A Century Too Soon: The Age of Tyranny

Oh, there be some Whose writhed features, fixed in all their strength Of grappling agony, do stare at you, With their dead eyes half opened. And there be some struck through wit...

We love The king who loves the law, respects his bounds, And reigns content within them; him we serve Freely and with delight, who leaves us free: But recollecting still that he...

At the close of a July day in the year of the restoration, a man, travelling on foot and leading a little girl six years of age, entered the town of Boston. The few inhabitants...

Dorothe Stevens was not a woman to take misfortune much to heart. She watched the ship in which her husband sailed until it vanished from sight, shed a few tears, heaved a few s...

The wind Increased at night, until it blew a gale; And though 'twas not much to naval mind, Some landsmen would have looked a little pale, For sailors are, in fact, a different...

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing f...

"Hark! 'tis the sound that charms The war-steed's wakening ears. Oh! many a mother folds her arms Round her boy-soldier, when that call she hears, And though her fond heart sink...

Strange that when nature loved to trace As if for God a dwelling place, And every charm of grace hath mixed Within the paradise she fixed, There man, enamoured of distress, Shou...

If we could look down the long vista of ages, And witness the changes of time, Or draw from Isaiah's mysterious pages A key to this vision sublime; We'd gaze on the picture with...

In Virginia's colonial days, no man was better known than John Smith Stevens. His father was one of the original founders of Jamestown and, it was said, had felled the first tre...

'Do you know the old man of the sea, of the sea? Have you met with that dreadful old man? If you haven't been caught, you will be, you will be; For catch you he must and he can....

So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou g...

He stood--some dread was on his face, Soon hatred settled in its place: It rose not with the reddening flush Of transient anger's hasty blush, But pale as marble o'er the tomb,...

Yes, 'twill be over soon,--This sickly dream Of life will vanish from my brain; And death my wearied spirit will redeem From this wild region of unvaried pain. --WHITE.

Mother, for the love of grace Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass but my madness speaks. It will skin and film the ulcerous place; While rank co...

"Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of successful or unsuccessful war, Might never reach me more....

The longer life, the more offence; The more offence, the greater pain; The greater pain, the less defence; The less defence, the greater gain: The loss of gain long ill doth try...

"At every turn, Morena's dusky height Sustains aloft the battery's iron load, And, far as mortal eye can compass sight, The mountain-howitzer, the broken road, The bristling pal...

At times there come, as come there ought, Grave moments of sedater thought. When fortune frowns, nor lends our night One gleam of her inconstant light: And hope, that decks the...

I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute: From the centre all round to the sea I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That...

When thy beauty appears In its graces and airs, All bright as an angel new dropped from the sky At a distance I gaze and am awed at my fears, So strangely you dazzle my eyes. --...

Since the art of navigation became known, there have been castaways in romance and reality without number. De Foe's celebrated Robinson Crusoe stands first, but not alone among...

"O gentle wind ('tis thus she sings) That blowest to the west, Oh, couldst thou waft me on thy wings To the land that I love best, How swiftly o'er the-ocean's foam, Like a sea-...