Till, discouraged and desponding, Then a voice cried, "Rise, O Master; Woke, and from the smoking embers O thou sculptor, painter, poet! BIRDS OF PASSAGE. Flight the First. 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, each day's events, The low desire, the base design, 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 roots in thoughts of ill; Whatever hinders or impedes The action of the nobler will;— All these must first be trampled down We have not wings, we cannot soar ; The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, The distant mountains, that uprear The heights by great men reached and kept Standing on what too long we bore Nor deem the irrevocable Past, PROMETHEUS, OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT. OF Prometheus, how undaunted Of that flight through heavenly portals, The old classic superstition Of the theft and the transmission 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; In their feverish exultations, In their triumph and their yearning, In their passionate pulsations, In their words among the nations, 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 chanted; Thoughts in attitudes imperious, Voices soft, and deep, and serious, Words that whispered, songs that haunted. All the soul in rapt suspension, Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling! Round the cloudy crags Caucasian! Though to all there is not given Strength for such sublime endeavour, All the hearts of men for ever; |