In life's discord, strife, and clamor, Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest. Weary hearts by thee are lifted, Struggling souls by thee are strengthened, Clouds of fear asunder rifted, Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted, Lives, like days in summer, lengthened! Therefore art thou ever dearer, O my Sibyl, my deceiver ! For thou makest each mystery clearer, When thou fillest my heart with fever! Muse of all the Gifts and Graces! Though the fields around us wither, There are ampler realms and spaces, Let us turn and wander thither! NOTES. PAGE 123. That of our vices we can frame A ladder. The words of St. Augustine are, "De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus.” Sermon III. De Ascensione. PAGE 127. THE PHANTOM SHIP. A detailed account of this "apparition of a Ship in the Air" is given by Cotton Mather in his Magnalia Christi, Book I. Ch. VI. It is contained in a letter from the Rev. James Pierpont, Pastor of New Haven. To this account Mather adds these words: "Reader, there being yet living so many credible gentlemen, that were eyewitnesses of this wonderful thing, I venture to publish it for a thing as undoubted as 't is wonderful." |