The village grows, the city springs,
And point their spires of faith to heaven.
He rends the oak-and bids it ride,

To guard the shores its beauty graced;
He smites the rock-upheaved in pride,
See towers of strength and domes of taste
Earth's teeming caves their wealth reveal;
Fire bears his banner on the wave;
He bids the mortal poison heal,

And leaps triumphant o'er the grave.

He plucks the pearls that stud the deep,
Admiring Beauty's lap to fill;

He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep,
And mocks his own Creator's skill.
With thoughts that fill his glowing soul,
He bids the ore illume the page,
And, proudly scorning Time's control,
Commerces with an unborn age.

In fields of air he writes his name,
And treads the chambers of the sky;
He reads the stars, and grasps the flame
That quivers round the throne on high.
In war renowned, in peace sublime,

He moves in greatness and in grace;
His power, subduing space and time,
Links realm to realm, and race to race.

Lydia Huntley Sigourney.

THE

PILGRIM

FATHER S.

OW slow yon lonely vessel ploughs the main!

How

Amid the heavy billows now she seems

A toiling atom: then from wave to wave

Leaps madly, by the tempest lashed, or reels

Half wrecked through gulfs profound. Moons wax and wane, But still that patient traveller treads the deep.

-I see an icebound coast toward which she steers

With such a tardy movement, that it seems
Stern Winter's hand hath turned her keel to stone,
And sealed his victory on her slippery shrouds.
-They land! they land! not like the Genoese,
With glittering sword, and gaudy train, and eye
Kindling with golden fancies. Forth they come.
From their long prison, hardy forms that brave
The world's unkindness, men of hoary hair,
Maidens of fearless heart, and matrons grave,
Who hush the wailing infant with a glance.
Bleak Nature's desolation wraps them round,-
Eternal forests, and unyielding earth,

His father's home to roam through Haran's wilds,
Distrusting not the guide who called him forth,
Nor doubting, though a stranger, that his seed
Should be as ocean's sands. But yon lone bark
Hath spread her parting sail; they crowd the strand,

Those few, lone pilgrims. Can ye scan the woc
That wrings their bosoms, as the last frail link,
Binding to man and habitable earth,

Is severed? Can ye tell what pangs were there,
With keen regrets; what sickness of the heart;
What yearnings o'er their forfeit land of birth,
Their distant dear ones? Long, with straining eye,

They watch the lessening speck.

Heard ye no shriek

Of anguish, when that bitter loneliness
Sank down into their bosoms? No! they turn
Back to their dreary, famished huts, and pray!
Pray, and the ills that haunt this transient life
Fade into air. Up in each girded breast
There sprang a rooted and mysterious strength,—
A loftiness to face a world in arms,

To strip the pomp from sceptres, and to lay
On Duty's sacred altar the warm blood
Of slain affections, should they rise between
The soul and GOD. O ye, who proudly boast
your free veins the blood of sires like these,
Look to their lineaments. Dread lest ye lose

In

Their likeness in your sons.

Should Mammon cling

Too close around your heart, or wealth beget

That bloated luxury which eats the core
From manly virtue, or the tempting world.
Make taint the Christian purpose in your soul,
Turn ye to Plymouth Rock, and where they knelt

Kneel, and renew the vow they breathed to God.

NIAGARA.

LOW on, forever, in thy glorious robe

FLOW

Of terror and of beauty! Yea, flow or,
Unfathomed and resistless! God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
Mandled around thy feet. And He doth give
Thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him
Eternally-bidding the lip of man

Keep silence and upon thy rocky altar pour
Incense of awe-struck praise. Ah! who can dare
To lift the insect trump of earthly hope,
Or love, or sorrow, mid the peal sublime
Of thy tremendous hymn'? Even Ocean shrinks
Back from thy brotherhood: and all his waves
Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem
To sleep like a spent labourer, and recall
His wearied billows from their vexing play,
And lull them to a cradle calm: but thou,
With everlasting, undecaying tide,

Dost rest not, night or day. The morning stars,
When first they sang o'er young
Creation's birth,

Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires
That wait the archangel's signal to dissolve
This solid earth, shall find JEHOVAH's name
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
Of thine unending volume. Every leaf,
That lifts itself within thy wide domain,
Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo! yon
birds
Do boldly venture near, and bathe their wing

Amid thy mist and foam.

"Tis meet for them

To touch thy garment's hem, and lightly stir
The snowy leaflets of thy vapour wreath,
For they may sport unharmed amid the cloud,
Or listen at the echoing gate of heaven,
Without reproof.

But as for us, it seems

Scarce lawful, with our broken tones, to speak
Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint

Thy glorious features with our pencil's point,
Or woo thee to the tablet of a song,

Were profanation. Thou dost make the soul
A wondering witness of thy majesty;
But as it presses with delirious joy

To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step,
And tame its rapture, with the humbling view
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand
In the dread presence of the Invisible,
As if to answer to its God through thee.

OIL on! toil on! ye, ephemeral train,

TOIL

Who build in the tossing and treacherous main;

Toil on-for the wisdom of man ye mock,

With your sand-based structures and domes of rock:

Your columns the fathomless fountains lave,

And your arches spring up to the crested wave;
Ye're a puny race, thus to boldly rear

A fabric so vast, in a realm so drear.

Ye bind the deep with your secret zone,
The ocean is sealed, and the surge a stone;