The emerald Spring, sun awakened!

On the trees are the white blossoms rustling,
And the young flowers look up unto me,

With moist loving eyes full of beauty.

All is fragrance and murmurs and soft airs and laughter,

And in the blue heavens the birds are a-singing

Thalatta! Thalatta!

From the German of Ileine.

THE VOYAGE.

E left behind the painted buoy

WE

That tosses at the harbor-mouth;
And madly danced our hearts with joy,
As fast we fleeted to the South;
How fresh was every sight and sound
On open main or winding shore!
We knew the merry world was round,
And we might sail for evermore.

Warm broke the breeze against the brow,
Dry sang the tackle, sang the sail :
The Lady's head upon the prow

Caught the shrill salt, and sheer'd the gale.
The broad seas swell'd to meet the keel,
And swept behind so quick the run,
We felt the good ship shake and reel,
We seem'd to sail into the sun!

THE VOYAGE.

How oft we saw the sun retire,

And burn the threshold of the night, Fall from his Ocean-lane of fire,

And sleep beneath his pillar'd light! How oft the purple-skirted robe

Of twilight slowly downward drawn, As thro' the slumber of the globe Again we dash'd into the dawn!

By peaks that flamed, or, all in shade,
Gloom'd the low coast and quivering brine
With ashy rains, that spreading made
Fantastic plume or sable pine;

By sands and steaming flats, and floods
Of mighty mouth, we scudded fast,
And hills and scarlet mingled woods
Glow'd for a moment as we passed.

O hundred shores of happy climes,

How swiftly stream'd ye by the bark!
At times the whole sea burn'd, at times
With wakes of fire we tore the dark;
At times a carven craft would shoot

From havens hid in fairy bowers,
With naked limbs and flowers and fruit,
But we nor paused for fruit nor flowers.

For one fair vision ever fled

Down the waste waters day and night,
And still we follow'd where she led,
In hope to gain upon her flight.

35

Her face was evermore unseen,
And fixt upon the far sea-line;
But each man murmur'd "O my Queen,
I follow till I make thee mine."

And now we lost her, now she gleam'd
Like Fancy made of golden air,
Now nearer to the prow she seem'd

Like Virtue firm, like knowledge fair,
Now high on waves that idly burst

Like Heavenly Hope she crown'd the sea, And now, the bloodless point reversed, She bore the blade of Liberty.

And never sail of ours was furl'd,

Nor anchor dropt at eve or morn; We loved the glories of the world,

But laws of nature were our scorn; For blasts would rise and rave and cease, But whence were those that drove the sail Across the whirlwind's heart of peace,

And to and thro' the counter gale?

Again to colder climes we came,

For still we followed where she led : Now mate is blind and captain lame, And half the crew are sick or dead. But blind or lame or sick or sound We follow that which flies before: We know the merry world is round, And we may sail for evermore.

Tennyson.

TR

COLUMBUS.

RUST to the guiding god, follow the silent sea; Were shore not yet there, 'twould now arise from the wave;

For Nature is to Genius linked eternally,

And ever will perform the promise Genius gave.

Schilier.

COLUMBUS.

HE cordage creaks and rattles in the wind,

THE

With freaks of sudden hush; the reeling sea

Now thumps like solid rock beneath the stern,

Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes short, and

falling

Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling down
The broad backs of the waves, which jostle and

crowd

To fling themselves upon that unknown shore,
Their used familiar since the dawn of time,
Whither this foredoomed life is guided on
To sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring poise
One glittering moment, then to break fulfilled.

How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing,
The melancholy wash of endless waves,
The sigh of some grim monster undescried,
Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark,
Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine!

Yet night brings more companions than the day

To this drear waste; new constellations burn,
And fairer stars, with whose calm height my soul
Finds nearer sympathy than with my herd
Of earthen souls, whose vision's scanty ring
Makes me its prisoner to beat my wings
Against the cold bars of their unbelief,
Knowing in vain my own free heaven beyond.

But to the spirit select there is no choice;
He cannot say, This will I do, or that,

For the cheap means putting Heaven's ends in pawn,
And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold stern
Of destiny's first born, for smoother fields
That yield no crop of self-denying will;

A hand is stretched to him from out the dark,
Which grasping without question, he is led
Where there is work that he must do for God.
The trial still is the strength's complement,
And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales
The sheer heights of supremest purposes
Is steeper to the angel than the child.
Chances have laws as fixed as planets have,
And disappointment's dry and bitter root,
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.