For I saw from where the ocean Drifts its rhythms to the beach, From where mountain snows eternal Far toward heaven as stainless reach, From where gold and russet harvests Of God's 'whelming bounty teach, From where all are always freemen, From where colleges and schools Free the mind from Old-World trammels, Unfit men for tyrants' tools, From where firesides and altars Govern hearts with golden rules, Came, as flowers come in spring-time Dropt from Winter's icy hand, Came to cheer, to teach, to brighten-- God's commissioned, shining band; Came with hands and hearts o'erflowing To renew the Southern land! And I watched how spirit-anguish Songs and smiles soon soothed, allayed, And how soul-wounds touched by kindness, As by Christ, could heal and fade, And how darkness fled affrighted Where these angels wept and prayed. And my soul went up in praising To God's ear: 'Yea, Thou dost know, High and Holy! men are devils, Earth, like hell, is drowned in woe; But Thy war-blast, in Thy mercy, Hath dealt sin a staggering blow!' THE UNDIVINE COMEDY--A POLISH DRAMA. Dedicated to Mary. PART IV. 'Bottomless perdition.'--_Milton._ Fog and cloud! Nothing can be seen from the bastions of the castle of the Holy Trinity, to the right or to the left, in front or in the rear, but dense, motionless, snowy mist; a spectral image of that deluge-wrath which, as it rose to sweep o'er earth, once broke against these stern, steep cliffs and beetling peaks of rock: no trace is to be seen of the buried valley, for the ghostly waves of the cold, white sea of foam shroud it closely in their stifling veils; the glowing face of the crimson sun shines not as yet upon earth's winding sheet of silent, clinging, pallid vapor. The tower of the castle stands upon a bold and naked granite peak. Built of the strong rock from which it soars by the giant labor of the now dying Past, it seems during the lapse of centuries to have grown up from its stony heart, as the human breast grows from the broad back of the Centaur. A single banner streams above its lofty turret, the only banner of the Cross now raised on earth; the symbol of God's mystic love alone floats high enough to pierce into the unclouded blue of the stormy sky! The white and sleeping mist gradually awakens; the sighing and howling of the bleak winds are heard above; the vapor palpitates in the first rays of the coming sun, and a drifting ice-floe of curdling clouds drives wildly o'er this quickening sea of fog and foam. Other voices, human voices, mingle with the wails and sobs of the passing storm: borne upward on the ghastly waves of the spectral cloud sea, they break against the walls of the granite castle. The pallid shroud of mist is suddenly riven, and through the walls of the chasm torn through the heart of the white foam, glimpses are seen of the abyss below.