She speeds them with the thanks of men He perilled life to save, And grateful prayers like holy oil To smooth for him the wave. Brown Viking of the fishing-smack! The skipper's jerkin ill beseems But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear For him the blush of shame Who dares to set his manly gifts The stream is brightest at its spring, Nor honored less than he who heirs Is he who founds a line. Full lightly shall the prize be won, If love be Fortune's spur; And never maiden stoops to him Who lifts himself to her. Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, Still green about its ample porch The English ivy twines, Trained back to show in English oak The herald's carven signs. And on her, from the wainscot old, Ancestral faces frown, And this has worn the soldier's sword, And that the judge's gown. But, strong of will and proud as they, She walks the gallery floor As if she trod her sailor's deck By stormy Labrador! The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side, Her garden is the pebbled beach, She looks across the harbor-bar His greeting from the Northern sea She hums a song, and dreams that he, As in its romance old, Shall homeward ride with silken sails And masts of beaten gold! O rank is good, and gold is fair, And high and low mate ill; But love has never known a law Beyond its own sweet will! I KNOW not, Time and Space so intervene, Whether, still waiting with a trust serene, Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen; But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee, Like an old friend, all day has been with me. The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet Keeps green the memory of his early debt. To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords, |