mars, Scanting our room to cut the features out Of our full hope, so forcing us to crown With a mean head the perfect limbs, or leave The god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk, Failure's brief epitaph. Yes, Europe's world Reels on to judgment; there the common need, Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond "Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowlingly O'er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state, Knit strongly with eternal fibres up Holds up a shape of large Humanity They are, even in the flush of victory, weak, Conquering that manhood which should them subdue. And what gift bring I to this untried world? Shall the same tragedy be played anew, And the same lurid curtain drop at last On one dread desolation, one fierce crash Of that recoil which on its makers God Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make, Early or late? Or shall that commonwealth Whose potent unity and concentric force Can draw these scattered joints and parts of men Into a whole ideal man once more, Which sucks not from its limbs the life Feeling the truer life within his life, The fountain of his spirit's prophecy, Sinking away and wasting, drop by drop, In the ungrateful sands of sceptic ears He in the palace-aisles of untrod wood Doth walk a king; for him the pent up cell Widens beyond the circles of the stars, And all the sceptred spirits of the past Come thronging in to greet him as their peer; But in the market-place's glare and throng He sits apart, an exile, and his brow Aches with the mocking memory of its I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen mates, and from the leaning mast Fortune's full sail strains forward! One poor day! 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 ; And as from acorn springs the oak, so, freely and alone, Sprang from his heart this hymn to God, sung in obedient 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 panted the lustful fire, The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its desire; And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but to the knee, Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirling sea. Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet look; His soul had trusted God too long to be at last forsook ; 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 churchyard wall; And, ere a pater half was said, 'mid smoke and crackling glare, His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide despair. Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sublime; His first thought was for God above, his next was for his chime; Sing now and make your voices heard in hymns of praise," cried he, "As did the Israelites of old, safe walking through the sea! "Through this red sea our God hath made the pathway safe to shore ; Our promised land stands full in sight; shout now as ne'er before!" And as the tower came crushing down, the bells, in clear accord, Pealed forth the grand old German hymn,—“All good souls, praise the Lord!" THE SOWER. I SAW a Sower walking slow His dim face showed no soul beneath, I heard, as still the seed he cast, The happy days when I was young. "Then all was wheat without a tare, "The fruitful germs I scatter free, Then I looked back along his path, The sky with burning towns flared red, Nearer the noise of fighting rolled, And brothers' blood, by brothers shed, Crept, curdling, over pavements cold. Then marked I how each germ of truth Which through the dotard's fingers ran |