The yellow spoil of unconjectured realms Far through a gulf's green silence, never scarred By any but the North-wind's hurrying keels. And not the pines alone; all sights and sounds To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, Then did I entertain the poet's song, I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore: For I believed the poets; it is they Who utter wisdom from the central deep, And, listening to the inner flow of things, Speak to the age out of eternity. Ah me! old hermits sought for solitude In caves and desert places of the earth, Where their own heart-beat was the only stir Of living thing that comforted the year; Matched with the isolation drear and deep Of him who pines among the swarm of men, At once a new thought's king and pris oner, Feeling the truer life within his life, The fountain of his spirit's prophecy, Sinking away and wasting, drop by drop, In the ungrateful sands of sceptic ears. He in the palace-aisles of untrod woods Doth walk a king; for him the pent-up cell Widens beyond the circles of the stars, And all the sceptred spirits of the past Come thronging in to greet him as their peer; But in the market-place's glare and throng He sits apart, an exile, and his brow Aches with the mocking memory of its crown. Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear | You could not deem its crowding spires The voice that errs not; then my tri Of a world's solitude, sweep broadening down, And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea; Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist 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 pack, and from the leaning mast Fortune's full sail strains forward! 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 obedient 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 And in broad sunlight basked and slept, in quaint harmonious lines, 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. Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared onward red as blood, Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beFor miles away the fiery spray poured neath the eddying flood; And back and forth the billows sucked, down its deadly rain, 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 | In Europe now, from sea to sea, And, ere a pater half was said, mid smoke Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart His first thought was for God above, his "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 With shrivelled hands he flung his seed, His dim face showed no soul beneath, I heard, as still the seed he cast, "Then all was wheat without a tare, "The fruitful germs I scatter free, Then I looked back along his path, The sky with burning towns flared red, Then marked I how each germ of truth Long to my straining ears the blast sung: "I sow again the holy Past, HUNGER AND COLD. SISTERS two, all praise to you, You can speak the keenest word, Let sleek statesmen temporize; Policy you set at naught, In their traps you'll not be caught, Bolt and bar the palace door; You had never yet, I guess, |