Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

Saw we old Hildebrand,

With twenty horsemen.

“Then launch’d they to the blast,

Bent like a reed each mast,

Yet we were gaining fast,

When the wind fail’d us;

And with a sudden flaw

Came round the gusty Skaw,

So that our foe we saw

Laugh as he hail’d us.