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.

Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared onward red as blood, Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beneath the eddying flood; For miles away the fiery spray poured down its deadly rain,

And back and forth the billows sucked,

and paused, and burst again.

From square to square with tiger leaps panted the lustful fire,

The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its desire;

And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but to the knee, Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirling sea.

Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet look;

His soul had trusted God too long to be at last forsook ;

He could not fear, for surely God a pathway would unfold

Through this red sea for faithful hearts, as once he did of old.

But scarcely can he cross himself, or on his good saint call,

Before the sacrilegious flood o'erleaped the churchyard wall; And, ere a pater half was said, 'mid smoke and crackling glare, His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide despair.

Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sublime; His first thought was for God above, his next was for his chime; "Sing now and make your voices heard in hymns of praise," cried he, "As did the Israelites of old, safe walking through the sea!

"Through this red sea our God hath made the pathway safe to shore ;

Our promised land stands full in sight; shout now as ne'er before !

And as the tower came crushing down, the bells, in clear accord,

Pealed forth the grand old German hymn,-"All good souls, praise the Lord!"

THE SOWER.

I SAW a Sower walking slow
Across the earth, from east to west;
His hair was white as mountain snow,
His head drooped forward on his breast,
With shrivelled hands he flung his seed,
Nor ever turned to look behind;
Of sight or sound he took no heed;
It seemed he was both deaf and blind.

His dim face showed no soul beneath,
Yet in my heart I felt a stir,
As if I looked upon the sheath
That once had clasped Excalibur.

I heard, as still the seed he cast,
How, crooning to himself, he sung,
"I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.

"Then all was wheat without a tare,
Then all was righteous, fair, and true;
And I am he whose thoughtful care
Shall plant the Old World in the New.

"The fruitful germs I scatter free,
With busy hand, while all men sleep;
In Europe now, from sea to sea,
The nations bless me as they reap."

Then I looked back along his path, And heard the clash of steel on steel, Where man faced man, in deadly wrath, While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal.

The sky with burning towns flared red, Nearer the noise of fighting rolled, And brothers' blood, by brothers shed, Crept, curdling, over pavements cold.

Then marked I how each germ of truth Which through the dotard's fingers ran

Was mated with a dragon's tooth Whence there sprang up an armëd man.

I shouted, but he could not hear; Made signs, but these he could not see; And still, without a doubt or fear, Broadcast he scattered anarchy.

Long to my straining ears the blast Brought faintly back the words he sung:

"I sow again the holy Past,

The happy days when I was young."

HUNGER AND COLD.

SISTERS two, all praise to you,
With your faces pinched and blue;
To the poor man you 've been true
From of old:

You can speak the keenest word,
You are sure of being heard,
From the point you 're never stirred,
Hunger and Cold!

Let sleek statesmen temporize;
Palsied are their shifts and lies
When they meet your bloodshot eyes,
Grim and bold;

Policy you set at naught,

In their traps you 'll not be caught,
You're too honest to be bought,
Hunger and Cold!

Bolt and bar the palace door;
While the mass of men are poor,
Naked truth grows more and more
Uncontrolled;

You had never yet, I guess,
Any praise for bashfulness,
You can visit sans court-dress,
Hunger and Cold!

While the music fell and rose,
And the dance reeled to its close,
Where her round of costly woes

Fashion strolled,

I beheld with shuddering fear
Wolves' eyes through the windows peer;
Little dream they you are near,
Hunger and Cold!

Cheeks are pale, but hands are red, Guiltless blood may chance be shed, But ye must and will be fed,

Hunger and Cold!

God has plans man must not spoil,
Some were made to starve and toil,
Some to share the wine and oil,
We are told:

Devil's theories are these,
Stifling hope and love and peace,
Framed your hideous lusts to please,
Hunger and Cold!

Scatter ashes on thy head,

Tears of burning sorrow shed,
Earth! and be by Pity led

To Love's fold;

Ere they block the very door
With lean corpses of the poor,
And will hush for naught but gore, -
Hunger and Cold!

1844.

wax

By right of eminent domain; From factory tall to woodman's axe, All things on earth must pay their tax, To feed his hungry heart and brain. He takes you from your easy-chair,

And what he plans that you must do ; You sleep in down, eat dainty fare, He mounts his crazy garret-stair

And starves, the landlord over you. Feeding the clods your idlesse drains,

You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil. Your lands, with force or cunning got, Shrink to the measure of the grave; But Death himself abridges not The tenures of almighty thought, The titles of the wise and brave.

TO A PINE-TREE.

FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest, Purple-blue with the distance and

vast;

How far are ye from the innocent, from those

Whose hearts are as a little lane serene,

Smooth-heaped from wall to wall with unbroke snows,

Or in the summer blithe with lambcropped green,

Save the one track, where naught more rude is seen

Than the plump wain at even Bringing home four months' sunshine bound in sheaves !

How far are ye from those ! yet who believes

That ye can shut out heaven? Your souls partake its influence, not in vain

Nor all unconscious, as that silent lane Its drift of noiseless apple-blooms receives.

Looking within myself, I note how thin A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate,

Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin;

In my own heart I find the worst man's mate,

And see not dimly the smooth-hingëd gate That opes to those abysses Where ye grope darkly, -ye who never

knew

On your young hearts love's consecrating dew,

Or felt a mother's kisses, Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled;

Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world

The fatal nightshade grows and bitter rue!

One band ye cannot break, the force that clips

And grasps your circles to the central light;

Yours is the prodigal comet's long ellipse,

Self-exiled to the farthest verge of

night;

Yet strives with you no less that inward might

No sin hath e'er imbruted

O kingdom of the past! There lie the bygone ages in their palls, Guarded by shadows vast, There all is hushed and breathless, Save when some image of old error falls Earth worshipped once as deathless.

There sits drear Egypt, 'mid beleaguering sands,

Half woman and half beast, The burnt-out torch within her mouldering hands

That once lit all the East; A dotard bleared and hoary, There Asser crouches o'er the blackened brands

Of Asia's long-quenched glory.

Still as a city buried 'neath the sea

Thy courts and temples stand; Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry Of saints and heroes grand, Thy phantasms grope and shiver, Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently

Into Time's gnawing river.

Titanic shapes with faces blank and dun,
Of their old godhead lorn,
Gaze on the embers of the sunken sun,
Which they misdeem for morn;
And yet the eternal sorrow
In their unmonarched eyes says day is
done

Without the hope of morrow.

O realm of silence and of swart eclipse, The shapes that haunt thy gloom

Make signs to us and move thy withered lips

Across the gulf of doom;

Yet all their sound and motion Bring no more freight to us than wraiths of ships

On the mirage's ocean.

And if sometimes a moaning wandereth
From out thy desolate halls,
If some grim shadow of thy living death
Across thy sunshine falls

And scares the world to error, The eternal life sends forth melodious breath

To chase the misty terror.

Thy mighty clamors, wars, and worldnoised deeds

Are silent now in dust, Gone like a tremble of the huddling reeds

Beneath some sudden gust;

Thy forms and creeds have vanished, Tossed out to wither like unsightly weeds

From the world's garden banished. Whatever of true life there was in thee Leaps in our age's veins;

Wield still thy bent and wrinkled empery,

And shake thine idle chains;To thee thy dross is clinging, For us thy martyrs die, thy prophets see, Thy poets still are singing.

Here, 'mid the bleak waves of our strife and care,

Float the green Fortunate Isles Where all thy hero-spirits dwell, and share

Our martyrdoms and toils; The present moves attended With all of brave and excellent and fair That made the old time splendid.

TO THE FUTURE.

O LAND of Promise! from what Pisgah's height

Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful bowers,