BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

come i gru van cantando lor lai Facendo in aer di sè lunga riga.

DANTE.

PROMETHEUS,

OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT.

OF Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chaunted,
Full of promptings and suggestions.

Beautiful is the tradition

Of that flight through heavenly portals, The old classic superstition

Of the theft and the transmission

Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring.

Born of heavenward aspiration, Then the fire with mortals sharing, Then the vulture,-the despairing Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

All is but a symbol painted

Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;
Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,

In their triumph and their yearning,

In their passionate pulsations,
In their words among the nations,
The Promethean fire is burning.

Shall it, then, be unavailing,

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,
And, on all their steps attendant,
Make their darkened lives resplendent
With such gleams of inward lustre!

All the melodies mysterious,

Through the dreary darkness chaunted; Thoughts in attitudes imperious,

Voices soft, and deep, and serious,

Words that whispered, songs that haunted!

All the soul in rapt suspension,
All the quivering, palpitating
Chords of life in utmost tension,
With the fervour of invention,
With the rapture of creating!

Ah, Prometheus; heaven-scaling!
In such hours of exultation
Even in the faintest heart, unquailing,
Might behold the vulture sailing

Round the cloudy crags Caucasian!

Though to all there is not given

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 pressage,
Hold aloft their torches lighted,
Gleaming through the realms benighted,
As they onward bear the message!

THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE.

SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame

A ladder,75 if we will but tread

Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

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 desine, the buse design
Than makes smother's virtues less
The revel of the raddy wide.

And all occasions of excess;

The longing for inmoble thing:

The surde for trampt more than truth The hardening of the beart, abat brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth; All thoughts of ; all evil deeds. That have their root in thoughts of ill; Whatever hinders or impedes

The action of the nobler will;—

All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fells 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-
A path to higher destinies.

Nor deem the irrevocable Past,
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.76

IN Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old Colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men's prayers.
"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure”-
Thus prayed the old divine-
"To bury our friends in the ocean,
Take them, for they are thine!"
But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
"This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be!"

And the ships that came from England,
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of the 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,
A ship was seen below,

And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so long ago.

On she came, with a cloud of canvass,
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.

THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS. A MIST was driving down the British Channel, The day was just begun,

And through the window-panes, on floor and panel,
Streamed the red autumn sun.

It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon,
And the white sails of ships;

And from the frowning rampart, the black cannon
Hailed it with feverish lips.

Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hythe, and Dover,
Were all alert that day,

To see the French war-steamers speeding over,
When the fog cleared away.

Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions,
Their cannon, through the night,

Holding their breath, had watched, in grim defiance,
The sea-coast opposite.

And now they roared at drum-beat from their stations
On every citadel;

Each answering each, with morning salutations,
That all was well.

And down the coast, all taking up the burden,
Replied the distant forts,

As if to summon from his sleep the Warden
And Lord of the Cinque Ports.

Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure,
No drum-beat from the wall,

No morning gun from the black forts embrasure,
Awaken with its call!

No more, surveying with an eye impartial

The long line of the coast,

Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field Marshal
Be seen upon his post!

For in the night, unseen, a single warrior,
In sombre harness mailed,

Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer,
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,
But smote the Warden hoar.

Ah! what a blow! that made all England tremble
And groan from shore to shore.