AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE AT HAMBURG.

THE tower of old Saint Nicholas

soared upward to the skies, Like some huge piece of Nature's

make, the growth of centuries; You could not deem its crowding spires a work of human art, They seemed to struggle lightward

from a sturdy living heart.

Not Nature's self more freely speaks in crystal or in oak,

Than, through the pious builder's hand, in that gray pile she spoke ;

And as from acorn springs the oak, so, freely and alone, Sprang from his heart this hymn to

God, sung in obedient stone.

It seemed a wondrous freak of chance, so perfect, yet sorough, A whim of Nature crystallised

slowly in granite tough; The thick spires yearned towards

the sky in quaint harmonious lines,

And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like a grove of blasted pines.

Never did rock or stream or tree

lay claim with better right To all the adorning sympathies of shadow and of light; And, in that forest petrified, as forester there dwells Stout Herman, the old sacristan, sole lord of all its bells.

Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared onward red as blood, Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beneath the eddying flood; For miles away the fiery spray poured down its deadly rain, And back and forth the billows sucked, and paused and burst again.

From square to square with tiger leaps panted the lustful fire; The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its desire;

And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but to the knee,

Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirling sea.

Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet look; His soul had trusted God too long to be at last forsook; He could not fear, for surely God a pathway would unfold Through this red sea for faithful

hearts, as once He did of old.

But scarcely can he cross himself, or on his good saint call, Before the sacrilegious flood o erleaped the churchyard wall; And, ere a pater half was said, 'mid smoke and crackling glare, His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide despair.

Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sublime; His first thought was for God above, his next was for his chime: "Sing now and make your voices heard in hymns of praise," cried he,

"As did the Israelites of old, safe walking through the sea!

"Through this red sea our God

hath made the pathway safe to shore; Our promised land stands full in sight; shout now as ne'er before!"

And as the tower came crashing down, the bells, in clear accord, Pealed forth the grand old German hymn,-"All good souls, praise the Lord!"

With shrivelled hands he flung his seed,

Nor ever turned to look behind; Of sight or sound he took no heed; It seemed he was both deaf and blind.

His dim face showed no soul beneath,

Yet in my heart I felt a stir,
As if I looked upon the sheath
That once had clasped Excalibur.

I heard, as still the seed he cast,
How, crooning to himself, he sung,
"I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.

"Then all was wheat without a tare,.

Then all was righteous, fair, and true;

And I am he whose thoughtful

care

Shall plant the Old World in the New.

"The fruitful germs I scatter free, With busy hand, while all men sleep;

In Europe now, from sea to sea, The nations bless me as they reap."

Then I looked back along his path, And heard the clash of steel on steel

Where man faced man in deadly *wrath,

While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal.

The sky with burning towns flared red,

Nearer the noise of fighting rolled, And brothers' blood, by brothers shed,

Crept curdling over pavements cold.

Then marked I how each germ of truth

Which through the dotard's fingers

ran

Was mated with a dragon's tooth Whence there sprung up an armèd

man.

He recks not a bloody smutch
On his gold:

Everything to you defers,
You are potent reasoners,
At your whisper Treason stirs,
Hunger and Cold!

Rude comparisons you draw,
Words refuse to sate your maw,
Your gaunt limbs the cobweb law
Cannot hold :

You're not clogged with foolish pride,

But can seize a right denied:
Somehow God is on your side,
Hunger and Cold!

You respect no hoary wrong
More for having triumphed long;
Its past victims, haggard throng,
From the mould

You unbury swords and spears Weaker are than poor men's tears, Weaker than your silent years,

Hunger and Cold!

Let them guard both hall and bower;

Through the window you will glower,

Patient till your reckoning hour
Shall be tolled;

Cheeks are pale, but hands are red, Guiltless blood may chance be shed,

But ye must and will be fed,

Hunger and Cold!

God has plans man must not spoil,
Some were made to starve and toil,
Some to share the wine and oil,
We are told:

Devil's theories are these,
Stifling hope and love and peace,
Framed your hideous lusts to
please,

Hunger and Cold!

Scatter ashes on thy head,
Tears of burning sorrow shed,
Earth! and be by Pity led

To Love's fold;

Ere they block the very door
With lean corpses of the poor,
And will hush for naught but gɔre,
Hunger and Cold!

1844.

THE LANDLORD.

WHAT boot your houses and your lands?

In spite of close-drawn deed and fence,

Like water 'twixt your cheated hands,

They slip into the graveyard's sands,

And mock your ownership's pretence.

How shall you speak to urge your right,

Choked with that soil for which you lust?

The bit of clay, for whose delight You grasp, is mortgaged, too; Death might

Foreclose this very day in dust.

TO A PINE-TREE.

FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest, Purple-blue with the distance and vast;

Like a cloud o'er the lowlands thou lowerest,

That hangs poised on a lull in the blast,

To its fall leaning awful.

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened,

Thou singest and tossest thy branches;

Thy heart with the terror is gladdened,

Thou forebodest the dread avalanches,

When whole mountains swoop valeward.

In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys

With thine arms, as if blessings imploring,

Like an old king led forth from his palace,

When his people to battle are pouring

From the city beneath him.

To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming

Thou dost sing of wild billows in

With mad hand crashing melody

frantic,

While he pours forth his mighty desire

To leap down on the eager
Atlantic,

Whose arms stretch to his
playmate.

The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches,

Preying thence on the continent under;

Like a lion, crouched close on his haunches,

There awaiteth his leap the fierce thunder,

Growling low with impatience.

Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory,

Lusty father of Titans past number!

The snowflakes alone make thee hoary,

Nestling close to thy branches in slumber,

And thee mantling with silence.

Thou alone know'st the splendour of winter,

'Mid thy snow-silvered hushed precipices,

Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter,

And then plunge down the muffled abysses

In the quiet of midnight.

Thou alone know'st the glory of

Up to thee, to their sachem, who towerest

From thy bleak throne to

heaven.

SI DESCENDERO IN INFERNUM, ADES.

OH, wandering dim on the extremest edge

Of God's bright providence, whose spirits sigh

How far are ye from the innocent, from those

Whose hearts are as a little lane serene,

Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroke snows,

Or in the summer blithe with
lamb-cropped green,
Save the one track, where naught

more rude is seen

Than the plump wain at even Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves! How far are ye from those! yet who believes

That ye can shut out heaven! Your souls partake its influence, not in vain

Nor all unconscious, as that silent lane

Its drift of noiseless apple-blooms receives.

Looking within myself, I note how thin

A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate,

Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin;

In my own heart I find the worst

On your young hearts love's consecrating dew,

Or felt a mother's kisses, Or home's restraining tendrils. round you curled;

Ah! side by side with heart's ease in this world

The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue!

One band ye cannot break,-the force that clips

And grasps your circles to the central light;

Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse,

Self-exiled to the farthest verge of night;

Yet strives with you no less that inward might

No sin hath e'er imbruted; The god in you the creed-dimmed eye eludes;

The Law brooks not to have its solitudes

By bigot feet polluted ;Yet they who watch your Godcompelled return

May see your happy perihelion burn

Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods.

TO THE PAST.

WONDROUS and awful are thy silent halls,

O kingdom of the past! There lie the bygone ages in their palls,

Guarded by shadows vast; There all is hushed and breath

less,

Save when some image of old error falls

Earth worshipped once as death

less.

There sits drear Egypt, 'mid beleaguering sands,

Half woman and half beast, The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands

That once lit all the East;