COLUMBUS.

Sets its hard face against their fateful thought,
And brute strength, like a scornful conqueror,
Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale,
The inspired soul but flings his patience in,
And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe,-
One faith against a whole earth's unbelief,
One soul against the flesh of all mankind.

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Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear
The voice that errs not; then my triumph gleams,
O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all night
My heart flies on before me as I sail.

And lo, with what clear omen in the east
On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn,
Like young Leander rosy from the sea

Glowing at Hero's lattice!

One day more

These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me :
God, let me not in their dull 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

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.

COLUMBUS.

J. R. Lowell.

H

OW, in God's name, did Columbus get over,
Is a pure wonder to me, I protest,

Cabot, and Raleigh too, that well-read rover,
Frobisher, Dampier, Drake, and the rest.
Bad enough all the same,
For them that after came,
But, in great Heaven's name,
How he should ever think
That on the other brink

Of this wild waste terra firma should be,
Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.

How a man should hope to get thither,

E'en if he knew that there was another side; But to suppose he should come any whither, Sailing straight on into chaos untried,

In spite of the motion

Across the whole ocean,

To stick to the notion

That in some nook or bend

Of a sea without end

He should find North and South America,

Was a pure madness, I must say, to me.

THE DISCOVERER.

What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy,

Judged that the earth like an orange was round, None of them ever said, Come along, follow me, Sail to the West, and the East will be found. Many a day before

Ever they'd come ashore,

From the San Salvador,

Sadder and wiser men

They'd have turned back again :

And that he did not, but did cross the sea,
Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.

THE DISCOVERER.

A. H. Clough.

I

HAVE a little kinsman

Whose earthly summers are but three,

And yet a voyager is he

Greater than Drake or Frobisher,

Than all their peers together!

He is a brave discoverer,

And, far beyond the tether

Of them who seek the frozen pole,
Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll;
Ay, he has travelled whither

A winged pilot steered his bark
Through the portals of the dark,
Past hoary Mimir's well and tree,
Across the unknown sea.
Suddenly in his fair young hour,
Came one who bore a flower,

4I

And laid it in his dimpled hand
With this command:
"Henceforth thou art a rover!
Thou must make a voyage far,
Sail beneath the evening star,
And a wondrous land discover."
With his sweet smile innocent

Our little kinsman went.

Since that time, no word

From the absent has been heard.
Who can tell

How he fares, or answer well
What the little one has found
Since he left us, outward bound?
Would that he might return!
Then should we learn,

From the pricking of his chart,
How the skyey roadways part.

Hush! does not the baby this way bring,

To lay beside this severed curl,
Some starry offering

Of chrysolite or pearl?

Ah, no! Not so!

We may follow on his track,

But he comes not back.

And yet I dare aver

He is a brave discoverer

Of climes his elders do not know.

A CRY FROM THE shore.

He has more learning than appears

On the scroll of twice three thousand years;
More than in the groves is taught,

Or from farther Indies brought;
He knows perchance how spirits fare;
What shapes the angels wear;
What is their guise and speech

In those lands beyond our reach;

And his eyes behold

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Things that shall never, never be to mortal hearers

told.

E. C. Stedman.

A CRY FROM THE SHORE.

COME

OME down, ye graybeard mariners,
Unto the wasting shore !

The morning winds are up,-the gods
Bid me to dream no more.

Come, tell me whither I must sail,

What peril there may be,
Before I take my life in hand
And venture out to sea!

"We may not tell thee where to sail,
Nor what the dangers are;
Each sailor soundeth for himself,

Each hath a separate star :

Each sailor soundeth for himself,

And on the awful sea

What we have learned is ours alone;

We may not tell it thee."