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," Thus prayed the old divine, "To bury our friends in the ocean, Take them, for they are thine!" 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 :— It was in the month of June, 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, Then fell her straining top-masts, And the masts, with all their rigging, Fell slowly one by one, 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, The low desire-the base design, That makes another's virtues less ; 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, 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 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 |