Ah, Prometheus! heaven-scaling!

In such hours of exultation Even the faintest heart, unquailing, Might behold the vulture sailing Round the cloudy crags Caucasian !

Though to all there be not given

Strength for such sublime endeavor, Thus to scale the walls of heaven, And to leaven with fiery leaven,

All the hearts of men forever;

Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted
Honor and believe the presage,
Hold aloft their torches lighted,
Gleaming through the realms benighted,
As they onward bear the message!

EPIMETHEUS

OR THE POET'S AFTERTHOUGHT

HAVE I dreamed? or was it real,
What I saw as in a vision,
When to marches hymeneal
In the land of the Ideal

Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?

What are these the guests whose glances
Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?
These the wild, bewildering fancies,
That with dithyrambic dances

As with magic circles bound me ?

Ah! how cold are their caresses!

Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms !
Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,
And from loose, dishevelled tresses
Fall the hyacinthine blossoms !

O my songs! whose winsome measures
Filled my heart with secret rapture!
Children of my golden leisures!
Must even your delights and pleasures

Fade and perish with the capture ?

Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous,
When they came to me unbidden;
Voices single, and in chorus,
Like the wild birds singing o'er us
In the dark of branches hidden.
Disenchantment! Disillusion !
Must each noble aspiration

Come at last to this conclusion, Jarring discord, wild confusion, Lassitude, renunciation ?

Not with steeper fall nor faster,

From the sun's serene dominions, Not through brighter realms nor vaster, In swift ruin and disaster,

Icarus fell with shattered pinions!

Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora! Why did mighty Jove create thee Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora, Beautiful as young Aurora,

If to win thee is to hate thee?

No, not hate thee! for this feeling
Of unrest and long resistance
Is but passionate appealing,
A prophetic whisper stealing
O'er the chords of our existence.

Him whom thou dost once enamor,
Thou, beloved, never leavest;
In life's discord, strife, and clamor,
Still he feels thy spell of glamour;

Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest.

Weary hearts by thee are lifted, Struggling souls by thee are strength ened,

Clouds of fear asunder rifted,

Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted, Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!

Therefore art thou ever dearer,

O my Sibyl, my deceiver ! For thou makest each mystery clearer, And the unattained seems nearer,

When thou fillest my heart with fever!

Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!

Though the fields around us wither,
There are ampler realms and spaces,
Where no foot has left its traces:
Let us turn and wander thither!

THE LADDER OF SAINT 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,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire, the base design,

That makes another's virtues less; The revel of the ruddy 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,

That have their root in thoughts of ill; Whatever hinders or impedes

The action of the nobler will; —

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.

Standing on what too long we bore
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern-unseen before-
A path to higher destinies,

Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain.

But smote the Warden hoar; Ah! what a blow! that made all England 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.

HAUNTED HOUSES

ALL houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

burden,

Replied the distant forts,

stair,

Along the passages they come and go,

Yes, it was a swallow's nest,

Built of clay and hair of horses, Mane, or tail, or dragoon's crest, Found on hedge-rows east and west, After skirmish of the forces.

Then an old Hidalgo said,

As he twirled his gray mustachio,
"Sure this swallow overhead
Thinks the Emperor's tent a shed,
And the Emperor but a Macho!"

Hearing his imperial name

Coupled with those words of malice, Half in anger, half in shame, Forth the great campaigner came Slowly from his canvas palace.

"Let no hand the bird molest," Said he solemnly, "nor hurt her!" Adding then, by way of jest, "Golondrina is my guest,

'Tis the wife of some deserter !"

Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft,
Through the camp was spread the rumor,
And the soldiers, as they quaffed
Flemish beer at dinner, laughed

At the Emperor's pleasant humor.

So unharmed and unafraid

Sat the swallow still and brooded, Till the constant cannonade Through the walls a breach had made, And the siege was thus concluded.

Then the army, elsewhere bent,
Struck its tents as if disbanding,
Only not the Emperor's tent,
For he ordered, ere he went,

Very curtly, "Leave it standing!"

So it stood there all alone,

Loosely flapping, torn and tattered, Till the brood was fledged and flown, Singing o'er those walls of stone Which the cannon-shot had shattered.

THE TWO ANGELS

In a letter to a correspondent written April 25, 1855, Mr. Longfellow says: "I have only time this morning to enclose you a poem. .. written on the birth of my younger daughter, and the death of the young and beautiful wife of my neighbor and friend, the poet Lowell.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest, And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice;

And, knowing whatsoe'er he sent was best, Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

Then with a smile, that filled the house with light,

"My errand is not Death, but Life," he said;

And ere I answered, passing out of sight, On his celestial embassy he sped.

'T was at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,

The angel with the amaranthine wreath,