Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree, Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac, Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers. So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession. Hold aloft their torches lighted, Gleaming through the realms benighted, As they onward bear the message! THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUS TINE. Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downe eyes, We may discern-unseen before- Nor deem the irrevocable Past, SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, If, rising on its wrecks, at last That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things, each day's events, The low desire, the base design, That makes another's virtues less; The revel of the ruddy wine, And all occasions of excess; The longing for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth; All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds, The action of the nobler will; – All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown The right of eminent domain. We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy suminits of our time. The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen, and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs. The distant mountains, that uprear The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. To something nobler we attain. THE PHANTOM SHIP. IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, That is here set down in rhyme. A ship sailed from New Haven, Were heavy with good men's prayer "O Lord! if it be thy pleasure". Thus prayed the old divine"To bury our friends in the ocean, Take them, for they are thine! But Master Lamberton muttered, And the ships that came from England This put the people to praying That the Lord would let them hear What in his greater wisdom He had done with friends so dear. And at last their prayers were a swered: It was in the month of June, An hour before the sunset Of a windy afternoon, When, steadily steering landward, And they knew it was Lamberton, Mas ter, Who sailed so long ago. MIST was driving down the British For in the night, unseen, a single warChannel, The day was just begun, rior, In sombre harness mailed, nd through the window-panes, on floor Dreaded of man, and surnamed the De and panel, Streamed the red autumn sun. glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, And the white sails of ships; stroyer, The rampart wall had scaled. The dark and silent room, nd, from the frowning rampart, the And as he entered, darker grew, and black cannon deeper, The silence and the gloom. He did not pause to parley or dissemble, Ah! what a blow! that made all Eng- And groan from shore to shore. Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited, The sun rose bright o'erhead; Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead. THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S-NEST. NCE the Emperor Charlesof Spain, With his swarthy, grave commanders, forget in what campaign, ong besieged, in mud and rain, Some old frontier town of Flanders. Jp and down the dreary camp, Thus as to and fro they went, Over upland and through hollow, Giving their impatience vent, Perched upon the Emperor's tent, In her nest, they spied a swallow. Yes, it was a swallow's nest, Built of clay and hair of horses, Mane, or tail, or dragoon's crest, Found on hedge-rows east and west, After skirmish of the forces. Then an old Hidalgo said, As he twirled his gray mustachio, "Sure this swallow overhead Thinks the Emperor's tent a shed, And the Emperor but a Macho!" Hearing his imperial name Coupled with those words of malice, Half in anger, half in shame, Forth the great campaigner came Slowly from his canvas palace. "Let no hand the bird molest," Said he solemnly, "nor hurt her!" Adding then, by way of jest, "Golondrina is my guest, "T is the wife of some deserter!" Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft, Through the camp was spread the ru mor, And the soldiers, as they quaffed At the Emperor's pleasant humor. So unharmed and unafraid Sat the swallow still and brooded, Till the constant cannonade Through the walls a breach had made And the siege was thus concluded. |