STEAM TRAVEL.

WHO hath not longed, by converse fired or book,
To break him sudden from his own home-nook,

(There, in cramp nest, too long, like dormouse curled) And speed from land to land, and scan the world?

But Time and Space stood ready to forbid

Or Niagara -or the Pyramid.

"Soon shall thy arm, Unconquer'd Steam! afar * Drag the slow barge and drive the rapid car.”

* DARWIN'S Botanic Garden, book i.

Some twice five lustres since, so sang the bard:

Bold was the prophecy; the credence hard.

The jeerer jeered; the thinker stood aloof

In

pause;
proof."

"but now the time hath given it

Did Venus win from Vulcan, Mighty Power!
That thou shouldst strain a day within an hour?
And lend her thy twin spirits, Force and Speed,
To break down distance for some gentle need?
And did Minerva join Cythera's prayer?

Or bribe thee with some gift of science rare,
For her young sages, or of state or law,

Within vacation half a world to draw?

And (not as when, of old, men plodded slow "To Pyrenean or the river Po")

Fling forth each acolyte, as suits him best,

To Moslem East, or Transatlantic West?

Then snatch the senator, o'er land and main,

Back to his voters and the house-again?

Or from his poetry and picturesque

Whirl back the future chancellor to his desk?

The fire-wheeled bark would part. Storm saith her “ Nay”

With blustering throat; yet lo! she bursts away.

In vain around her curl the landward seas;

In vain-to stop her-strains the landward breeze.
Not like yon white winged loiterers, taken aback
By the fierce blast, and foiled of skilful tack ;
At anchor tossing still, with close-reefed sail,

Sick of delay, yet bondsmen of the gale;

She, in mad surf tho' forced awhile to reel,

And heave and dive, from bowsprit down to keel,

Asserts, full soon, her self-selected course,

And conquers wind and wave by inner force.

And while swift smoke, as from volcano's mouth,

(Such Pliny saw) is hurried, north or south,

By the head wind; (the swiftlier driven back,

The more to show what power would thwart her track) She, leaving coast and bay far, far, behind,

As all contemptuous of that bullying wind ;

And fluttering round to unresisting spray

Each coming wave, that would contest her
Unoared, uncanvassed, marches on, until

way;

Instinct almost she seems with human will.

Like some strong mind, that, shipped on fortune's

bark,

Holds onward still, unflinching to the mark;

And loves, or so might seem, to breast and urge

Thro' life's worst seas, and scoffs at wind and surge.

But now her prow hath touched the foreign strand ; And harnessed, lo! the iron coursers stand.