They fought-like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain, They conquered-but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurrah, And the red field was won; Then saw in death his eyelids close Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal chamber, Death! That close the pestilence are broke, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, The thanks of millions yet to be. Of sky and stars to prisoned men: Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas. Bozzaris! with the storied brave She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume. Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb. But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thee her evening prayer is said At palace couch and cottage bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow, His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek Is read the grief she will not speak, The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh: For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's; One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die. THE story of Hawthorne's life is a simple one. He was born in Salem, Mass., in 1804, and as a boy was brought up partly in that ancient town, and partly on the shores of Sebago Lake, in Maine, where his uncle, Richard Manning, had an estate. His father, who died of fever in Surinam, when Nathaniel was four years old, was an East India merchant, and captained his own vessel; an uncle, Daniel, had commanded a privateer in the Revolution; an ancestor, John Hathorne (as the name was then spelled), had been a judge in the witch trials; and the first emigrant, William, the elder son of the English family, was a man of note in the Province, and a major in the Indian wars. His mother was a woman of intellect and refinement; but Nathaniel was the first of the Hawthornes to evince literary proclivities. He was an active, outdoor boy, though fond of reading and with thoughts of his own. As a student he was not distinguished, either before or during his Bowdoin college career; but he graduated well in the class of 1824; Longfellow was a classmate, and Franklin Pierce was in the class ahead of him. After graduating he lived in seclusion at his home in Salem for twelve years, writing, meditating, and occasionally publishing short sketches in Annuals and similar publications, uniformly over a pseudonym. Before 1840 he met, and in 1842 he married Sophia Peabody of Salem, and lived with her in "The Old Manse" at Concord, Mass. He had already tried the Brook Farm community life, and decided it was not suited to his requirements. He obtained an appointment in the Salem Custom House, and supported himself on the salary derived therefrom, and by writing sketches and stories. These were collected under the title of "Mosses from an Old Manse," and "The Snow Image and Other Stories." He was rotated out of office, and in 1850 wrote "The Scarlet Letter," which brought him fame here and abroad. Removing to Lenox, Mass., he produced "The House of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," evolved from his Brook Farm observations, and "The Wonder-Book" and "Tanglewood Tales"-stories for children based on classic mythology. Taking up his residence for the second time in Concord, at "The Wayside," he wrote a campaign biography of his friend Franklin Pierce, and the latter, on his election to the Presidency of the United States, appointed Hawthorne consul at Liverpool, England. Shortly before the end of his term he resigned the office and sojourned for two or three years on the Continent. Returning in 1859 to England, he wrote "The Marble Faun" (published in England under the title of "Transformation"), and came back to America in 1860. The outbreak of the Civil War the following year interrupted his imaginative work; but he published a volume of English studies, "Our Old Home," and the first chapters of a new romance, "The Dolliver Romance," in the Atlantic Monthly. He died suddenly in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on a journey for health undertaken with Franklin Pierce, and was buried in Concord, May 23d, 1864. He The story of Hawthorne's mind and opinions may be gathered from his writings, especially from the shorter pieces contained in "Twice-Told Tales" and "The Mosses." These appear on the surface to be merely imaginative tales, exquisitely wrought; but they embody profound, radical and sometimes revolutionary views on all subjects of society and morals. probed deeply into the mystery of human sin; the revelations thus evolved cast a tinge of sadness over much that he wrote; but Hawthorne was at heart an optimist, and his most searching analyses result in conclusions the most hopeful. The more he is studied, the more is the student impressed with his truth, justice and sanity. Common sense and the sense of humor existed in him side by side with the keenest insight and the finest imaginative gifts; and all that he wrote is rendered fascinating by the charm of a translucent, nearly perfect literary style. Everything that he produced was in its degree a work of art. The four romances on which his reputation chiefly rests |