THE In an old ancestral hall, And many a merry laugh rang out, And many a merry call; And the glass was freely passed around, In that broad and huge ancestral hall, A voice arose, as the lights grew dim, I have no fear-I have no fear Talk not of the vagrant, Death, A boast well worthy a revel-rout "We drink," said all, "We drink to Life And we do not fear to die!" Just then a rushing sound was heard, As of quick wings sweeping by; And soon the old latch was lifted up, And a stranger strode within the hall With an air of martial pride: In visor and cloak, like a secret knight Of the times that were, of old. He spoke: "I join in your revelry, Bold sons of the Bacchan rite, And I drink the toast ye have filled to drink, The pledge of yon dauntless knight: Fill high-fill higher-we drink to Life, And we scorn the vagrant, Death, A pledge well worthy a revel-rout VOL. VI.-26 "He's a noble soul, that champion knight, And he wears a martial brow; Oh, he'll pass the gates of Paradise, To the regions of bliss below!" The Reveller stood in deep amaze Now flashed his fiery eye; He muttered a curse-then shouted loud, And his sword leaped out, like a baron's brave, He struck-and the stranger's guise fell off, A grinning, and ghastly, and horrible thing, He stirred not again, till the stranger blew Then the Reveller fell at the Phantom's feet And his conqueror was— -DEATH! In that broad and high ancestral hall, BROW THE BROWN THRUSH. ROWN-BREASTED bird that in the dim old forest, At dewy eve and purple morn outpourest The sweet, wild melodies that thrill my breast, How like to thine were my young heart's libations, Poured daily to the Giver of all good! How like our love and simple ministrations At God's green altars in the deep and hallowed wood. We trilled our morn and evening songs together, We kept like silence in ungenial weather, And never knew blue skies come back too soon; We sang not for the world, we sang not even For those we loved; we could not help but sing, There was such beauty in the earth and heaven, Such music in our hearts, such joy in everything. Wild warblers of the wood, I hear them only There comes from out the green aisles of the forest And I again am with thee where thou pourest Ray Palmer. BORN in Little Compton, R. I., 1808. DIED in Newark, N. J., 1887. FAITH. [Poetical Works. 1876.] MY faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary, Saviour divine: Now hear me while I pray, O let me from this day May Thy rich grace impart As Thou hast died for me, O may my love to Thee Pure, warm, and changeless be,— While life's dark maze I tread, And griefs around me spread, Bid darkness turn to day, Wipe sorrow's tears away, Nor let me ever stray From Thee aside. When ends life's transient dream, Blest Saviour, then, in love, A ransomed soul. BORN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1808. PERISHED in the foundered steamship Arctic, 1854. PROSE AS A MEANS OF EXPRESSION. [Lectures on English Literature. 1855.-Revised Edition. 1876.] THE prose literature leads us along into the region of actual truth, that which has manifested itself in action, in deeds, in historic events, in biographic incidents. It tells us what men have done, and said, and suffered, or it reasons on the capacity for action and for passion, and so it gives power to the mind, in making us the better know ourselves and our fellow-beings. But most inadequate are his conceptions of truth who thinks it has no range beyond the facts and outward things which observation and research and argument ascertain. Beneath all the visible and audible and tangible things of the world's history, there lies the deeper region of silent, unseen, spiritual truth-that which was shadowed forth in action, and yet the action, which to some minds seems everything, is but the shadow, and the spirit is the reality. The experience of any one's own mind may teach the inadequacy of mere actual truth. Has not every one felt, at the time when any deep emotion stirred him, or any lofty thought animated him, what imperfect exponents of such emotion or thought his words or actions are? Nay, the more profound and sacred the affection, how it shrinks from any outward shape, as too narrow and superficial for it! Is it not in your daily consciousness to recognize the presence of emotions, yearnings, aspirations of your spiritual nature, which baffle expression, even if you wished to bring them forth from the recess of silence-motions of the soul which word nor deed do justice to? Do you not know that there are sympathies, affinities with our fellow-beings, and with the external world of sight and sound, which pass beyond the reach of argument or common speech? So true is it, that there are powers, "That touch each other to the quick-in modes Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive, This whole range of subjects, of deepest moment in the science of humanity, belongs to the imaginative portion of literature, toward which the prose literature is always tending, whenever it approaches the deep and spiritual and mysterious parts of human nature. When Mr. Lockhart, at the conclusion of his admirable biography of Sir Walter Scott, devotes a chapter to a delineation of Scott's character, with all his familiarity with his subject and his powers as an author, he prefaces his attempt with this remark: "Many of the feelings common to our nature can only be expressed adequately, and some of the finest can only be expressed at all, in the language of art, and more especially in the language of poetry." When Arnold, in his "History of Rome," portrays the character of Scipio, and especially that deep religious spirit in it which baffled the ancient historians-feeling the inadequacy of his effort in dealing with characters which, like Scipio's and the Protector Cromwell's, "are the wonders of history," he adds, "the genius which conceived the incomprehensible character of Hamlet would alone be able to describe with intuitive truth the character of Scipio, or of Cromwell." Now observe how two authors, of the finest powers in these two high departments-biography and history-after carrying those powers to the farthest, profess their sense of how much remains unaccomplished, and, moreover, their conviction that all of higher or deeper achievement which lies beyond is left to poetry, or left to silence; not that it is less true or less real, but because there is truth which prose can never reach to-truth to which a form can be given only by imagination and art, |