A swift-betraying vision's Gany- But from my boyhood up I loved

Yet to have greatly dreamed pre- The tall pine-forests of the Apen

Great days have ever such a morn- Murmur their hoary legends of the

they

Which hearing, I in vision clear And I believed the poets; it is beheld The sudden dark of tropic night Who utter wisdom from the cen

Where their own heart-beat was the only stir

Of living thing that comforted the year;

But the bald pillar- top of Simeon,

In midnight's blankest waste, were populous,

Matched with the isolation drear and deep

Brought honey to the baby Jupiter,
Who in his soft hand crushed a vi- Of him who pines among the swarm

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of men,

olet, Godlike foremusing the rough At once a new thought's king and thunder's gripe; prisoner,

Then did I entertain the poet's Feeling the truer life within his

song,

My great Idea's guest, and, pass

ing o'er

That iron bridge the Tuscan built

to hell,

life,

I heard Ulysses tell of mountain- In the ungrateful sands of sceptic

Of happy Atlantis, and heard And all the sceptred spirits of

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the past

Björne's keel Crunch the gray pebbles of the Come thronging in to greet him as Vinland shore: their peer;

I listened, musing, to the pro- But in the market-place's glare

phecy

and throng

Of Nero's tutor - victim; lo, the He sits apart, an exile, and his birds brow

Sing darkling, conscious of the Aches with the mocking memory climbing dawn. of its crown.

He cannot say, This will I do, or And slowly that outweighs the

Far on I see my lifelong enterprise, The trial still is the strength's That rose like Ganges mid the

And the uncertain, dizzy path that Of a world's solitude, sweep broad

Envy's harsh berries, and the Fade like a wreath of unreturning

Of the world's scorn, are the right Before the irreversible feet of mother-milk

To the tough hearts that pioneer And lo, with what clear omen in

That in the earth's broad shadow Like young Leander rosy from the

Endurance is the crowning quality, Glowing at Hero's lattice!
And patience all the passion of

These are their stay, and when the These muttering shoalbrains leave

Sets its hard face against their God, let me not in their dull ooze

Clangs his huge glaive down in I have dug out the pith and sinewy

THE tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the skies,
Like some huge piece of Nature's make, the growth of centuries;
You could not deem its crowding spires 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 in quaint harmonious lines,
And in broad sunlight basked and slept, 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 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 crashing down, the bells, in clear accord, Pealed forth the grand old German hymn, -'All good souls, praise the Lord!'

Then all was righteous, fair, and I shouted, but he could not hear;