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, Light the long and dusky lane; Gleam the long threads in the sun; While within this brain of mine Cobwebs brighter and more fine By the busy wheel are spun. Two fair maidens in a swing, Like white doves upon the wing, First before my vision pass; Laughing, as their gentle hands Closely clasp the twisted strands, At their shadow on the grass. Then a booth of mountebanks, With its smell of tan and planks, And a girl poised high in air On a cord, in spangled dress, With a faded loveliness, And a weary look of care. Then a homestead among farms, And a woman with bare arms, Drawing water from a well; As the bucket mounts apace, With it mounts her own fair face, As at some magician's spell. Then an old man in a tower Ringing loud the noontide hour, While the rope coils round and round, Like a serpent, at his feet, And again in swift retreat 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, Sailors feeling for the land. 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. 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 :- The waters sink before an earthquake's shock. I recognised the nameless agony The terror, and the tremor, and the pain- 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- On his celestial embassy he sped. 'Twas at thy door, O friend, and not at mine, A shadow on those features fair and thin: The mists collect, the rains fall thick and loud; 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. That around their memories cluster, darkness 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 revel of the treacherous 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 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 eyes, We may discern-unseen before- THE PHANTOM SHIP.* * A detailed account of this "apparition of a Ship in the Air" is given by Cotton Mather in his MagnaliaChristi, 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- And under his breath said he, 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, And they knew it was Lamberton, 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. And the masts, with all their rigging, Fell slowly, one by one; And the hulk dilated and vanished, As a sea-mist in the sun! And the people who saw this marvel Each said unto his friend, That this was the mould of their vessel, And thus her tragic end. And the pastor of the village Gave thanks to God in prayer, That, to quiet their troubled spirits, He had sent this Ship of Air. |