Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree, Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac, Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always, Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers. So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession. Nor deem the irrevocable Past, SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, If, rising on its wrecks, at last That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! 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, When nearer seen, and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs. The distant mountains, that uprear Their solid bastions to the skies, Are crossed by pathways, that appear As we to higher levels rise. The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. To something nobler we attain. THE PHANTOM SHIP. IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, That is here set down in rhyme. A ship sailed from New Haven, Were heavy with good men's prayers. "O Lord! if it be thy pleasure' Thus prayed the old divine "To bury our friends in the ocean, Take them, for they are thine!" But Master Lamberton muttered, And the ships that came from England, This put the people to praying That the Lord would let them hear What in his greater wisdom He had done with friends so dear. A MIST was driving down the British For in the night, unseen, a single warChannel, The day was just begun, rior, In sombre harness mailed, And through the window-panes, on floor Dreaded of man, and surnamed the De and panel, Streamed the red autumn sun. It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, And the white sails of ships; stroyer, The dark and silent room, And, from the frowning rampart, the And as he entered, darker grew, and black cannon Hailed it with feverish lips. deeper, The silence and the gloom. He did not pause to parley or dissemble, Ah! what a blow! that made all Eng- And groan from shore to shore. Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited, The sun rose bright o'erhead; Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead. |