Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

Oh, well for the fisherman’s boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

Oh, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

Behind him lay the gray Azores,

Behind the Gates of Hercules;

Before him not the ghost of shores,

Before him only shoreless seas.

The good mate said: “Now we must pray,

For lo, the very stars are gone.

Brave Adm’r’l speak; what shall I say?”

“Why say: ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on!’”

“My men grow mutinous day by day;

My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”

The stout mate thought of home; a spray

Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.

“What shall I say, brave Adm’r’l, say,

If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”

“Why you shall say at break of day:

‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! sail on!’”

They sailed and sailed, as the winds might blow,

Until at last the blanched mate said:

“Why, not even God would know

Should I and all my men fall dead.These very winds forget their way,

For God from these dread seas is gone.

Now speak, brave Adm’r’l; speak and say”—

He said: “Sail on! sail on! sail on!”

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:

“This mad sea shows its teeth to-night.

He curls his lips, he lies in wait,

With lifted teeth, as if to bite!

Brave Adm’r’l, say but one good word;

What shall we do when hope is gone?”

The words leapt as a leaping sword:

“Sail on! sail on! sail on! sail on!”

Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night

Of all dark nights! And then a speck—

A light! A light! A light! A light!

It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!

It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.

He gained a world; he gave that world

Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me,

That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards19 sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggestLife’s endless toil and endeavor;

And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor;

And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction20

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

The breaking waves dashed high on a stern and rock-bound coast,

And the woods against a stormy sky their giant branches tossed;

And the heavy night hung dark the hills and waters o’er,

When a band of exiles moored their bark on the wild New England shore.

Not as the conqueror comes, they the true-hearted, came;

Not with the roll of stirring drums, and the trumpet that sings of fame;

Not as the flying come, in silence and in fear;

They shook the depths of the desert gloom with their hymns of lofty cheer.

Amidst the storm they sang, and the stars heard, and the sea;

And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang with the anthems of the free!

The ocean eagle soared from his nest by the white wave’s foam,

And the rocking pines of the forest roared—this was their welcome home!

There were men with hoary hair amidst that pilgrim band;

Why had they come to wither there away from their childhood’s land?

There was woman’s fearless eye, lit by her deep love’s truth;

There was manhood’s brow serenely high, and the fiery heart of youth.

What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine?

The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a faith’s pure shrine!

Ay, call it holy ground, the soil where first they trod:

They left unstained, what there they found, Freedom to worship God.

“He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.”

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,

Of thee from the hilltop looking down;

The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm,

The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,

Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight,

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.

All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,

Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even,

He sings the song, but it cheers not now,

For I did not bring the river and sky;

He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye.

The delicate shells lay on the shore;

The bubbles of the latest wave

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,

And the bellowing of the savage sea

Greeted their safe escape to me.I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid,

As mid the virgin train she strayed,

Nor knew her beauty’s best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white quire.

At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;

The gay enchantment was undone,

A gentle wife, but fairy none.

When I said, “I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth.”

As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground pine curled its pretty leaf,

Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet’s breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs,

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground.

Over me soared the eternal sky,

Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,The rolling river, the morning bird;

Beauty through my senses stole:

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march

By land or sea from the town21 to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light—

One if by land, and two if by sea,

And I on the opposite shore22 will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

The Somerset, British man-of-war;

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

Across the moon like a prison bar,

And a huge black hulk that was magnified

By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,

Wanders and watches with eager ears,

Till in the silence around him he hears

The muster of men at the barrack door,

The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,

And the measured tread of the grenadiers23

Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church,

Up the wooden stairs with stealthy tread,

To the belfry chamber overhead,

And startled the pigeons from their perch,

On the sombre rafters, that round him made

Masses and moving shapes of shade—

Up the light ladder, slender and tall,

To the highest window in the wall,

Where he paused to listen and look down

A moment on the roofs of the town,

And the moonlight flowing over all.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,

Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride

On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere

Now he patted his horse’s side,

Now gazed at the landscape far and near,

Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,

And turned and tightened his saddle girth;

But mostly he watched with eager search

The belfry-tower of the old North Church,

As it rose above the graves on the hill,

Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in the village street,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet;

That was all! And yet through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night.

It was twelve by the village clock

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,

And the barking of the farmer’s dog,

And felt the damp of the river fog,

That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,

When he rode into Lexington.

He saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as he passed,

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

Gaze at him with a spectral stare,

As if they already stood aghast

At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,

When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

He heard the bleating of the flock,

And the twitter of the birds among the trees,

And felt the breath of the morning breeze

Blowing over the meadows brown.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;

And so through the night went his cry of alarm

To every Middlesex village and farm—A cry of defiance and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

And a word that shall echo forever more!

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I have read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;

“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel;

Since God is marching on.”

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat;

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

Blessings on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy with cheeks of tan!

With thy turned up pantaloons

And thy merry whistled tunes;

With thy red lips, redder still,

Kissed by strawberries on the hill;

With the sunshine on thy face,

Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;

From my heart I give thee joy!—

I was once a barefoot boy!

Oh, for boyhood’s painless play,

Sleep that wakes in laughing day,

Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,

Knowledge never learned in schools,

Of the wild bee’s morning chase,

Of the wild flower’s time and place,

How the tortoise bears his shell,

How the woodchuck digs his cell,

How the robin feeds her young,

How the oriole’s nest is hung,

Where the whitest lilies blow,

Where the freshest berries grow,Where the ground-nut trails its vine,

Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine,

Of the black wasp’s cunning way,

Mason of his walls of clay.

Oh, for boyhood’s time of June,

Crowding years in one brief moon,

When all things I heard or saw

Me, their master, waited for!

I was rich in flowers and trees,

Humming-birds and honey-bees;

For my sport the squirrel played,

Plied the snouted mole his spade.

Laughed the brook for my delight,

Through the day and through the night,

Whispering at the garden wall,

Talked with me from fall to fall.

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,

Mine the walnut slopes beyond,

Mine on bending orchard trees,

Apples of Hesperides.

I was monarch: pomp and joy

Waited on the barefoot boy!

When the Norn-mother saw the Whirl-wind Hour,

Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,

She bent the strenuous heavens and came down

To make a man to meet the mortal need.

She took the tried clay of the common road,

Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth,

Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy:

Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff,

It was a stuff to wear for centuries,

A man that matched the mountains and compelled

The stars to look our way and honor us.

The color of the ground was in him, the red Earth

The tang and odor of the primal things—

The rectitude and patience of the rocks:

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;

The courage of the bird that dares the sea;

The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;

The pity of the snow that hides all scars;

The loving kindness of the wayside well;

The tolerance and equity of light

That gives as freely to the shrinking weedAs to the great oak flaring to the wind—

To the grave’s low hill as to the Matterhorn

That shoulders out the sky.

And so he came

From prairie cabin up to Capitol,

One fair Ideal led our chieftain on.

Forevermore he burned to do his deed

With the fine stroke and gesture of a king.

He built the rail pile as he built the State,

Pouring his splendid strength through every blow,

The conscience of him testing every blow,

To make his deed the measure of a man.

So came the captain with the mighty heart;

And when the step of earthquake shook the house,

Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold,

He held the ridge-pole up and spiked again

The rafters of the Home. He held his place—

Held the long purpose like a growing tree—

Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.

And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down

As when a kingly cedar green with boughs

Goes down with a great shout upon the hills.

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:

There spread a cloud of dust along a plain

And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords

Shocked upon swords and shields, a prince’s banner

Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle’s edge,

And thought: “Had I a sword of keener steel—

That blue blade that the king’s son bears—but this

Blunt thing!” He snapped and flung it from his hand,

And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king’s son wounded, sore bestead,

And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,

Hilt buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout

Lifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause on that heroic day.

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear;

There is ever a something sings alway:

There’s the song of the lark when the skies are clear,

And the song of the thrush when the skies are gray.

The sunshine showers across the grain,

And the bluebird trills in the orchard tree;

And in and out, when the eaves drip rain,

The swallows are twittering ceaselessly.

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear.

Be the skies above or dark or fair,

There is ever a song that our hearts may hear—

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear—

There is ever a song somewhere!

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear,

In the mid-night black, or the mid-day blue;

The robin pipes when the sun is here,

And the cricket chirps the whole night through.

The buds may blow, and the fruit may grow,

And the autumn leaves drop crisp and sear;

But whether the sun, or the rain, or the snow,

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear.

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear.

Be the skies above or dark or fair,

There is ever a song that our hearts may hear—

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear—

There is ever a song somewhere!

Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days!

None knew thee but to love thee,

Nor named thee but to praise.

Tears fell, when thou wert dying,

From eyes unused to weep,

And long, where thou art lying,

Will tears the cold turf steep.

When hearts, whose truth was proven,

Like thine are laid in earth,

There should a wreath be woven

To tell the world their worth.