The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He was so near that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it, when a high, green, vast hillside of water moved on shoreward from beyond the ship. He seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone! Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet insensible, dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy while every means of restoration was tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled forever. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Man marks the earth with ruin, — his control When for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Dark-heaving; - boundless, endless, and sublime — Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane as I do here. -From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. OUR FLAG When the standard of the Union is raised and waves over my head the standard which Washington planted on the ramparts of the Constitution - God forbid that I should inquire whom the people have commissioned to unfurl it and bear it up! I only ask in what manner, as an humble individual, I can best discharge my duty in defending it. THE OWL CRITIC "Who stuffed that owl?" No one spoke in the shop: The customers, waiting their turns, were reading "Don't you see, Mister Brown," Cried the youth with a frown, "How wrong the whole thing is, How preposterous each wing is, How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is, In short the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis? I make no apology, I've learned owl-ology, I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any defections Arising from unskilful fingers that fail To stuff a bird right from his beak to his tail. Mister Brown! Mister Brown! Do take that bird down Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!" "I've studied owls and other night fowls, And I tell you what I know to be true: An owl cannot roost With his limbs so unloosed; No owl in the world Ever had his claws curled; Ever had his legs slanted, Ever had his bill canted, Ever had his neck screwed Into that attitude. He can't do it, because That can't turn out so! I've made the white owl my study for years, And to see such a job almost moves me to tears! You should be so gone crazed As to put up a bird In that posture absurd! To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness; The man who stuffed him don't half know his business." And the barber kept on shaving. "Examine those eyes! I'm filled with surprise And John Burroughs laugh |