To the heights of such estimate of Nature indeed ascending, we proceed to make observations for our Vistas, breathing 10 rarest air. What is I believe called Idealism seems to me to suggest (guarding against extravagance, and ever modified even by its opposite) the course of inquiry and desert of favor for our New World 15 Metaphysics, their foundation of and in literature, giving hue to all. . . .

world needs, a class of bards who will, now and ever, so link and tally the rational physical being of man with ensembles of time and space, and with this vast and multiform show, Nature, surrounding him, ever tantalizing him, equally a part, and yet not a part of him, as to essentially, harmonize, satisfy, and put at rest. Faith, very old, now scared away by science, must be restored, brought back by the same power that caused her departure-restored with new sway,

deeper, wider, higher than ever. Surely, this universal ennui, this coward fear, this shuddering at death, these low, degrading views, are not always to rule the spirit pervading future society, as it has the past, and does the present. What the Roman Lucretius sought most nobly, yet all too blindly, negatively to do for his age and its successors, must be done positively by some great coming literatus, especially poet, who, while remaining fully poet, will absorb whatever science indicates, with spiritualism, and out of them, and out of his own genius, will compose the great poem of death. Then will man indeed confront Nature, and confront time and space, both with science, and con amore, and take his right place, prepared for life, master of fortune and misfortune. And then that which was long wanted will be supplied, and the ship that had it not before in all her voyages will

In the future of these States must arise poets immenser far, and make great poems of death. The poems of life are great, but 20 there must be the poems of the purport of life, not only in itself, but beyond itself. I have eulogized Homer, the sacred bards of Jewry, Eschylus, Juvenal, Shakspere, etc., and acknowledged their inestimable 25 value. But (with perhaps the exception, in some, not all respects, of the secondmention'd), I say there must, for future and democratic purposes, appear poets (dare I to say so?) of higher class even 30 than any of those-poets not only possessed of the religious fire and abandon of Isaiah, luxuriant in the epic talent of Homer, or for proud characters as in Shakspere, but consistent with the 35 have an anchor. Hegelian formulas, and consistent with modern science. America needs, and the

The Galaxy, 1867-1868.

TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)

Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,

As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.)

Far, far at sea,

After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,

With reappearing day as now so happy and serene,

The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,

The limpid spread of air cerulean,

Thou also reappearest.

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Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)

To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,

Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,

At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America,

That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,
In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul,
What joys! what joys were thine!

London Athenæum, 1876.

PRAYER OF COLUMBUS

A batter'd, wrecked old man,

Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,

Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,
Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death,

I take my way along the island's edge,

Venting a heavy heart.

I am too full of woe!

Haply I may not live another day;

I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep,

Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,

Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee,
Report myself once more to Thee.

Thou knowest my years entire, my life,

My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely;
Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth,

Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations,

Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee,

Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them,
Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee,

In shackles, prison'd, in disgrace, repining not,

Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee.

All my emprises have been fill'd with Thee,

My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee
Sailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee;

Intentions, purports, aspirations none, leaving results to Thee.

O I am sure they really came from Thee,

The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,

The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,

A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep,
These sped me on.

By me and these the work so far accomplish'd,

By me earth's elder cloy'd and stifled lands uncloy'd, unloos'd
By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known.

The end I know not, it is all in Thee,

Or small or great I know not-haply what broad fields, what lands,
Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know,

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Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee,
Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn'd to reaping-tools,

Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may bud and blossom there.

One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;

That Thou O God my life hast lighted,

With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,
Light rare untellable, lighting the very light,

Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages;

For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,
Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee.

My terminus near,

The clouds already closing in upon me,

The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost,

I yield my ships to Thee.

My hands, my limbs grow nerveless,

My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd,

Let the old timbers part, I will not part,

I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,
Thee, Thee, at least I know.

Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving?
What do I know of life? what of myself?

I know not even my own work past or present,
Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,
Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,
Mocking, perplexing me.

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?
As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes,
Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,
And on the distant waves sail countless ships,
And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.

Harper's Monthly, March, 1874.

PATROLLING BARNEGAT

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,

Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,

Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,

On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching.

The American, June, 1880.

GOOD-BY MY FANCY

Good-by my Fancy!

Farewell dear mate, dear love!

I'm going away, I know not where,

Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,

So Good-by my Fancy.

Now for my last let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,.
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

Long have we lived, joy'd caress'd together;
Delightful! - now separation - Good-by my Fancy.

Yet let me not be too hasty,

Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended into one;
Then if we die we die together (yes, we'll remain one),

If we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something,

May-be it is yourself now ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?)
May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning-so now finally,
Good-by-and hail! my Fancy.

From Good-By My Fancy, 1891.

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EDWARD EVERETT HALE (1822-1909)

Of the later Boston group' of writers, born within a decade of each other and educated at Harvard, Lowell, Story, Parkman, Dana, Higginson, Norton, and others, the most versatile and voluminous, perhaps, was Edward Everett Hale, who, graduating at seventeen, filled seventy years with almost incessant literary productiveness. He was active in many lines: he was a preacher of power, a lecturer, social reformer, philanthropist, and editor, and he was author and editor of more than sixty books,-histories, essays, short stories, biographies, sermons, prayers. In his last years he served as Chaplain of the United States Senate.

As a director of the thinking of his generation he was an undoubted power, but it is now seen that little that he wrote is destined to be of permanent value. His most distinctive literary accomplishment was his short story The Man Without a Country,' 1863, already an American classic. Several other short stories of his have undoubted value. In the evolution of this distinctive literary form in America, Hale added several new elements, notably verisimilitude, the art of making the improbable and the impossible seem plausible and even convincing.

MY DOUBLE, AND HOW HE
UNDID ME

It is not often that I trouble the readers of the Atlantic Monthly. I should not trouble them now, but for the importunities of my wife, who feels to insist' that a duty to society is unfulfilled till I have told why I had to have a double, and how he undid me. She is sure, she to says, that intelligent persons cannot understand that pressure upon public servants which alone drives any man into the employment of a double. And while I fear she thinks, at the bottom of her heart, 15 that my fortunes will never be remade, she has a faint hope that, as another Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future publics, from which they may profit, though we die. Owing to the behavior of my double, 20 or, if you please, to that public pressure which compelled me to employ him, I have plenty of leisure to write this communication.

that

the confidential friend in a hundred families in the town, cutting the social trifle, as my friend Haliburton says, 'from the top of the whipped syllabub to the bottom of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation,' to keep abreast of the thought of the age in one's study, and to do one's best on Sunday to interweave thought with the active life of an active town, and to inspirit both and make both infinite by glimpses of the Eternal Glory, seemed such an exquisite forelook into one's life! Enough to do, and all so real and so grand! If this vision could only have lasted!

The truth is, that this vision was not in itself a delusion, nor, indeed, half bright enough. If one could only have been left to do his own business, the vision would have accomplished itself and brought out new paraheliacal visions, each as bright as the original. The misery was and is, as we found out, I and Polly, before long, that besides the vision, and

I am, or rather was, a minister of the 25 besides the usual human and finite failSandemanian connection. I was settled in the active, wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the finest water-powers in Maine. We used to call it a western town in the heart of the civilization of 30 New England. A charming place it was and is. A spirited, brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might have all the joy of eventful living' to our heart's content.

Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those halcyon monents of our first housekeeping. To be

ures in life (such as breaking the old pitcher that came over in the Mayflower, and putting into the fire the alpenstock with which her father climbed Mont Blanc)- besides these, I say (imitating the style of Robinson Crusoe), there were pitchforked in on us a great rowen-heap of humbugs, handed down from some unknown seed-time, in which we were expected, and I chiefly, to fulfil certain public functions before the community, of the character of those fulfilled by the third row of supernumeraries who stand be

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