422 NATURE STUDY. 



Read to the older children the lines from Longfellow's 

 "Building of the Ship:" 



" 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 1 



'Mid shouts and cheers 



The jaded steers, 



Panting beneath the load, 



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 forevermore 



Of their native forests they should not see again ; 



And everywhere 



The slender, graceful spars 



Poise aloft in the air, 



And at the mast-head, 



White, blue, and red, 



A flag unrolls the stripes and stars. 



Ah ! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, 



In foreign harbors shall behold 



That flag unrolled, 



'Twill be as a friendly hand 



Stretched out from his native land, 



Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless." 



Try to have the children see, in imagination, the four 

 scenes pictured by the poet the pine tree in the " deer- 

 haunted forest ; " the cutting of the tree ; the mast and 

 ship in the storm at sea ; the "slender, graceful spars " bear- 

 ing so proudly, in a foreign port, the flag which attracts the 

 wanderer. 



