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, And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales And patience all the passion of great hearts; These are their stay, and when the leaden world 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 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, Before the irreversible feet of light;· 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, 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. |