The low desine, the buse design Than ones sacthers witnes less The revel of the raddy wine. And all occasions of excess; The longing for inmoble thing: The strife for trampt more than truth; The hardening of the beart, that brings Ireverence for the dreams of youth; All thoughts of ; aer 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 We have not wings, we cannot soar; The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, The distant mountains, that uprear The heights by great men reached and kept Standing on what too long we bore, Nor deem the irrevocable Past, THE PHANTOM SHIP.76 IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, A ship sailed from New Haven, Were heavy with good men's prayers. And the ships that came from England, Nor of Master Lamberton. This put the people to praying He had done with friends so dear. And at last their prayers were answered:- An hour before the sunset When steadily steering landward, And they knew was Lamberton, Master, On she came, with a cloud of canvass, The faces of the crew. Then fell her straining topmasts, And the masts with all their rigging, And the hulk dilated and vanished, And the people who saw this marvel That this was the mould of their vessel, 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, And through the window-panes, on floor and panel, It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, And from the frowning rampart, the black cannon Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hythe, and Dover, To see the French war-steamers speeding over, Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions, Holding their breath, had watched, in grim defiance, And now they roared at drum-beat from their stations Each answering each, with morning salutations, And down the coast, all taking up the burden, As if to summon from his sleep the Warden Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure, No morning gun from the black forts embrasure, No more, surveying with an eye impartial The long line of the coast, Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field Marshal For in the night, unseen, a single warrior, Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer, He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper, He did not pause to parley or dissemble, Ah! what a blow! that made all England tremble T Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited, Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated HAUNTED HOUSES. ALL houses wherein men have lived and died A sense of something moving to and fro. There are more guests at table, than the hosts Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts, The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; All that has been is visible and clear. We have no title-deeds to house or lands; The spirit-world around this world of sense Our little lives are kept in equipoise Of earthly wants and aspirations high, And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud So from the world of spirits there descends IN THE CHURCHYARD AT CAMBRIDGE. IN the village churchyard she lies, Dust is in her beautiful eyes, No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs; At her feet and at her head Lies a slave to attend the dead, But their dust is white as hers. Was she a lady of high degree, So much in love with the vanity And foolish pomp of this world of ours? And lowliness and humility, The richest and rarest of all dowers ? Who shall tell us? No one speaks; By those who are sleeping at her side To find her failings, faults, and errors? THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S NEST. ONCE the Emperor Charles of Spain, Long besieged, in mud and rain, Some old frontier town of Flanders. Up and down the dreary camp, In great boots of Spanish leather, These Hidalgos, dull and damp, Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather. Thus as to and fro they went, Over upland and through hollow, Giving their impatience vent, In her nest, they spied a swallow. Yes, it was a swallow's nest, Built of clay and hair of horses, |