Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

A Greeting to the “George Griswold”

London Punch

[The ship which bore to the Mersey the contribution of the United States to the relief of Lancashire]

BEFORE thy stem smooth seas were curled,

Soft winds thy sails did move,

Good ship, that from the Western world

Bore freight of brothers’ love.

’Twixt starving here and thriving there,

When wrath flies to and fro,

Till all seems hatred everywhere,

How fair thy white wings show!

O’er the great seas thy keel ploughed through

Good ships have borne the chain

That should have knit old world and new

Across the weltering main.

The chain was borne,—one kindly wave

Of speech pulsed through its coil;

Then dumb and dead in ocean’s grave

Lay hope and cost and toil.

But thou, good ship, again hast brought

O’er these wide waves of blue,

The chain of kindly word and thought

To link those worlds anew.