'S LAND! THE STEAMBOAT SEE how yon flaming herald treads The ridged and rolling waves, As, crashing o'er their crested heads, She bows her surly slaves! With foam before and fire behind, She rends the clinging sea, That flies before the roaring wind, Beneath her hissing lee. The morning spray, like sea-born flowers, With heaped and glistening bells, Falls round her fast, in ringing showers, With every wave that swells; And, burning o'er the midnight deep, In lurid fringes thrown, The living gems of ocean sweep Along her flashing zone.