PROMETHEUS,

OR THE POET's Forethought.

OF Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chaunted,
Full of promptings and suggestions.
Beautiful is the tradition

Of that flight through heavenly portals, The old classic superstition

Of the theft and the transmission

Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring,

Born of heavenward aspiration, Then the fire with mortals sharing, Then the vulture, the despairing

Cry of pain on crags Caucasian. All is but a symbol painted

Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer; Only those are crowned and sainted Who with grief have been acquainted, Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,

In their triumph and their yearning, In their passionate pulsations, In their words among the nations, The Promethean fire is burning. Shall it, then, be unavailing,

All this toil for human culture? Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing,

Must they see above them sailing

O'er life's barren crags the vulture? Such a fate as this was Dante's,

By defeat and exile maddened; Thus were Milton and Cervantes, Nature's priests and Corybantes,

By affliction touched and saddened. But the glories so transcon lent

That around their memories cluster, And, on all their steps attendant, Make their darkened lives resplendent With such gleams of inward lustre! All the melodies mysterious, Through the dreary darkness chaunted;

Thoughts in attitudes imperious, Voices soft, and deep, and serious, Words that whispered, songs that haunted!

All the soul in rapt suspension,

All the quivering, palpitating
Chords of life in utmost tension,
With the fervour of invention,

With the rapture of creating!
Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling!
In such hours of exultation
Even the faintest heart, unquailing,
Might behold the vulture sailing

Round the cloudy crags Caucasian ! Though to all there is not given

Strength for such sublime endeavour, Thus to scale the walls of heaven, And to leaven with fiery leaven

All the hearts of men for ever; Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted Honour and believe the presage, Hold aloft their torches lighted, Gleaming through the realms benighted, As they onward bear the message!

THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUS-
TINE.

SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said,
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,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.
The low desire, the base design,

That makes another's virtues less;
The revel of the treacherous 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,
That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes

The action of the noble 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 summits 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
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

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.

Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,

We may discern- -unseen before-
A path to higher destinies.
Nor deem the irrevocable Past

As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.* IN Mather's Magnalia Christi,

Of the old colonial time, May be found in prose the legend That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men's prayers.

"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 under his breath said he,
"This ship is so crank and walty,
I fear our grave she will be!"

And the ships that came from England
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel,

Nor of Master Lamberton.

And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one;
And the hulk dilated and vanished,
As a sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw this marvel
Each said unto his friend,

That this was the mould of their vessel,
And thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village

Gave thanks to God in prayer, That, to quiet their troubled spirits, He had sent this Ship of Air.

HAUNTED HOUSES.

ALL houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,

Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts

Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive

ghosts,

As silent as the pictures on the wall. The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds

I hear;

He but perceives what is; while unto me All that has been is visible and clear. We have no title-deeds to house or lands;

Owners and occupants of earlier dates From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of

sense

Floats like an atmosphere, and every

where

Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense

A vital breath of more ethereal air. Our little lives are kept in equipoise

By opposite attractions and desires! The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, And the more noble instinct that

aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar

Of earthly wants and aspirations high, Come from the influence of an unseen star,

An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud

Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,

Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd

Into the realm of mystery and night,

So from the world of spirits there descends

A bridge of light, connecting it with this,

O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,

Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

IN broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a schoolboy's paper kite.
In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a Poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Was she a lady of high degree,
So much in love with vanity

And foolish pomp of this world of ours?
Or was it Christian charity,
And lowliness and humility,

The richest and rarest of all dowers? Who shall tell us? No one speaks; No colour shoots into those cheeks,

Either of anger or of pride, At the rude question we have asked; Nor will the mystery be unmasked

By those who are sleeping at her side. Hereafter? And do you think to look On the terrible pages of that Book

To find her failings, faults, and errors? Ah, you will then have other cares, In your own short-comings and despairs, In your own secret sins and terrors!