For Memorizing

OLD IRONSIDES.

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky:

Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;

The meteor of the ocean air

Shail sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck

once red with heroes' blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe,

When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,

And waves were white below.

No more shall feel the victor's tread,

Or know the conquered knee;

The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea.

Oh! better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave.
Nail to the mast her holy flag,

Set every threadbare sail,

And give her to the god of storms

The lightning and the gale.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

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BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.

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;

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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.

-Julia Ward Howe.

For Memorizing

LIBERTY AND UNION.

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union that we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to see what might be hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the union should be

For Memorizing

preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people, when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

Be

God grant that in

God grant that behind. When

While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. yond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil. my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. on my vision never may be opened what lies my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster; not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured,-bearing for its motto, no such miseraable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly: Liberty first, and union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,LIBERTY AND UNION, now and forever, one and inseparable! -Daniel Webster,

For Memorizing

THE SHELL.

See what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,

Lying close to my foot,

Frail, but a work divine,

Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,

How exquisitely minute,

A miracle of design!

What is it? a learned man

Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.

The tiny cell is forlorn,
Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd
A golden foot or a fairy horn
'Thro his dim water world!

Slight, to be crushed with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,

Frail, but of force to withstand,