BIRDS OF PASSAGE. COME I GRU VAN CANTANDO LOR LAI, FACENDO IN AER DI SE LUNGA RIGA.-Dante. THE ROPE-WALK, IN that building long and low, Like the port-holes of a hulk, By the busy wheel are spun. And a weary look of care. Drawing water from a well; While the rope coils round and round, Almosts lifts him from the ground. Then within a prison-yard, Blow, and sweep it from the earth! Then a schoolboy, with his kite, Gleaming in a sky of light, And an eager, upward look; Steeds pur ued through lane and field; Fowlers with their snares concealed, And an angler by a brook. Sea-fog drifting overhead, In that building long and low; While the wheels go round and round With a drowsy, dreamy sound, And the spinners backward go. No more surveying with an eye impartial Be seen upon his post. For in the night, unseen, a single In sombre harness mailed, The rampart wall has scaled. He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, The dark and silent room; And as he entered, darker grew and deeper The silence and the gloom. He did not pause to parley or dissemble, Ah! what a blow! that made all Eng- And groan from shore to shore. Meanwhile, without the surly cannon waited, The sun rose bright o'erhead; Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead! THE TWO ANGELS.* Two Angels, one of Life, and one of Death, The sombre houses capped with plumes of smoke. Alike their features and their robes of white; I saw them pause on their celestial way : Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed, The waters sink before an earthquake's shock. I recognised the nameless agony The terror, and the tremor, and the pain That oft before had filled and haunted me, And now returned with threefold strength again. * Inspired by the birth of a child to the writer, and the death of Mrs. Maria Lowell, the wife of another American poet, on the same day, at Cambridge, U. S. T The door I opened to my heavenly guest, Then with a smile that filled the house with light- "Twas at thy door, O friend, and not at mine, Lo! He looks back from the departing cloud. PROMETHEUS, OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT. Of that flight through heavenly The old classic superstition Of the fire of the Immortals! First the deed of noble daring, Born of heavenward aspiration, Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer; In their triumph and their yearning, In their passionate pulsations, 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, With such gleams of inward lustre! Thoughts in attitudes imperious, All the soul in rapt suspension, With the rapture of creating! Strength for such sublime endeavour, Thus to scale the walls of heaven, And to leaven with fiery leaven All the hearts of men for ever; Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted Honour and believe the presage, Hold aloft their torches lighted, Gleaming through the realms benighted, As they onward bear the message! THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUS- SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, Beneath our feet each deed of All common things, each day's events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend. The low desire, the base design, That makes another's virtues less; 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 noble will; * The words of St. Augustine are, "De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus."-SERMON III. De Ascensione. 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. Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast 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 eye-witnesses of this wonderful thing, I venture to publish it for a thing as undoubted as 'tis wonderful." A ship sailed from New Haven, Thus prayed the old divine- 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 swered: It was in the month of June, An hour before the sunset Of a windy afternoon, When, steadily steering landward, an 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, And the people who saw this marvel Gave thanks to God in prayer, HAUNTED HOUSES. ALL houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses. open doors Through the The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, With feet that make no sound upon the floors. We meet them at the doorway, on the stair, Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air, A sense of something moving to and fro. There are more guests at table than the hosts Invited; the illuminated hall Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts, As silent as the pictures on the wall. The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; He but perceives what is; while unto |