And now lurks in his lair to destroy the race of the red man? Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the Crows and the Foxes, Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the tread of Behemoth, Lo! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri's Merciless current! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the camp-fires Gleam through the night; and the cloud of dust in the gray of the daybreak Marks not the buffalo's track, nor the Mandan's dexterous horse-race; It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches! Ha! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of the east-wind, Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams! THE PHANTOM SHIP. IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, Of the old colonial time, May be found in prose the legend A ship sailed from New Haven, Were heavy with good men's prayers. "O Lord! if it be thy pleasure," But Master Lamberton muttered And the ships that came from England, When the winter months were gone, Brought no tidings of this vessel Nor of Master Lamberton. This put the people to praying That the Lord would let them hear What, in his greater wisdom, He had done with friends so dear. And at last their prayers were answered: An hour before the sunset Of a windy afternoon; When steadily steering landward A ship was seen below, - And they knew it was Lamberton, Master, Who sailed so long ago. On she came, with a cloud of canvass, The faces of the crew. Then fell her straining top-masts, Hanging tangled in the shrouds, And her sails were loosened and lifted, And blown away like clouds. And the masts, with all their rigging, And the hulk dilated and vanished, As a sea-mist in the sun! And the people who saw this marvel, That this was the mould of their vessel, And the pastor of the village THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All common things—each day's events, Our pleasures and our discontents, The low desire-the base design, The revel of the giddy wine, And all occasions of excess. The longing for ignoble things, The strife for triumph more than truth, The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth! All thoughts of ill-all evil deeds, The action of the nobler will! All these must first be trampled down We have not wings-we cannot soar But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees—by more and more— The cloudy summits of our time. The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs. The distant mountains, that uprear Are crossed by pathways, that appear |