Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said with emotion, "Forgive me! Never so much as now was Miles Standish the friend of John Alden." Great was the people's amazement, and greater yet their rejoicing, Thus to behold once more the sunburnt face of their Captain, Whom they had mourned as dead; and they gathered and crowded about him, Till the good Captain declared, being quite overpowered and bewildered, Than come again to a wedding to which he had not been invited. Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood with the bride at the doorway, Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and beautiful morning. Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad in the sunshine, Lay extended before them the land of toil and privation; There were the graves of the dead, and the barren waste of the sea-shore, But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the Garden of Eden, Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was the sound of the ocean. Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and stir of departure, She should not walk, he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday; Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the hand of her husband, Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her palfrey. Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, "but the distaff; Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful Bertha !" Onward the bridal procession now moved to their new habitation, Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing together. Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest, Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree, Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages, Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac, Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always, Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers. So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession. Nor deem the irrevocable Past, SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, If, rising on its wrecks, at last That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame! All these must first be trampled down Beneath our feet, if we would gain In the bright fields of fair renown The right of eminent domain. 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 The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. To something nobler we attain. THE PHANTOM SHIP. IN Mather's Magnalia Christi, That is here set down in rhyme. 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 under his breath said he, This ship is so crank and walty I fear our grave she will be! And the ships that came from England, 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. A MIST was driving down the British For in the night, unseen, a single warChannel, The day was just begun, rior, In sombre harness mailed, And through the window-panes, on floor Dreaded of man, and surnamed the De and panel, Streamed the red autumn sun. stroyer, The rampart wall had scaled. It glanced on flowing flag and rippling He pennon, passed into the chamber of the sleeper, And the white sails of ships; The dark and silent room, And, from the frowning rampart, the And as he entered, darker grew, and black cannon deeper, The silence and the gloom. He did not pause to parley or dissemble, Ah! what a blow! that made all Eng- And groan from shore to shore. Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited, The sun rose bright o'erhead; Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated That a great man was dead. |