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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;

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All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain

In the bright fields of fair renown

The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;

But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time.

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 uprear
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

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Standing on what too long we bore

With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,

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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,
Of the old colonial time,

May be found in prose the legend
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.

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Thus prayed the old divine"To bury our friends in the ocean, Take them, for they are thine!"

But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
"This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be!"

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.

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