The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene, So like the soul of me, what if 't were me? 215 A melancholy better than all mirth.

Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,
Or at the foresight of obscurer years?
Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory,
Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty
220 Superior to all its gaudy skirts.

And, that no day of life may lack romance,
The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down
A private beam into each several heart.

Daily the bending skies solicit man,
225 The seasons chariot him from this exile,

230

The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,
The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,
Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights
Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.

With a vermilion pencil mark the day
When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs
Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Fall
Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront

Two of our mates returning with swift oars. 235 One held a printed journal waving high

Caught from a late-arriving traveller,

Big with great news, and shouted the report
For which the world had waited, now firm fact,
Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,

240 And landed on our coast, and pulsating

With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries
From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,

239. It will be remembered that it was in August, 1858, when the first Atlantic Cable was laid and the first message transmitted, proving the feasibility of the connection, though the table was imperfect, and a second one became necessary.

Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found

path

Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, 245 Match God's equator with a zone of art,

And lift man's public action to a height Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, When linked hemispheres attest his deed. We have few moments in the longest life 250 Of such delight and wonder as there grew, Nor yet unsuited to that solitude:

A burst of joy, as if we told the fact

To ears intelligent; as if gray rock

And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know 255 This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind; As if we men were talking in a vein

Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs,
And a prime end of the most subtle element
Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing
caves!

260 Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops, Let them hear well! 't is theirs as much as ours.

A spasm throbbing through the pedestals
Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,
Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill

265 To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.

The lightning has run masterless too long;

He must to school, and learn his verb and noun, And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man's messages 0 Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea. And yet I marked, even in the manly joy Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat, (Perchance I erred,) a shade of discontent; Or was it for mankind a generous shame,

M