For they cried, "Fill high the goblet!
We must drink to one Saint more!"

THE SINGERS.

OD sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of

mirth,

That they might touch the hearts of men, And bring them back to heaven again.

The first, a youth with soul of fire,
Held in his hand a golden lyre;

Through groves he wandered, and by streams,

Playing the music of our dreams.

The second, with a bearded face,
Stood singing in the market-place,
And stirred with accents deep and loud
The hearts of all the listening crowd.

A

gray old man, the third and last, Sang in cathedrals dim and vast, While the majestic organ rolled Contrition from its mouths of gold.

And those who heard the Singers three
Disputed which the best might be;
For still their music seemed to start
Discordant echoes in each heart.

But the great Master said, "I see
No best in kind, but in degree;
I gave a various gift to each,

To charm, to strengthen, and to teach.

"These are the three great chords of might,

And he whose ear is tuned aright

Will hear no discord in the three,
But the most perfect harmony."

PROMETHEUS,

OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT.

F Prometheus, how undaunted

On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,

Myths are told and songs are chanted,
Full of promptings and suggestions.

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,
Then the vulture, the despairing
Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

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; 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 chanted; Thoughts in attitudes imperious,

Voices soft, and deep, and serious,

Words that whispered, songs that haunted!

All the soul in rapt suspension,
All the quivering, palpitating
Chords of life in utmost tension,
With the fervor 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 be 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 forever;

Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted
Honor and believe the presage,
Hold aloft their torches lighted,
Gleaming through the realms benighted,
As they onward bear the message!

EPIMETHEUS,

OR THE POET'S AFTERTHOUGHT.

AVE I dreamed? or was it real,
What I saw as in a vision,
When to marches hymeneal

In the land of the Ideal

Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?