Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind, And break a pathway to those unknown realms That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled; Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts; These are their stay, and when the leaden world Sets its hard face against their fateful thought, And brute strength, like a scornful conqueror, Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale, The inspired soul but flings his patience in, And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe,-- One faith against a whole earth's unbelief, One soul against the flesh of all mankind. Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear The voice that errs not; then my triumph gleams, O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all night My heart flies on before me as I sail; Far on I see my lifelong enterprise, Which rose like Ganges mid the freezing snows Of a world's sordidness, sweep broadening down, And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea; I see the ungated wall of chaos old, With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night, Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist Before the irreversible feet of light;-- And lo, with what clear omen in the east On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn, Like young Leander rosy from the sea Glowing at Hero's lattice! One day more These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me. God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded; Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen mates, and from the leaning mast Fortune's full sail strains forward! One poor day!-- Remember whose and not how short it is! It is God's day, it is Columbus's. A lavish day! One day, with life and heart, Is more than time enough to find a world. 1844. AN INCIDENT OF THE FIRE AT HAMBURG. The tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the skies, Like some huge piece of Nature's make, the growth of centuries; You could not deem its crowding spires a work of human art, They seemed to struggle lightward from a sturdy living heart. Not Nature's self more freely speaks in crystal or in oak, Than, through the pious builder's hand, in that gray pile she spoke; And as from acorn springs the oak, so, freely and alone, Sprang from his heart this hymn to God, sung in obedient stone. It seemed a wondrous freak of chance, so perfect, yet so rough, A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in granite tough; The thick spires yearned towards the sky in quaint, harmonious lines, And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like a grove of blasted pines.