And all the sceptred spirits of the past
Come thronging in to greet him as their peer;
But in the market-place's glare and throng
He sits apart, an exile, and his brow

Aches with the mocking memory of its crown.
But to the spirit select there is no choice;

He cannot say, This will I do, or that,

For the cheap means putting Heaven's ends in pawn,
And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold stern
Of destiny's first-born, for smoother fields
That yield no crop of self-denying will;

A hand is stretched to him from out the dark,
Which grasping without question, he is led
Where there is work that he must do for God.
The trial still is the strength's complement,
And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales
The sheer heights of supremest purposes
Is steeper to the angel than the child.
Chances have laws as fixed as planets have,
And disappointment's dry and bitter root,
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool
Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind,
And break a pathway to those unknown realms
That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled;
Endurance is the crowning quality,

And patience all the passion of great hearts;
These are their stay, and when the leaden world
Sets its hard face against their fateful thought,
And brute strength, like a scornful conqueror,
Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale,
The inspired soul but flings his patience in,
And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe,-
One faith against a whole earth's unbelief,
One soul against the flesh of all mankind.

Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear

The voice that errs not; then my triumph gleams,
O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all night
My heart flies on before me as I sail;

Far on I see my lifelong enterprise,

Which rose like Ganges mid the freezing snows
Of a world's sordidness, sweep broadening down,

And, gathering to itself a thousand streams,
Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea;
I see the ungated wall of chaos old,
With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night,
Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist
Before the irreversible feet of light;
And lo, with what clear omen in the east
On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn,
Like young Leander rosy from the sea
Glowing at Hero's lattice!

One day more

These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me.
God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded;
Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which

I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart
Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so
Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun,

Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off

His cheek-swollen mates, and from the leaning mast
Fortune's full sail strains forward!

One poor day!

Remember whose and not how short it is!

It is God's day, it is Columbus's.

A lavish day! One day, with life and heart,
Is more than time enough to find a world.

1844.

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 so rough,

A whim of Nature crystallized 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 crushing down, the bells, in clear accord,

Pealed forth the grand old German hymn,-"All good souls, praise the Lord!"

THE SOWER.

I SAW a Sower walking slow

Across the earth, from east to west;
His hair was white as mountain snow,
His head drooped forward on his breast.

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 sprang up an armed man.

I shouted, but he could not hear;

Made signs, but these he could not see; And still, without a doubt or fear, Broadcast he scattered anarchy.

Long to my straining ears the blast

Brought faintly back the words he sung:

"I sow again the holy Past,

The happy days when I was young."