umph gleams,

O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all night

My heart flies on before me as I sail; Far on I see my lifelong enterprise, Which rose like Ganges 'mid the freezing snows

Of a world's sordidness, sweep broadening down,

And, gathering to itself a thousand streams,

Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea; I see the ungated wall of chaos old, With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night,

Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist Before the irreversible feet of light; And lo, with what clear omen in the east

On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn,

Like young Leander rosy from the sea Glowing at Hero's lattice !

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

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 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