Cursed is the spot where Rebels fell,-
But holy was the voice that greeted,
OH! TRIUMPH TO THE SONS OF TELL.
Yet speak it not in your high mountain,
Ye children of the great, the brave,
That from your brethren's veins, a fountain
The soil of SWITZERLAND doth lave!
Oh, speak it not in those lone places,
Where thy undaunted MELCHTELS sleep,
Those bones might hear that their true races,
The death of Rebel freemen weep.
But tell them still of faith once plighted,
By those that now sleep in their grave,
A nation to be free, must be united,
SUCH IS THE FAITH YOUR FATHERS GAVE!
A TYPHOON IN THE CHINA SEA.*
HE sun sank frowning in his ocean bed,
The heavens grew black, the winds howled in fury dread,-
The mad ocean's billows dashed mountains high,
The affrighted sea-birds swept wildly by ;
The demon of the storm in his storm-cloud car,
His cloud-chariots marshalled like cohorts of war,
Whose dark battalions wheeling to and fro
Menaced death or wild havoc on all below.
Gleaming through the heavens shot the lightning's vivid flash,
Earth and sea tremble at the thunder's mighty crash
Old Boreas from the dark caves of the north,
His dread whirlwind furies madly thunders forth—
The heavens open, in floods downward pour,
Deluge torrents, like the deluge of yore,
Sea, air, and sky, chaos-like, seem near and far,
Dissolving in fierce elemental war.
Midnight has come and gone, and dawn draws nigh,
Still the TYPHOON rages with fury high;
Our brave ship in the glory of her pride,
Is tossed to and fro as a waif on the tide
* Experienced by the writer on the 25th May, 1857, on the clipper ship "Winged Arrow," while near the Philippine Islands, on the voyage from Hong Kong to San Francisco.
With sails close reefed, her yards and masts towering high,
Now dip in the sea, now sweep against the sky-
O'er her bulwarks the huge billows madly sweep,
As down she plunges in the trough of the deep-
Still, on she drives through the high-crested wave,
Dashing the foam from her prow like a war-steed brave.
Madly the storm-demon hurtles on-hark!
A crash aloft is heard-'tis our frail bark!
Her towering royal-mast comes toppling down,
Like the giant oak's lightning-riven crown.
The sheltered spars shake in their loosened shrouds,
The shipmates stand aghast in bewildered crowds,
Fearing that the fierce whirling cycline blast,
Might sweep from our ship each trembling mast.
Their every duty the brave mariners obeyed,
Yet was the fury of the Typhoon not stayed,
Till He, whom the storms and winds must obey,
The winds did hush, the tempest allay;
The old storm-king to his caverns was driven,
And the bow of promise gleamed athwart the heaven;
The sun came out in his glory once more,
The fierce war of the elements was o'er.
O'er the land we see the fell Typhoon sweep,
And hurl the proud mansion in one ruined heap-
We refelt the fearful shock, as round us fell
The crashing pile-it seemed like Time's last knell;
But there's a wildness in a Typhoon at sea,
A strange, unearthly, dread sublimity,
That none can know who have not felt its power-
None can portray the dread scenes of such an hour.
NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN, July 4, 1857.
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