At Sundown | Page 2

wrong,
Pretence that turns her holy truths to lies,
And lawless
license masking in her guise.

Land of his love! with one glad voice
Let thy great sisterhood rejoice;

A century's suns o'er thee have risen and set,
And, God be praised,
we are one nation yet.
And still we trust the years to be
Shall prove his hope was destiny,

Leaving our flag, with all its added stars,
Unrent by faction and
unstained by wars.
Lo! where with patient toil he nursed
And trained the new-set plant at
first,
The widening branches of a stately tree
Stretch from the
sunrise to the sunset sea.
And in its broad and sheltering shade,
Sitting with none to make
afraid,
Were we now silent, through each mighty limb,
The winds
of heaven would sing the praise of him.
Our first and best!--his ashes lie
Beneath his own Virginian sky.

Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave,
The storm that swept
above thy sacred grave.
For, ever in the awful strife
And dark hours of the nation's life,

Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning word,
Their father's
voice his erring children heard.
The change for which he prayed and sought
In that sharp agony was
wrought;
No partial interest draws its alien line
'Twixt North and
South, the cypress and the pine!
One people now, all doubt beyond,
His name shall be our
Union-bond;
We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now.
Take
on our lips the old Centennial vow.
For rule and trust must needs be ours;
Chooser and chosen both are
powers
Equal in service as in rights; the claim
Of Duty rests on
each and all the same.

Then let the sovereign millions, where
Our banner floats in sun and
air,
From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's cold,
Repeat with us the
pledge a century old?
THE CAPTAIN'S WELL.
The story of the shipwreck of Captain Valentine Bagley, on the coast of
Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been familiar from my
childhood. It has been partially told in the singularly beautiful lines of
my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford, an the occasion of a public
celebration at the Newburyport Library. To the charm and felicity of
her verse, as far as it goes, nothing can be added; but in the following
ballad I have endeavored to give a fuller detail of the touching incident
upon which it is founded.
From pain and peril, by land and main,
The shipwrecked sailor came
back again;
And like one from the dead, the threshold cross'd
Of his wondering
home, that had mourned him lost.
Where he sat once more with his kith and kin,
And welcomed his
neighbors thronging in.
But when morning came he called for his spade.
"I must pay my debt
to the Lord," he said.
"Why dig you here?" asked the passer-by;
"Is there gold or silver the
road so nigh?"
"No, friend," he answered: "but under this sod
Is the blessed water,
the wine of God."
"Water! the Powow is at your back,
And right before you the
Merrimac,
"And look you up, or look you down,
There 's a well-sweep at every

door in town."
"True," he said, "we have wells of our own;
But this I dig for the
Lord alone."
Said the other: "This soil is dry, you know.
I doubt if a spring can be
found below;
"You had better consult, before you dig,
Some water-witch, with a
hazel twig."
"No, wet or dry, I will dig it here,
Shallow or deep, if it takes a year.
"In the Arab desert, where shade is none,
The waterless land of sand
and sun,
"Under the pitiless, brazen sky
My burning throat as the sand was
dry;
"My crazed brain listened in fever dreams
For plash of buckets and
ripple of streams;
"And opening my eyes to the blinding glare,
And my lips to the
breath of the blistering air,
"Tortured alike by the heavens and earth,
I cursed, like Job, the day
of my birth.
"Then something tender, and sad, and mild
As a mother's voice to her
wandering child,
"Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my head,
I prayed as I never before
had prayed:
"Pity me, God! for I die of thirst;
Take me out of this land accurst;
"And if ever I reach my home again,
Where earth has springs, and the

sky has rain,
"I will dig a well for the passers-by,
And none shall suffer from thirst
as I.
"I saw, as I prayed, my home once more,
The house, the barn, the
elms by the door,
"The grass-lined road, that riverward wound,
The tall slate stones of
the burying-ground,
"The belfry and steeple on meeting-house hill,
The brook with its
dam, and gray grist mill,
"And I knew in that vision beyond the sea,
The very place where my
well must be.
"God heard my prayer in that evil day;
He led my feet in their
homeward way,
"From false mirage and dried-up well,
And the hot sand storms of a
land of hell,
"Till I saw at last through the coast-hill's gap,
A city held in its stony