In their feverish exultations, In their triumph and their yearning, Shall it, then, be unavailing, All this toil for human culture? 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 transcendent 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 cnaunted; 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! In such hours of exultation Though to all there is not given Strength for such sublime endeavour, Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things, each day's events, The low desire, the base design, 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 We have not wings, we cannot soar; 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 appear The heights by great men reached and kept Standing on what too long we bore Nor deem the irrevocable Past, THE PHANTOM SHIP.76 IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, A ship sailed from New Haven, 66 Thus prayed the old divine To bury our friends in the ocean, But Master Lamberton muttered, And the ships that came from England, 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. And at last their prayers were answered :— Of a windy afternoon, When, steadily steering landward, And they knew it was Lamberton, Master On she came, with a cloud of canvas, Then fell her straining topmasts. And the masts, with all their rigging, 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 the pastor of the village Gave thanks to God in prayer, That, to quiet their troubled spirits, He had sent this Ship of Air. |