Page images
PDF
EPUB

But to the spirit select there is no choice;

He cannot say, This will I do, or that,

For the cheap means putting Heaven's ends in pawn, And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold stern

Of destiny's first-born, for smoother fields

That yield no crop of self-denying will;

A hand is stretched to him from out the dark,
Which grasping without question, he is led
Where there is work that he must do for God.
The trial still is the strength's complement,

And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales
The sheer heights of supremest purposes
Is steeper to the angel than the child.
Chances have laws as fixed as planets have,
And disappointment's dry and bitter root,
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool
Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind,
And break a pathway to those unknown realms
That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled;
Endurance is the crowning quality,

And patience all the passion of great hearts;

These are their stay, and when the leaden world
Sets its hard face against their fateful thought,
And brute strength, like a scornful conqueror,
Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale,
The inspired soul but flings his patience in,
And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe, -

One faith against a whole earth's unbelief,

One soul against the flesh of all mankind.

Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear
The voice that errs not; then my triumph gleams,
O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all night
My heart flies on before me as I sail;

Far on I see my lifelong enterprise,

Which rose like Ganges 'mid the freezing snows Of a world's sordidness, sweep broadening down, And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea;

I see the ungated wall of chaos old,

With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night,
Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist

Before the irreversible feet of light;·

[ocr errors]

And lo, with what clear omen in the east

On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn,

Like young Leander rosy from the sea

Glowing at Hero's lattice!

One day more

These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me: God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded;

Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which

I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart

Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so

Cast up to warp

and blacken in the sun,

Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off

His cheek-swollen mates, and from the leaning mast

Fortune's full sail strains forward!

One poor day!

Remember whose and not how short it is!

It is God's day, it is Columbus's.

A lavish day! One day, with life and heart,
Is more than time enough to find a world.

1844.

AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE AT HAMBURG.

THE tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the

skies,

Like some huge piece of Nature's make, the growth of centuries;

You could not deem its crowding spires a work of

human art,

They seemed to struggle lightward from a sturdy living heart.

Not Nature's self more freely speaks in crystal or in

oak,

Than, through the pious builder's hand, in that gray pile

she spoke;

And as from acorn springs the oak, so, freely and alone,

Sprang from his heart this hymn to God, sung in obedi

ent stone.

It seemed a wondrous freak of chance, so perfect, yet

so rough,

A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in granite

tough;

The thick spires yearned towards the sky in quaint, harmonious lines,

And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like a grove of blasted pines.

Never did rock or stream or tree lay claim with better

right

To all the adorning sympathies of shadow and of

light;

And, in that forest petrified, as forester there

dwells

Stout Herman, the old sacristan, sole lord of all its

bells.

« PreviousContinue »