In their passionate pulsations, 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, But the glories so transcendent That around their memories cluster, 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, With the rapture of creating! Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling! Though to all there is not given Strength for such sublime endeavor, Thus to scale the walls of heaven, And to leaven with fiery leaven And the hearts of men for ever; Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted 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, 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 In the bright fields of fair renown We have not wings, we cannot soar; The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, The distant mountains, that uprear The heights by great men reached and kept Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, Nor deem the irrevocable Past, IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, T A ship sailed from New Haven, „ ̈T And the keen and frosty airs, 9 91Ê. That filled her sails at parting, />1. Were heavy with good men's prayers. "O Lord! if it be thy pleasure" —// I fear our grave she will be!" 1 1. $167 And the ships that came from England, When the winter months were gone, Brought no tidings of this vessel Nor of Master Lamberton. 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. |