With rash and impious hand the stripling tried

The immortal coursers of the sun to guide.

With mournful look the seamen eyed the strand, Where death's inexorable jaws expand;

Swift from their minds elapsed dangers past,

all

7 As, dumb with terror, they beheld the last.

lashed on by destiny se

And now, vere, With horror fraught the dreadful scene drew near!

The ship hangs hovering on the verge of death,

Hell yawns, rocks rise, and breakers roar beneath!

In vain, alas! the sacred shades of yore, Would arm the mind with philosophic lore; [breath, In vain they'd teach us, at the latest To smile serene amid the pangs of death.

Even Zeno's self, and Epictetus old, This fell abyss had shuddered to behold.

Uplifted on the surge, to heaven she flies,

Her shattered top half buried in the skies,

Then headlong plunging thunders on the ground,

Earth groans, air trembles, and the deeps resound!

Her giant bulk the dread concussion feels,

And quivering with the wound, in torment reels;

Again she plunges; hark! a second

shock

Tears her strong bottom on the marble rock!

Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries,

The

fated victims shuddering roll their eyes

In wild despair; while yet another stroke,

With deep convulsion, rends the solid oak:

Till, like the mine, in whose infernal cell

The lurking demons of destruction dwell,

At length asunder torn her frame divides,

tides.

[From The Shipwreck.]

A SUNSET PICTURE.

THE sun's bright orb, declining all serene,

Now glanced obliquely o'er the woodland scene;

Creation smiles around; on every

spray

The warbling birds exalt their evening lay;

Blithe skipping o'er yon hill, the fleecy train

Join the deep chorus of the lowing plain;

The golden lime and orange there

were seen

plains;

ows lave,

To the green ocean roll with chiding

wave.

The glassy ocean, hushed, forgets to roar;

But trembling, murmurs on the sandy shore;

And, lo! his surface lovely to behold, Glows in the west, a sea of living gold!

While all above a thousand liveries gay

The skies with pomp ineffable array.

ment reigns

While glowing Vesper leads the starry train,

And Night slow draws her veil o'er land and main,

Emerging clouds the azure east invade,

And wrap the lucid spheres in gradual shade;

While yet the songsters of the vocal grove

With dying numbers tune the soul to love.

Dear gifts from the bourns you wing,

There is yet, O undaunted Science, One gift that you do not bring!

Shall you conquer the last restriction

That conceals it from you now, And come back with its benediction Like an aureole on your brow? Shall you fly to us, roamer daring, Past barriers of time and space, And return from your mission bearing

The light of God on your face?

We know not, but still can treasure,
In the yearnings of our suspense,
Consolation we may not measure
By the certitudes of Sense.
For Life, as we long and question,
Seems to speak, while it hurries by,
Through undertones of suggestion
Immortality's deep reply.

To ears that await its token
Indeterminate, fitful, broken,
Perpetually it strays,
By the discords of our days.
It pierces the grim disasters

Of clamorous human Hate, And its influence overmasters All the ironies of Fate.

The icy laugh of the scorner

Cannot strike its echoes mute; It cleaves the moan of the mourner Like a clear æolian lute;

At its tone less clear and savage

Grows the anguish of farewell tears,
And its melody haunts the ravage
Of the desecrating years.

Philosophy builds, and spares not
Her firm, laborious power,
But her lordly edifice wears not

Its last aerial tower.

For the quarries of Reason fail her

Ere the structure's perfect scope, And the stone that would now avail her [hope. Must be hewn from heights of

But Art, at her noblest glory,

Can seem, to her lovers fond, As divinely admonitory

Of infinitudes beyond.

WOUNDS.

THE night-wind sweeps its viewless lyre,

And o'er dim lands, at pastoral rest, A single star's white heart of fire Is throbbing in the amber west.

I track a rivulet, while I roam,

By banks that copious leafage cools, And watch it roughening into foam Or deepening into glassy pools.

And where the shy stream gains a glade

That willowy thickets overwhelm, I find a cottage in the shade

Of one high patriarchal elm.

Unseen, I mark, well bowered from reach,

A group the sloping lawn displays, And more by gestures than by speech I learn their converse while I gaze.

In curious band, youth, maid, and dame,

About his chair they throng to greet

A gaunt old man of crippled frame, Whose crutch leans idle at his feet.

Girt with meek twilight's peaceful breath, [fray, They hear of loud, tempestuous Of troops mown down like wheat by death,

Of red Antietam's ghastly day. He tells of hurts that will not heal;

Where sting of shot and bite of steel Of aches that nerve and sinew fret,

Have left their dull mementos yet;

And touched by pathos, filled with praise,

To pay alike in glance or phrase, His gathered hearers closer press, Response of pitying tenderness.

But I, who note their kindly will, Look onward, past the box-edged walk, [still, Where stands a woman, grave and Oblivious of their fleeting talk.