O breathe upon my soul thy Spirit’s fire,
    That I may glow like seraphim on high,
  Or rapt Isaiah kindling o’er his lyre;
    And sent by Thee, let holy Hope be nigh,
  To fill with prescient joy my ravished eye,
    And gentle Love; to tune each jarring string
  Accordant with the heavenly harmony;
    Then upward borne, on Faith’s aspiring wing,
  The praises of my God to listening earth, I sing.

* * * * *

=_Charles Fenno Hoffman, 1806-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 505, 519.)

From “The Vigil of Faith.”

=_363._= THE RED MAN’S HEAVEN.

  White man!  I say not that they lie
      Who preach a faith so dark and drear,
  That wedded hearts in yon cold sky
      Meet not as they were mated here. 
    But scorning not thy faith, thou must
    Stranger, in mine have equal trust,—­
    The Red man’s faith, by Him implanted,
    Who souls to both our bodies granted. 
    Thou know’st in life we mingle not;
    Death cannot change our different lot! 
    He who hath placed the White man’s heaven
  Where hymns in vapory clouds are chanted,
      To harps by angel fingers play’d,
    Not less on his Red children smiles,
  To whom a land of souls is given,
      Where in the ruddy West array’d. 
    Brighten our blessed hunting isles.

* * * * *

  Those blissful ISLANDS OF THE WEST! 
      I’ve seen, myself, at sunset time,
  The golden lake in which they rest;
  Seen, too, the barks that bear The Blest,
      Floating toward that fadeless clime: 
    First dark, just as they leave our shore,
    Their sides then brightening more and more,
    Till in a flood of crimson light
    They melted from my straining sight. 
    And she who climb’d the storm-swept steep,
      She who the foaming wave would dare,
    So oft love’s vigil here to keep,—­
    Stranger, albeit thou think’st I dote,
      I know, I know she watches there! 
    Watches upon that radiant strand,
      Watches to see her lover’s boat
    Approach The Spirit-Land.

  He ceased, and spoke no more that night,
      Though oft, when chillier blew the blast,
  I saw him moving in the light
      The fire, that he was feeding, cast;
    While I, still wakeful, ponder’d o’er
    His wondrous story more and more. 
    I thought, not wholly waste the mind
    Where Faith so deep a root could find,
  Faith which both love and life could save,
      And keep the first, in age still fond. 
  Thus blossoming this side the grave
      In steadfast trust of fruit beyond. 
  And when in after years I stood
      By INCA-PAH-CHO’S haunted water,
  Where long ago that hunter woo’d
      In early youth its island daughter,
  And traced the voiceless solitude