I would joy in your joy: let me have a friend’s
part
In the warmth of your welcome of hand and of heart,—
On your play-ground of boyhood unbend the brow’s
care,
And shift the old burdens our shoulders must bear.
Long live the good School! giving out year by year
Recruits to true manhood and womanhood dear
Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty sent forth,
The living epistles and proof of its worth!
In and out let the young life as steadily flow
As in broad Narragansett the tides come and go;
And its sons and its daughters in prairie and town
Remember its honor, and guard its renown.
Not vainly the gift of its founder was made;
Not prayerless the stones of its corner were laid
The blessing of Him whom in secret they sought
Has owned the good work which the fathers have wrought.
To Him be the glory forever! We bear
To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat with the tare.
What we lack in our work may He find in our will,
And winnow in mercy our good from the ill!
For A summer festival at “The
laurels” On the Merrimac.
Jean Pierre Brissot, the famous leader
of the Girondist party in the French Revolution,
when a young man travelled extensively in the
United States. He visited the valley of the Merrimac,
and speaks in terms of admiration of the view
from Moulton’s hill opposite Amesbury.
The “Laurel Party” so called, as composed
of ladies and gentlemen in the lower valley of
the Merrimac, and invited friends and guests
in other sections of the country. Its thoroughly
enjoyable annual festivals were held in the early summer
on the pine-shaded, laurel-blossomed slopes of
the Newbury side of the river opposite Pleasant
Valley in Amesbury. The several poems called
out by these gatherings are here printed in sequence.
Once more on yonder laurelled height
The summer flowers have budded;
Once more with summer’s golden light
The vales of home are flooded;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim
The praises of our river,
Its pines above, its waves below,
The west-wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing,—
And bore its memory o’er the deep,
To soothe a martyr’s sadness,
And fresco, hi his troubled sleep,
His prison-walls with gladness.
We know the world is rich with streams
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through our dreams
Of human love and glory
We know that Arno’s banks are fair,
And Rhine has castled shadows,
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
Go singing down their meadows.
But while, unpictured and unsung
By painter or by poet,
Our river waits the tuneful tongue
And cunning hand to show it,—
We only know the fond skies lean
Above it, warm with blessing,
And the sweet soul of our Undine
Awakes to our caressing.
