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.

11 *

Standing on what too long we bore

With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,

We may discern

A path to higher destinies.

unseen before

Nor deem the irrevocable Past,

As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.

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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"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"

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.

And at last their prayers were answered:

It was in the month of June,

An hour before the sunset

Of a windy afternoon,

When, steadily steering landward,
A ship was seen below,

And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so long ago.

On she came, with a cloud of canvas,
Right against the wind that blew,

Until the eye could distinguish

The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts,

Hanging tangled in the shrouds,

And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.