DANTE. TUSCAN, that wanderest through the realms of gloom Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom; As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks, THE LADDER OF ST AUGUSTINE. SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things-each day's events, Our pleasures and our discontents, The low desire-the base design, That makes another's virtues less; The revel of the giddy wine, And all occasions of excess. The longing for ignoble things, The strife for triumph more than truth, All thoughts of ill-all evil deeds, The action of the nobler will! 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, The distant mountains, that uprear The heights by great men reached and kept, Standing on what too long we bore Nor deem the irrevocable Past THE PHANTOM SHIP. IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, A ship sailed from New Haven, Were heavy with good men's prayers. "Oh 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. And at last their prayers were answered: It was in the month of June, An hour before the sunset Of a windy afternoon; When steadily steering landward A ship was seen below, And they knew it was Lamberton, Master, Who sailed so long ago. On she came, with a cloud of canvas, Then fell her straining top-mast, Hanging tangled in the shrouds, And her sails were loosened and lifted, And blown away like clouds. And the masts, with all their rigging, And the hulk dilated and vanished, As a sea-mist in the sun! And the people who saw this marvel, That this was the mould of their vessel, And the pastor of the village THE SEA DIVER. My way is on the bright blue sea, My plumage bears the crimson blush, When ocean by the sun is kissed! When fades the evening's purple flush, My dark wing cleaves the silver mist. Full many a fathom down beneath The bright, arch of the splendid deep, My ear has heard the sea-shell breathe O'er living myriads in their sleep. They rested by the coral throne, Where the pale sea-grape had o'ergrown At night, upon my storm-drenched wing, And when the wind and storm had done, I saw the pomp of day depart The cloud resign its golden crown, Peace be to those whose graves are made THE INDIAN HUNTER. WHEN the summer harvest was gathered in, And the ploughshare was in its furrow left, Where the stubble land had been lately cleft, An Indian hunter, with unstrung bow, Looked down where the valley lay stretched below. He was a stranger there, and all that day But the foot of the deer was far and fleet, |