Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree,
Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eschol.
Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages,

Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac,

Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always,

Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers.

So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession.

Nor deem the irrevocable Past,
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,

SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, If, rising on its wrecks, at last

That of our vices we can frame

A ladder, if we will but tread

Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
The right of eminent domain.

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 Their solid bastions to the skies, Are crossed by pathways, that appear As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.

To something nobler we attain.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

IN Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend

That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men's prayers.

"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure'

Thus prayed the old divine "To bury our friends in the ocean, Take them, for they are thine!"

But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
"This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be !"

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.

A MIST was driving down the British For in the night, unseen, a single warChannel,

The day was just begun,

rior,

In sombre harness mailed,

And through the window-panes, on floor Dreaded of man, and surnamed the De

and panel,

Streamed the red autumn sun.

It glanced on flowing flag and rippling

pennon,

And the white sails of ships;

stroyer,

The dark and silent room,

And, from the frowning rampart, the And as he entered, darker grew, and

black cannon

Hailed it with feverish lips.

deeper,

The silence and the gloom.

He did not pause to parley or dissemble,
But smote the Warden hoar;

Ah! what a blow! that made all Eng-
land tremble

And groan from shore to shore.

Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited,

The sun rose bright o'erhead; Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead.

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