And Earth has need of Prophets fiery-lipped
  And deep-souled, to announce the glorious dooms
  Writ on the silent heavens in starry script,
  And flashing fitfully from her shuddering tombs,—­
  Commissioned Angels of the new-born Faith,
  To teach the immortality of Good,
  The soul’s God-likeness, Sin’s coeval death,
  And Man’s indissoluble Brotherhood.

  Yet never an age, when God has need of him,
  Shall want its Man, predestined by that need,
  To pour his life in fiery word or deed,—­
  The strong Archangel of the Elohim! 
  Earth’s hollow want is prophet of his coming: 
  In the low murmur of her famished cry,
  And heavy sobs breathed up despairingly,
  Ye hear the near invisible humming
  Of his wide wings that fan the lurid sky
  Into cool ripples of new life and hope,
  While far in its dissolving ether ope
  Deeps beyond deeps, of sapphire calm, to cheer
  With Sabbath gleams the troubled Now and Here.

  Father! thy will be done,
  Holy and righteous One! 
  Though the reluctant years
  May never crown my throbbing brows with white,
  Nor round my shoulders turn the golden light
  Of my thick locks to wisdom’s royal ermine: 
  Yet by the solitary tears,
  Deeper than joy or sorrow,—­by the thrill,
  Higher than hope or terror, whose quick germen,
  In those hot tears to sudden vigor sprung,
  Sheds, even now, the fruits of graver age,—­
  By the long wrestle in which inward ill
  Fell like a trampled viper to the ground. 
  By all that lifts me o’er my outward peers
  To that supernal stage
  Where soul dissolves the bonds by Nature bound,—­
  Fall when I may, by pale disease unstrung,
  Or by the hand of fratricidal rage,
  I cannot now die young!

* * * * *

ODDS AND ENDS FROM THE OLD WORLD

My first visit to Turin dates as far back as 1831.  We are so personal, that our impressions of things depend less on their intrinsic worth than on such or such extrinsic circumstance which may affect our mental vision at the moment.  I suppose mine was affected by the mist and rain which graced the capital of Piedmont on the morning of my arrival there.  Another incident, microscopic, and almost too ludicrous to mention, had no less its weight in the scale of prepossession.  I was tired and hungry, and, while the diligence was being unloaded, I entered a caffe close by, and called for some buttered toast.  My hair (I had plenty at that time) stood on end at the answer I received.  There was no buttered toast to be had, the waiter said.  “It was not the custom.”  I confess I augured ill of a city from whose caffes, unlike all others throughout Italy, such a staple of breakfast was banished.