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 Hold aloft their torches lighted, Gleaming through the realms benighted, As they onward bear the message! THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. 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, 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 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, That have their root in thoughts of ill; Whatever hinders or impedes The action of the nobler will ; All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen, and better known, The distant mountains, that uprear Their solid bastions to the skies, Are crossed by pathways, that appear The heights by great men reached and kept But they, while their companions slept, 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, 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, "This ship is so crank and walty I fear our grave she will be !" |