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, 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, 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; 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 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! In such hours of exultation Might behold the vulture sailing Round the cloudy crags Caucasian! 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 All 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, eacn day's events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, |