Aurora greets the billowy sea!
The King of Day, now risen, darts his rays
Across the waves, and near our tropic line,
Like a rare diamond set mid lesser gems,
Discloses there a green and fertile isle-
Fair queen of the far-famed Antillean group
Whose orange groves, by the zephyrs fann'd
That steal across Caribbe's southern sea,
Yield their rich fruitage to our open marts;
While saccharine sweets in bountiful stores,
And rare exotics greet our shores.
Four centuries are flown since first arose
To ken of questant navigator bold,
The headlands of this fair retreat. The heel
Of despot since has deep and deeper tracked
Its virgin, and its highly cultured soil,
And laid a tribute, onerous to bear;
But with resources natural, yet rare
Delightful climate, swift productiveness,
And ease of access to the world around,
It has however to a factor grown
In the commercial world, exceeding far
The area of its circumscribed domain:
And if oppression has at times evoked
The plaint of people smarting under wrong,
These islanders, in most part, yet have been
A happy and contented band of men.
But in this closing century, what strides
Hath Freedom made, and victories secured!
Our goddess fair of Liberty hath flung
Her banner to the breeze, to float, undimmed
Now, o'er the soil once by the bondman trod:
The inspiration from its folds goes out-
Is wafted o'er the intervening waves,
And touches this fair isle-pervades its air,
And is breathed in by people long oppressed.
At last the long-restrained, decisive shout
Of "Cuba libre! Cuba libre!" swells
Again, until resistance armed and fierce,
Confronts with bristling steel the cry ***
And lo! the shout is changed to wail of woe!
Where late the happy song was heard, Th' inspiring thrum of harp and mandolin, Timing the feet of merry dancers, 'neath
The palm trees' shade, while Age surveyed
With kind emotions, youthful pastimes gay,
There now are raging all the horrors dire
Of savage and exterminating war,
Waged by a cruel and relentless foe,
Whose blinded zeal no age or sex doth know.
Mid such unequal and inhuman strife,
This little band bears bravely up, yet looks
With hope to us, the nearest hand to aid-
Exemplar too, of that for which they strive.
Shall Cuba seek in vain the help that came
So grateful and so timely to our cause
When erst this nation, later grown so great,
Trod the same path, trembling for its fate?
I counsel no rash breach of treaty made,
Nor rupture of the general law that guides
Great nations in their intercourse benign;
Yet would I advocate obedience to
That higher law humane, by God impressed
In living letters on each Christian heart;
And, grateful for the grand, historic past,
Would, by such memories as Bunker Hill
And Valley Forge, and noble La Fayette,
Adjure the Nation's counselors to heed,
And ponder well, and then decide aright
What now so stirs each patriotic heart.
And then to vitalize and signalize
That just decision, born of motive pure,
By action, prompt, humane, decisive, Sure!
In the spring of 1889, a new government administration was ushered in, represented largely by veterans of our late Civil War; and being out of employment, as well as out of funds, I applied to the head of one of the departments for a small clerkship, and received such a flattering reply, that I waited in hope and confidence, till hope finally turned to disgust, when I wrote the following article and sent it to the department, advising them to "file" it with my application:
"PLACED ON FILE."
As the days drag slowly by,
Weary I wait;
And forsooth, would know just why
Doubt holds my fate.
Is it that too much I sought for?Just for menial wage t'ave wrought for The same land in youth I fought for! Or was I too late?
"Yours rec'd and contents weighed,
'Filed' it shall be;
To its claims all deference paid,-"
Thus you wrote me.
"But the time has scarcely come yet,
And in fact we've nothing done yet
With the places, such as you'd get:"
Signed, B. F. T.
It was then the early Spring.
Autumn is here;
Still I wait the postman's ring
Gone by, I fear!
Yet a comrade would not treat so,
Any man who helped to veto
That rash effort of the foes to
What we held dear.
"What a chump you are!" says HoagWard heeler, wise.
"Why, some chap with foreign brogue,
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