And lo, with what clear omen in the east On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn, Like young Leander rosy Glowing at Hero's lattice! from the sea One day more These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me: God, let me not in their duil ooze be stranded; Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen mates, and from the leaning mast Fortune's full sail strains forward! Remember whose and not how short it is! It is God's day, it is Columbus's. A lavish day! One day, with life and heart, Is more than time enough to find a world. 1844. AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE AT HAMBURG. THE tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the skies, Like some huge piece of Nature's make, the growth of centuries; You could not deem its crowding spires a work of human art, They seemed to struggle lightward from a sturdy living heart. Not Nature's self more freely speaks in crystal or in oak, Than, through the pious builder's hand, in that gray pile she spoke ; 2 And as from acorn springs the oak, so, freely and alone, Sprang from his heart this hymn to God, sung in obe.li ent stone. It seemed a wondrous freak of chance, so perfect, yet so rough, A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in granite tough; The thick spires yearned towards the sky in quaint, harmonious lines, And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like a grove of blasted pines. Never did rock or stream or tree lay claim with better right To all the adorning sympathies of shadow and of light; And, in that forest petrified, as forester there dwells Stout Herman, the old sacristan, sole lord of all its bells. Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared onward red as blood, Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beneath the eddying flood; For miles away, the fiery spray poured down its deadly rain, And back and forth the billows sucked, and paused, and burst again. From square to square with tiger leaps rushed on the lustful fire, The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its de sire; And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but to the knee, Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirl ing sea. Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet look ; His soul had trusted God too long to be at last for sook ; He could not fear, for surely God a pathway would unfold Through this red sea for faithful hearts, as once he did of old. But scarcely can he cross himself, or on his good saint call, Before the sacrilegious flood o'erleaped the church-yard wall; And, ere a pater half was said, 'mid smoke and crackling glare, His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide de spair. Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sub lime; His first thought was for God above, his next was for "Sing now and make your voices heard in hymns of praise," cried he, "As did the Israelites of old, safe walking through the sea! |