Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared onward red as blood,

Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beneath the eddying

flood;

For miles away, the fiery spray poured down its deadly

rain,

And back and forth the billows sucked, and paused, and burst again.

From square to square with tiger leaps rushed on the lustful fire,

The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its de

sire;

And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but to the knee,

Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirl

ing sea.

Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet

look ;

His soul had trusted God too long to be at last for

sook;

He could not fear, for surely God a pathway would unfold

Through this red sea for faithful hearts, as once he did of old.

But scarcely can he cross himself, or on his good saint

call,

Before the sacrilegious flood o'erleaped the church-yard

wall;

And, ere a pater half was said, 'mid smoke and crackling glare,

His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide de

spair.

Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sub

lime;

His first thought was for God above, his next was for

his chime;

"Sing now and make your voices heard in hymns of

praise," cried he,

"As did the Israelites of old, safe walking through the

sea!

Through this red sea our God hath made the pathway safe to shore;

Our promised land stands full in sight; shout now as ne'er before ! "

And as the tower came crushing down, the bells, in clear accord,

Pealed forth the grand old German hymn," All good souls, praise the Lord!

THE EPITAPH.

WHAT means this glozing epitaph,
Unless its errand be to shame,

As with a mocking devil's laugh,

The frail delusion of that fame

Which but embalms an empty name?

As columns, when the roof is gone

Which they were reared to hold on high,

Are merely idle shafts of stone,

Which, forced to tell an endless lie,

Do but deride the passer-by ;

So stand these legends in Death's halls;
Vain figures on a dial-plate

Whereon no gnomon's shadow falls;
Poor inch-deep characters, that prate
Of empire over Time and Fate.

When eye, and tongue, and heart are null, What profits then the laurel wreath, Twined loathsome round a grinning skull ? Food crammed between a corpse's teeth

To win a deeper sneer from Death!

O high Ambition! can there be

No epitaph in league with Time?

Is life a ship's track in the sea?

Are all these hopes and aims sublime

Mere architecture of frail rime?

Doth God implant for worse than naught

This huge desire of memory?

Cannot some monument be wrought,

Which from its moveless height shall see

The Pyramids' last obsequy?