O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,

50

As he paced thy streets and courtyards, sang in thought his careless lay: Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, The nobility of labor, - the long pedi gree of toil.

At the twisted brooks;

He can feel the cool

Breath of each little pool;

His fevered brain

Grows calm again,

20

And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

And the vapors that arise

And from each ample fold

Of the clouds about him rolled Scattering everywhere

The showery rain,

As the farmer scatters his grain.

Till glimpses more sublime

soil.

Unto his wondering eyes reveal

90

The Universe, as an immeasurable

wheel

Turning forevermore

In the rapid and rushing river of Time.

TO A CHILD

DEAR child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,

With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,

Thou gazest at the painted tiles,

In some obscure and sunless place,
Beneath huge Chimborazo's base,
Or Potosí's o'erhanging pines!
And thus for thee, O little child,
Through many a danger and escape, 30
The tall ships passed the stormy cape;
For thee in foreign lands remote,
Beneath a burning, tropic clime,
The Indian peasant, chasing the wild
goat,

Himself as swift and wild,

In falling, clutched the frail arbute,
The fibres of whose shallow root,
Uplifted from the soil, betrayed
The silver veins beneath it laid,
The buried treasures of the miser,
Time.

But, lo! thy door is left ajar!
Thou hearest footsteps from afar
And, at the sound,
Thou turnest round

With quick and questioning eyes,
Like one, who, in a foreign land,
Beholds on every hand

40

Some source of wonder and surprise!
And, restlessly, impatiently,
Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free. 50

The four walls of thy nursery
Are now like prison walls to thee.
No more thy mother's smiles,
No more the painted tiles,

By what astrology of fear or hope

realm!

Like the new moon thy life appears; 140
A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward into night
The shadowy disk of future years;
And yet upon its outer rim,

A luminous circle, faint and dim,
And scarcely visible to us here,
Rounds and completes the perfect
sphere;

A prophecy and intimation,
A pale and feeble adumbration,
Of the great world of light, that lies 150
Behind all human destinies.

Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught,
Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil,
To struggle with imperious thought,
Until the overburdened brain,
Weary with labor, faint with pain,
Like a jarred pendulum, retain
Only its motion, not its power,
Remember, in that perilous hour,
When most afflicted and oppressed,
From labor there shall come forth rest.

And if a more auspicious fate On thy advancing steps await, Still let it ever be thy pride

sleep.

O child! O new-born denizen

Of life's great city! on thy head The glory of the morn is shed, Like a celestial benison !

Here at the portal thou dost stand, And with thy little hand

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Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future's undiscovered land.
I see its valves expand,

As at the touch of Fate !

Into those realms of love and hate,
Into that darkness blank and drear,
By some prophetic feeling taught,
I launch the.bold, adventurous thought,
Freighted with hope and fear;
As upon subterranean streams,
In caverns unexplored and dark,
Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,
Laden with flickering fire,

And watch its swift-receding beams,
Until at length they disappear,
And in the distant dark expire.

130

With words of sympathy or song To cheer the dreary march along Of the great army of the poor,

160

O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous

Without reward; for thou shalt learn
The wisdom early to discern
True beauty in utility;

As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they
smote

The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.

Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope..

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