Their attitude and aspect were the same;

Alike their features and their robes of white;
And one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way :-
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,
"Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest!"
And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending at my door, began to knock;
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.

I recognised the nameless agony

The terror, and the tremour, and the painThat oft before had filled and haunted me,

And now returned with threefold strength again.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest,

And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice;
And, knowing whatsoe'er He sent was best,
Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

Then with a smile that filled the house with light-
"My errand is not Death, but Life," he said;
And, ere I answered, passing out of sight,
On his celestial embassy he sped.

'Twas at thy door, O friend, and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath,
Pausing, descended; and, with voice divine,
Whispered a word, that had a sound like Death.
Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom-

A shadow on those features fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.
All is of God! If He but wave His hand,
The mists collect, the rains fall thick and loud;
Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,

Lo! He looks back from the departing cloud.

Angels of Life and Death alike are His;

Without His leave they pass no threshold o'er; Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this, Against His messengers to shut the door?

PROMETHEUS,

OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT.

OF Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,

Myths are told and songs are chanted,
Full of promptings and suggestions.
Beautiful is the tradition

Of that flight through heavenly portals,
The old classic superstition

Of the theft and the transmission

Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring,

Born of heavenward aspiration,
Then the fire with mortals sharing,
Then the vulture,-the despairing
Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.
All is but a symbol painted

Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;
Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,

In their triumph and their yearning,

In their passionate pulsations,

In their words among the nations,
The Promethean fire is burning.

Shall it, then, be unavailing,

All this toil for human culture?
Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing,
Must they see above them sailing

O'er life's barren crags the vulture?

Such a fate as this was Dante's,

By defeat and exile maddened; Thus were Milton and Cervantes, Nature's priests and Corybantes,

By affliction touched and saddened. But the glories so transcendent

That around their memories cluster, And, on all their steps attendant, Make their darkened lives resplendent

With such gleams of inward lustre !

All the melodies mysterious,

Through the dreary darkness chaunted; Thoughts in attitudes imperious,

Voices soft, and deep, and serious,

Words that whispered, songs that haunted!

All the soul in rapt suspension,

All the quivering, palpitating Chords of life in utmost tension, With the fervour of invention,

With the rapture of creating!

474

Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling!
In such hours of exultation
Even the faintest heart, unquailing,
Might behold the vulture sailing
Round the cloudy crags Caucasian!
Though to all there is not given

Strength for such sublime endeavour,
Thus to scale the walls of heaven,
And to leaven with fiery leaven
All the hearts of men for ever;
Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted
Honour and believe the presage,
Hold aloft their torches lighted,
Gleaming through the realms benighted,
As they onward bear the message!

THE LADDER OF ST AUGUSTINE.
SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame

A ladder,* if we will but tread

Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things, each day's events,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may

The low desire, the base design,

ascend.

That makes another's virtues less;
The revel of the treacherous wine,
And all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things;

The strife for triumph more than truth;
The hardening of the heart, that brings
Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,
That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes

The action of the nobler will ;—

All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.

The words of St Augustine are, "De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus."-SERMON III. De Ascensione.

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.

Standing on what too long we bore
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern-unseen before-
A path to higher destinies.
Nor deem the irrevocable Past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.*

IN Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,

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 under his breath said he,
"This ship is so crank and walty,
I fear our grave she will be!"
And the ships that came from England
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel,

Nor of Master Lamberton.

A detailed account of this "apparition of a Ship in the Air" is given by Cotton Mather in his Magnalia Christi, Book 1. Ch. VI. It is contained in a

letter from the Rev. James Pierpont, Pastor of New Haven. To this account Mather adds these words:

"Reader, there being yet living so many credible gentlemen that were eyewitnesses of this wonderful thing, I venture to publish it for a thing as undoubted as 'tis wonderful."

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,
Right against the wind that blew,
Until the eye could distinguish

The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts,
Hanging tangled in the shrouds;
And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.

And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one;

And the hulk dilated and vanished,

As a sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw this marvel

Each said unto his friend,

That this was the mould of their vessel,
And thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village

Gave thanks to God in prayer,

That, to quiet their troubled spirits,
He had sent this Ship of Air.

HAUNTED HOUSES.

ALL houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Through the open doors The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, With feet that make no sound upon the floors. We meet them at the doorway, on the stair, Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.