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 216 LONGFELLOW

On many a dreary and misty night

'Twill be seen by the rays of the signal light,

Speeding along through the rain and the dark,

Like a ghost in its snow-white sark,

The pilot of some phantom bark,

Guiding the vessel in its flight

By a path none other knows aright.

Behold, at last,

Each tall and tapering mast

Is swung into its place;

Shrouds and stays

Holding it firm and fast !

Long ago,

In the deer-haunted forests of Maine,

When upon mountain and plain

Lay the snow,

They fell those lordly pines !

Those grand, majestic pines!

'Mid shouts and cheers

The jaded steers,

Panting beneath the goad,

Dragged down the weary, winding road

Those captive kings so straight and tall,

To be shorn of their streaming hair

And, naked and bare,

To feel the stress and the strain

Of the wind and the reeling main,

Whose roar

Would remind them for evermore

Of their native forest they should not see again.

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