Through her casement glancing down, Smiled on him who bore renown From red fields of slaughter.

"Hard to feel the stranger's scoff,
Hard the old friends' falling off,
Hard to learn forgiving;

But the Lord his own rewards,
And his love with theirs accords
Warm and fresh and living.

"Through this dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light

Up the blackness streaking; Knowing God's own time is best,

In a patient hope I rest

For the full day-breaking!"

So the laird of Ury said,

Turning slow his horse's head
Towards the Tolbooth prison,
Where, through iron gates, he heard
Poor disciples of the Word

Preach of Christ arisen!

Not in vain, confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told

Of thy day of trial!

Every age on him who strays

From its broad and beaten ways

Pours its seven-fold vial.

Happy he whose inward ear
Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter;

And, while hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern,
Of the good hereafter.

Knowing this,--that never yet
Share of truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.

Thus, with somewhat of the seer,
Must the moral pioneer

From the future borrow,

Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,
And, on midnight's sky of rain,

Paint the golden morrow!

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

THE FIGHT OF THE "ARMSTRONG "
PRIVATEER.

TELL the story to your sons

Of the gallant days of yore,

When the brig of seven guns

Fought the fleet of seven score,

From the set of sun till morn, through the long September night

Ninety men against two thousand, and the ninety won the fight

In the harbor of Fayal the Azore.

Three lofty British ships came a-sailing to Fayal: One was a line-of-battle ship, and two were frigates

tall;

Nelson's valiant men of war, brave as Britons ever

are,

Manned the guns they served so well at Aboukir and Trafalgar.

Lord Dundonald and his fleet at Jamaica far away Waited eager for their coming, fretted sore at their

delay.

There was loot for British valor on the Mississippi

coast

In the beauty and the booty that the Creole cities

boast;

There were rebel knaves to swing, there were prisoners to bring

Home in fetters to old England for the glory of the King!

At the setting of the sun and the ebbing of the

tide

Came the great ships one by one, with their portals opened wide,

And their cannon frowning down on the castle and the town

And the privateer that lay close inside;

Came the eighteen-gun Carnation, and the Rota, forty-four,

And the triple-decked Plantagenet an admiral's pennon bore;

And the privateer grew smaller as their topmasts towered taller,

And she bent her springs and anchored by the

castle on the shore.

Spake the noble Portuguese to the stranger: "Have

no fear;

They are neutral waters these, and your ship is sacred here

As if fifty stout armadas stood to shelter you from

harm,

For the honor of the Briton will defend you from his arm."

But the privateersman said, "Well we know the

Englishmen,

And their faith is written red in the Dartmoor

slaughter pen.

Come what fortune God may send, we will fight them to the end,

And the mercy of the sharks may spare us then."

"Seize the pirate where she lies!" cried the English admiral:

"If the Portuguese protect her, all the worse for Portugal!"

And four launches at his bidding leaped impatient for the fray,

Speeding shore ward where the Armstrong, grim and dark and ready, lay.

Twice she hailed and gave them warning; but the feeble menace scorning,

On they came in splendid silence, till a cable's length away

Then the Yankee pivot spoke; Pico's thousand echoes woke;

And four baffled, beaten launches drifted helpless on the bay.

Then the wrath of Lloyd arose till the lion roared

again,

And he called out all his launches and he called five hundred men ;

And he gave the word "No quarter!" and he sent them forth to smite.

Heaven help the foe before him when the Briton comes in might!

Heaven helped the little Armstrong in her hour of bitter need;

God Almighty nerved the heart and guided well the arm of Reid.

Launches to port and starboard, launches forward and aft,

Fourteen launches together striking the little craft. They hacked at the boarding-nettings, they swarmed above the rail;

But the Long Tom roared from his pivot and the grape-shot fell like hail:

Pike and pistol and cutlass, and hearts that knew

not fear,

Bulwarks of brawn and mettle, guarded the priva

teer.

And ever where fight was fiercest, the form of Reid

was seen;

Ever where foes drew nearest, his quick sword fell between.

Once in the deadly strife

The boarders' leader pressed

Forward of all the rest

Challenging life for life;

But ere their blades had crossed,