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THE ECHO : 
 
 OK, 
 
 BORROWED NOTES 
 
 FOR 
 
 HOME CIRCULATION. 
 
 BY CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "GREYSLAER," &c. 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 THE VIGIL OF FAITH, 
 EROS AND ANTEROS, 
 MISCELLANEOUS SONGS, 
 OCCASIONAL POEMS, 
 EARLY MISCELLANIES. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 o 
 
 BURGESS & STRINGER, 
 
 CORNER OF BROADWAY AND ANN STREET. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, GEORGE B. ZIEBER & CO. THIRD STREET. 
 
 1844. 
 
THE ECHO: 
 
 OR. 
 
 BORROWED NOTES 
 
 FOR HOME CIRCULATION. 
 
 
 BY 
 
 CKWHOFFMAN, 
 
 AUTHOR OP " A WINTER IN THE WEST;" "GREV'SLAER," etc. 
 
 American Poetry is little better than a far off Echo of the Father Land. It is necessary to enter a 
 little into this oint, for the sake of exhibiting the nature as well as the extent of the Echo." 
 
 BRITISH "FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW.' 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 LINDSAY & BLAKISTON, CHESNUT STREET. 
 
 1844. 
 

 Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1844, by C. F. Hoffman, in the 
 clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Southern District 
 of New York. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE VIQIL OF FAITH Page 7 
 
 BONOS-EROS AND ANTEROS:— 
 
 I. Th>'v are mockery all 15 
 
 [I, Why seek her heart to understand 15 
 
 III. Those eyes — those eyes 15 
 
 I V. 'T is hard to share her smiles with many . . . . 1G 
 V. Ay ! there it is, that winning smile 10 
 
 VI. She loves— hut 't is not me she loves JG 
 
 » VII. Like one who, on some clouded night 16 
 
 VIII. I will love her no more 1G 
 
 IX. I lied— ah yes, I lied like saucy page 16 
 
 X. I do not love thee 17 
 
 XI. I know thou dost love me 17 
 
 XII. I ask not what shadow came over her heart. .17 
 
 XIII. I waited for thee 17 
 
 XIV. Do I not love thee 17 
 
 XV. Nay, plead not thou art dull to-night 17 
 
 XVI. Life seems to thee more earnest, dearest ... .17 
 XVII. Thou ask'st me why that thought of death . .18 
 
 XVIII. A*k me not why I should love her IS 
 
 XIX. Where dost thou loiter, Spring 18 
 
 X X. WhHe lie thou lovest were not the same ... .13 
 
 XXI. Sleeping! why now sleeping 18 
 
 XXII. Thoughts— wild thoughts 18 
 
 XXIV. Think of me, dearest 19 
 
 XXV. Why should I murmur ; 19 
 
 VXVI. Trust in thee 19 
 
 XXVII. They say that thou art alter'd, Amy 19 
 
 XXVIII. Take, back then thy pledges 19 
 
 XXIX. Tlicy tell me that my trustiug heart 20 
 
 XXX. Alas! if she be false to me 20 
 
 XXXI. Withering— withering 20 
 
 XXX 1 1. I knew not how I loved thee 20 
 
 XXXIII. The conflict is over 20 
 
 SOXGS— MISCELLANEOUS :— 
 
 Sparkling and bright 21 
 
 Rosalie Clare 21 
 
 The Invitation 21 
 
 The Mint Julep 22 
 
 Wake, Lady, wake 22 
 
 Tlte Myrtle and Steel 22 
 
 My Birchen Bark 23 
 
 Le Faineant 23 
 
 The Brook and the Pine 23 
 
 " L'Amour sans Ailes" 23 
 
 The Vachter 24 
 
 No more — no more 24 
 
 Anacreontic 24 
 
 The Love Test 24 
 
 Song of the Drowned 25 
 
 Morning Hymn 25 
 
 The Sleigh Bells 25 
 
 Boat Song 25 
 
 Room, boys, room 2G 
 
 Love and Faith , gg 
 
 The Remonstrance 07 
 
 Bull' and Blue 07 
 
 Melody ' 27 
 
 We parted in sadness 07 
 
 Trust not Love 27 
 
 Away to the forest 28 
 
 A Hunter's Matin 28 
 
 The Lover's Star 28 
 
 OCCASIONAL POEMS:— 
 
 Moonlight on t he Hudson 29 
 
 Written in Springtime 30 
 
 Town Repinings 30 
 
 A Portrait 31 
 
 A Frontier Incident 31 
 
 The Language of Flowers 31 
 
 Indian Summer, 1828 32 
 
 Epitaph upon a Dog, 32 
 
 St. Valentine's Day 32 
 
 To an Autumn Rose 30 
 
 Thy Name 33 
 
 What is Solitude? 33 
 
 Birth-Day Thoughts 33 
 
 The Blush , . 33 
 
 The Bob-o'-Linkum 34 
 
 Distrust 34 
 
 Sympathy 34 
 
 The W T ish 34 
 
 " Our Friendship" 34 
 
 "Brunt the Fight" 35 
 
 Waller to Saccharissa 35 
 
 Primeval Woods. 35 
 
 The First and Last Parting 36 
 
 Written in a Lady's Prayer Book • • • -36 
 
 "Where would I rest?" , 37 
 
 EARLY MISCELLANIES:— 
 
 The Ambuscade 38 
 
 Love's Vagaries 40 
 
 The Suicide 41 
 
 The Thaw-King's Visit to New York 41 
 
 Rhymes on West Poi nt 43 
 
 A Birth-Day Meditation 43 
 
 Platonics 44 
 
 " Coming Out" 44 
 
 The Waxen Rose 45 
 
 To a Lady, with a collection of Verses .45 
 
 Myne Heartte 45 
 
 Writing for an Album 45 
 
 To a Lady Weeping in Church 46 
 
 • Byron 46 
 
 Holding a Girl's Jumping Rope 46 
 
 The Declaration 47 
 
 Closing Accounts 47 
 
 Forest Musings , 4a 
 
TO HUFUS W. GRISWOLD. 
 
 Mv Deak Sir, — You may remember some three or four years since having asked me 
 for a list of the various signatures under which my anonymous verses had appeared in 
 different American periodicals during the last twenty years. You are perhaps aware, also, 
 of the disparaging remarks which your free and flattering use, in " The Poetry of Ame- 
 rica," of the verses thus patiently collected by you, has called out in some quarters. I 
 have often regretted that I permitted those effusions (most of which had long since answered 
 the casual purpose for which they were written) to be thus exhumed : regretted it, not 
 from any particular sensibility to the critical dicta by which they have been assailed ; but 
 simply because, like many a sanguine yet indolent person originally conscious of rather 
 vivid poetic aspirations, I had, from my boyhood upward, from early manhood onward 
 11 lived along in the hope of doing something or other" in the way of a poem that my 
 countrymen would not unwillingly let live: and because (while thus probably much over- 
 rating poetic powers in reserve) I was unwilling that these fugitive pieces should fix a 
 character upon my writings it might be difficult to supersede by any subsequent effort in 
 a higher order of composition. That fanciful regret, if not abated, has, with the consi- 
 derations from which it sprung, been swallowed up lately by a reality which I deem of 
 more imperious moment than any thing affecting mere literary reputation. 
 
 One of those British reviews, which, in the absence of an international copyright, do 
 the thinking of this country upon literary matters, and which, you know, are circulated 
 so widely and are of such authority here that it is idle for an American author to refuse to 
 plead to any indictment they may prefer, has recently done me the honor, amid a confused 
 mass of indiscriminate accusations against my countrymen at large, to select me specially 
 and individually for the odious charge of gross and hitherto unheard-of literary dishonesty.* 
 
 Now, my dear sir, while it is due to you to relieve you from all responsibility as god- 
 father of these questionable effusions, by publishing them under my own name, — this is 
 likewise the only way by winch so sweeping and damnatory a charge can be fully met, 
 without involving myself in egotistical explanations far worse than those I am furnishing 
 here, because they would be endless. I have therefore, as the question is one of charac- 
 ter, and not of mere literary taste, collected all the pieces by which I have attempted "to 
 hocus the Americans," that I could lay my hands upon : and though the unconscious 
 imposition has been running on so long that many may have escaped me, yet there are 
 enough of all kinds for the present purpose ; which is to give that portion of the abused 
 public who feel any interest in the matter, an opportunity of deciding (not whether it is 
 good poetry, for that is not the question — but) whether they have really been taken in so 
 much after all : whether or not the affecting predicament of the amiable Parisian who 
 spoke prose for so many years without knowing it, has found a whimsical counterpart 
 
 * "It is reserved for Charles Fcnno Hoffman to distance all plagiarists of ancient and modern 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 in the unconscious use of the poetry of others by the writer of these effusions : or whether, 
 finally, they do sometimes — however rarely — (to borrow the language of my friendly 
 reviewer) " possess the property described in the mocking birds — a solitary note of their 
 
 own." 
 
 I am, dear sir, your friend ana servant, 
 
 C. F. HOFFMAN. 
 
 New York, February 22d, 1844. 
 
 limes in the enormity and magnitude of Ms thefts. ' No American,' says Mr. Griswold, « is comparable to 
 him as a song- writer.' We are not surprised at the fact, considering the magnitude of his obligations to 
 Moore. Hoffman is Moore hocused for the American market. His songs are rifaciamcntos. The 
 turns of the melody, the flooding of the images, the scintillating Conceits — all are Moore. Sometimes 
 he steals the very words. One song begins, ' Blame not the bowl' — a hint taken from ' Blame not the 
 bard :' another ' One bumper, yet, gallants, at parting.' Hoffman is like a hand-organ — a single touch 
 sets him off — he wants only the key-note, and he plays away as long as his wind lasts. The resem- 
 blance, when it runs into whole lines and verses, is more like a parody than a simple plagiarism. One 
 
 specimen will be ample. 
 
 'Tis in moments like this, when each bosom 
 
 With its highest-toned feeling is warm, 
 Like the music that's said from the ocean 
 
 To rise in the gathering storm, 
 That her image around us should hover, 
 
 Whose name, though our lips ne'er reveal, 
 We may breathe through the foam of a bumper, 
 
 As we drink to the myrtle and steel. 
 
 " He had Moore's measure ringing in his ear, and demanding a simile in the middle of the first qua- 
 train — hence the music from the ocean. The third and fourth lines are an echo of a sound, without the 
 smallest particle of meaning or application in them. They constitute the means, nevertheless, by which 
 Hoffman hocuses the Americans. Drop them out, altogether, and, so far as the sense is concerned, the 
 song would be materially improved," — Foreign Quarterly Review for January, 1844. 
 
 [The examples given by the reviewer to prove his charge, perhaps shake his position, and possibly 
 they do not. He is certainly mistaken about the similarity of ' measure,' as any one may verify by 
 counting the feet in the different songs mentioned. As for their identity of thought with those delicious 
 things of Moore's upon which the ingenious reviewer insists they are modelled, any 'American' who 
 feels a curiosity to ascertain how far he has been ' hocused,' may determine for himself by referring to 
 " Moore's Melodies" — a work not wholly unknown in this country. H.] 
 
THE VIGIL OF FAITH, 
 
 A TALE OF ABORIGINAL MESMERISM. 
 
 1 He held him with his glittering eye."— Coleridge. 
 
 'T was in the mellow autumn time, 
 That revel of our masquing clime, 
 
 When, as the Indian crone believes, 
 The rainbow tints of Nature's prime 
 
 She in her forest banner weaves ; 
 To show in that bright blazonry, 
 How the young earth did first supply 
 Each gorgeous hue that paints the sky, 
 
 Or in the sunset billow heaves. 
 
 II. 
 
 'T was in the mellow autumn time, 
 When, from the spongy swollen swamp, 
 
 The lake a darker tide receives ; 
 When nights are growing long and damp ; 
 And at the dawn a glistering rime 
 Is silver'd o'er the gaudy leaves : 
 When hunters leave their hill-side camp, 
 
 With fleet hound some, the dun-deer rousing, 
 In ' still-hunt' some, to shoot him browsing ; 
 And close at night their forest tramp, 
 
 Where the fat yearling scents their fire, 
 And, new unto their murderous ways, 
 
 Affrighted, feels his life expire 
 As stupidly he stands at gaze, 
 
 Where that wild crew sit late carousing. 
 
 III. 
 
 'T was in the mellow autumn time, 
 
 When I, an idler from the town, 
 With gun and rod was lured to climb 
 
 Those peaks where fresh the Hudson takes 
 His tribute from an hundred lakes ; 
 
 Lakes which the sun, though pouring down 
 His mid-day splendors round each isle, 
 
 At eventide so soon forsakes 
 That you may watch his fading smile 
 
 For hours around those summits glow 
 When all is gray and chill below ; 
 
 While, in that brief autumnal day, 
 Still, varying all in feature, they 
 As through their watery maze you stray 
 Will yet some wilding beauty show. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For he beholds, whose footfalls press 
 The mosses of that wilderness, 
 Each charm the glorious Hudson boasts 
 
 Through his far reaching strand — 
 When sweeping from these leafy coasts, 
 His mighty march he sea-ward takes — 
 First pictured in those mountain lakes, 
 
 All fresh from Nature's hand ! 
 Some broadly flashing to the sun, 
 
 Like warrior's shield when first display'd, 
 Some, dark, as when, the battle done, 
 
 That shield oft blackens in the glade. 
 Round one that on the eye will ope 
 
 With many a winding sunny reach, 
 The rising hills all gently slope 
 
 From turfy bank and pebbled beach. 
 With rocks and ragged forests bound, 
 
 Deep set in fir-clad mountain shade, 
 You trace another where resound 
 
 The echoes of the hoarse cascade. 
 
 V. 
 
 Aweary with a day of toil, 
 
 And all uncheer'd with hunter spoil, 
 Guiding a wet and sodden boat, 
 
 With thing, half paddle, half an oar, 
 I chanced one murky eve to float 
 
 Along the grim and ghastly shore 
 Of such wild water ; 
 Past trees, some shooting from the bank, 
 
 With dead boughs dipping in the wave, 
 And some with trunks moss-grown and dank, 
 On which the savage, that here drank 
 
 A thousand years ago, might grave 
 His tale of slaughter. 
 
HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Gazing amid these mouldering stems, 
 Through thickets from their ruins starting, 
 
 To spy a deer-track, if I could, 
 I saw the boughs before me parting, 
 
 Revealing what seemed two bright gems 
 Gleaming from out the dusky wood ; 
 And in that moment on the shore, 
 Just where I brush'd it with my oar, 
 An aged Indian stood ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Nay ! shrink not, lady, from my tale, 
 
 Because, erst moved by border story 
 Thy thoughtful cheek grew still more pale 
 At images so dire and gory 
 Nor yet — grown colder since that time — 
 Cry — half impatient of my rhyme — 
 " An Indian ! — why, on theme so trite 
 There's nothing surely new to write? 
 While I — who shudder'd with surprise 
 But now at those two glaring eyes — 
 Laugh at your painted Indian Fright !" 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Yet so it was, and nothing more ; 
 
 The deer-stand that I sought was here, 
 Where too the Indian came for deer ; 
 
 A civil fellow, seldom drunk, 
 Who dragg'd my leaky skiff ashore, 
 
 And pointed out a fallen trunk, 
 Where sitting I could spy the brink, 
 
 Beneath the gently tilting branches, 
 And shoot the buck that came to drink 
 
 Or wash the black-flies from his haunches. 
 With this he plunged into the wood, 
 
 Saying he on the ' run-way' knew 
 Another stand, and quite as good 
 
 If but the night breeze fairly blew. 
 
 IX. 
 
 So there, like mummied sagamore 
 
 I crouch with senses fairly aching, 
 To catch each sound by wood or shore 
 Upon the twilight stillness breaking. 
 I start ! that crash of leaves below, 
 A light hoof surely rattles ? — No ! 
 
 From overhead a dry branch parted. 
 A plash ! 'T is but the wavelets tapping 
 Yon floating log. The partridge drums ; 
 
 With thrilling ears again I 've started ; 
 The booming sound at distance hums 
 Like rushing herds. I start as though 
 
 A gang of moose had caught me napping. 
 And now my straining sight grows dim 
 While nearer yet the nighthawks skim; 
 Well, ' let the hart ungalled play,' 
 I '11 think of sweet looks far away. — 
 But no ! I list and gaze about, 
 
 My rifle to my shoulder clapping 
 At leap of every truant trout, 
 Or lotus leaf the water flapping. 
 
 X. 
 
 An hour went thus without a sign . 
 
 Of buck or doe in range appearing ; 
 The wind began to crisp the lake, 
 The wolf to howl from out the brake, 
 And I to think that boat of mine 
 
 Had better soon be campward steering : 
 When near me through the deepening night 
 Again I saw those eyes so bright, 
 
 And as my swarthy friend drew nigher, 
 I heard these words pronounced in tone, 
 Lady, as silken as thine own, 
 
 "White man, we'd better make a fire." 
 
 XL 
 
 Our kindling stuff lay near at hand- 
 Peelings of bark, some half uncoil'd 
 In flakes, from boughs by age despoil'd, 
 
 And some in shreds by rude winds torn ; 
 Dead vines that round the dead trees clung ; 
 
 Long moss that from their old arms swung, 
 Tatter'd and stain'd — all weather-worn, 
 Like funeral weeds hung out to dry, 
 Or banners drooping mournfully ; — 
 
 These quickly caught the spark we fann'd. 
 Branches, that once waved over head, 
 Now crisply crackling to our tread, 
 
 Fed next the greedy flame's demand. 
 Lastly a fallen trunk or two — 
 Which from its weedy lair we drew, 
 And o'er the blazing brushwood threw — 
 For savory broil supplied the brand. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Of hemlock-fir we made our couch, 
 A bed for cramps and colds consoling ; 
 
 I had some biscuits in my pouch, 
 A salmon-trout I 'd killed in trolling ; 
 My comrade had some venison dried, 
 And corn in bear's lard lately fried : 
 
 And on my word, I will avouch 
 That when we would our stock divide 
 
 In equal portions, save the last, 
 Apicius could not deride 
 
 The relish of that night's repast. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 We talk'd that night — I love to talk 
 
 With these grown children of the wild, 
 When in their native forest walk, 
 
 Confiding, simple as a child, 
 They lose at times that sullen mood 
 Which marks the wanderer of the wood, 
 And in that pliant hour will show 
 
 As prodigal and fresh of thought 
 As genius when its feelings flow 
 
 In words by feeling only taught. 
 
THE VIGIL OF FAITH. 
 
 XIV. 
 We talk'd — 'twos first, offish and game, 
 
 Of hunters arts to strike the quarry, 
 Of portages and lakes whose name, 
 As utter'd in liis native speeel), 
 If memory could have hoarded each, 
 
 A portage-labour 'twere to carry. 
 Yi t one whose Length — it is a score 
 Of miles perhaps in length or more — 
 
 'Tie glorious to troll, 
 I can recall in name and feature 
 From dull oblivion's scathe, 
 Partly hecausc in trim canoe 
 I since have track'd it through and through, 
 Partly that from this simple creature 
 I heard that night a tale of faith 
 Which moved my very soul. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Yes, Inca-pah-cho! though thy name 
 Has never flow'd in poet's numbers, 
 
 And all unknown, thy virgin claim 
 To wild and matchless beauty, slumbers ; 
 Yet memory's pictures all must fade 
 
 Ere I forget that sunset view 
 When, issuing first from darksome glade 
 A day of storms had darker made, 
 
 Thy floating isles and mountains blue, 
 Thy waters sparkling far away 
 Round craggy point and verdant bay — 
 The point with dusky cedars crown'd, 
 The bay with beach of silver bound — 
 Upon my raptured vision grew. 
 Grew every moment, brighter, fairer, 
 
 As I, at close of that wild day, 
 Emerging from the forest nearer, 
 Saw the red sun his glorious path 
 Cleave through the storm-cloud's dying wrath, 
 
 And with one broad triumphant ray 
 Upon thy crimson'd waters cast, 
 Sink warrior-like to rest at last. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 "I like Lake Inca-pah-cho well," 
 
 Half mused aloud my wild-wood friend; 
 Why, white man, I can hardly tell ! 
 For fish and deer, at either end 
 The rifts arc good ; but run-ways more 
 There arc by crooked Iroquois : 
 And Rackett at the time of spearing, 
 As well as that for yarding moose, 
 Hath both, enough for hunters' use : 
 Amid these hills arc lakes appearing 
 More limpid to the summer's eye ; 
 In some at night the stars will twinkle 
 
 As if they dropp'd there from the sky 
 The pebbled bed below to sprinkle ; 
 I ply my paddle in them all — 
 
 Of all, at times, a home have made — 
 Yet, stranger, when I've thither stray'd 
 
 I scem'd to hear the ripples fall 
 
 Each time stdl sweeter than before 
 On I.nca-paii-ciio's* winding shore." 
 
 XVII. 
 
 There was a sadness in his tone 
 
 His careless words would fain disown ; 
 
 Or rather I w-ould say their touch 
 
 Of mourufulnoss bctray'd that much, 
 
 Much more of deep and earnest feeling 
 
 Was through his withcr'd bosom stealing: 
 
 For now far back in memory 
 
 So much absorb'd he scem'd to be, 
 
 I 'd not molest his revcry ; 
 
 And when — in phrase I now forget — 
 
 When I at last the silence broke, 
 In the same train of musing yet, 
 
 Watching the while the wreathed smoke 
 Curl from his lighted calumet, 
 
 He thus aloud half pondering spoke : — 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " Years, years ago, when life was new, 
 And long before there was a clearing 
 Among these Adirondack Highlands, 
 
 My chieftain kept his best canoe 
 On one of Inca-pah-cho's islands — 
 The largest, which lies toward the north, 
 As you are though the Narrows veering — 
 
 And there had reared his wigwam too, 
 A trapper now with years o'erladcn, 
 
 He lived there with one. only daughter, 
 A gentle but still gamesome maiden, 
 Who, I have heard, would venture forth, 
 Venture upon the darkest night 
 Across the broad and gusty water 
 To climb that cliff" upon the main, 
 
 By some since call'd the maiden's rest, 
 That foot save hers hath never press'd, 
 And watch the camp-fire's distant light, 
 Which told that she should see again 
 Her hunter when the dawn was bright." 
 
 XIX. 
 
 He paused — look'd down, then stirr'd the fire, 
 
 He smiled — I did not like that smile, 
 As leaning on his elbow nigher 
 
 His bright eyes glared in mine the while. 
 And I was glad that scrutiny o'er, 
 When neither had misgivings more, 
 While he, in earnest now at last, 
 Reveal'd his memories of the past. 
 
 * ' Inca-pah-cho' (anglice, Lindenmere) is so called by. 
 the Indians from its forests of Bass-wood or American Lin- 
 den. It is better known perhaps by the insipid name of 
 ' Long Lake ;' and is one of that chain of mountain lakes 
 which though closely interlacing with the sources of the 
 Hudson, discharge themselves through Eackett river into 
 the St. Lawrence. They lie on the borders of Essex in 
 Hamilton county, New York. 
 
10 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 XX. 
 
 " White man, thy look is open, kind, 
 
 Thou scornest not a tale of truth ! 
 Should I in thee a mocker find, 
 
 'T would shame alike thy blood and youth. 
 I trust thee ! well, now look upon 
 
 This wither'd cheek and shrunken form ! 
 Canst think, young man, i" was the one 
 
 For whom that maiden dared the storm 1 
 Yes, often, till a tribesman came — ■ 
 It matters not to speak his name — 
 A youth as tall, as straight as I, 
 As quick his quarry to descry, 
 A hunter bold upon his prey 
 As ever struck the elk at bay. 
 —But thou shaft see him, if thou wilt 
 Gaze on the wreck since made by guilt.— 
 
 XXI. 
 
 " Often she dared to cross the wave 
 
 At midnight in the wildest weather, 
 While tempests round the peak would rave 
 
 From which she watch'd for nights together. 
 For he, that tribesman whom I loved, 
 
 Yes, loved as if he were my brother ; 
 Had told her that the woods I roved 
 
 To feed the lodge where dwelt another ; 
 Another who now cherish' d there 
 The child that claim'd a hunter's cate ; 
 Claim'd it upon some distant shore, 
 From which I would return no more. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 " All this in her had wrought no change, 
 
 No anxious doubt, no jealous fear, 
 But he meanwhile had words most strange, 
 Breathed in my gentle nul-kaii's ear, 
 Which made her wish that I were near : 
 Words strange to her, who, simple, true, 
 And only love as prosperous knew, 
 
 Shrank from the fitful fantasy, 
 Which seeming less like love than hate, 
 
 Would cloud his moody brow when he, 
 Gazing on her, arraign'd the fate 
 Which could such loveliness create 
 
 Only to work him misery. 
 And when she heard that lying tale, 
 
 Her woman's heart could soon discover 
 Some double treachery might assail, 
 
 Through him, her unsuspecting lover ; 
 And Love in fear, now, fearless, brought her 
 On errand Love in hope first taught her. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " I came at last. She ask'd me nought — 
 
 It was enough to see me there ; 
 But of the friend who thus had wrought, 
 Though he now streams far distant sought, 
 She bade me in the woods beware. 
 
 A wound my coming had delay'd, 
 
 And, still too weak to use my gun, 
 I set the nets the old chief made ; 
 Baited his traps in forest glade ; 
 And sweetly after woo'd the maid 
 At evening when my toils were done. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " 'T was then I chose a grassy swale, 
 
 In which my wigwam frame to make ; 
 
 Shelter'd by crags from northern gale, 
 
 Shaded by boughs, save toward the lake. 
 The Red-bird's nest above it swung; 
 There often the Ma-ma-twa* sung ; 
 There too, when Spring was backward, first 
 Her shrinking blossoms safely burst ; 
 And there, when autumn leaf was sere, 
 Some flowers still stay'd the loitering year. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 " She learn'd full soon to love the spot, 
 For who could see and love it not ? 
 And there, when I the isle would leave, 
 
 And sometimes now my gun resume, 
 She'd shyly steal the mats to weave 
 
 Which were to line our bridal room. 
 Happy we were ! what love like ours, 
 
 Blossoming thus as fresh and free, 
 As unrestrain'd as wild-wood flowers, 
 Yet keeping al? their purity ! 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 " Happy we were ! my secret foe, 
 
 How dread a foe, I knew not then 
 Remain'd to fish the streams below 
 That into Cadaraqui flow, 
 Returning to us only when 
 
 Some kinsman on our bridal morn, 
 ImpelFd by a mysterious doom 
 
 Which with that fateful man was born, 
 
 Brought him to shroud the day in gloom 
 And blast our joys about to bloom. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 "Just Manitou ! O may the boat 
 
 That bears him to the spirit land 
 For ages on those black waves float 
 
 Which catch no light from off its strand. 
 Float blindly there, still laboring on 
 
 . Toward shores 'tis never doom'd to reach; 
 Float there till time itself is gone, 
 
 And when again 'twould seek the beach 
 From which with that lone soul it started, 
 
 Baffling let that before it flee, 
 Till hope of rest hath all departed, 
 And still when that last hope is gone, 
 A guideless thing float on, float on ! 
 
 * Vulgate, "Catbird." 
 
THE VIGIL OF FAITH. 11 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Nor how they loosed the lifeless maid 
 
 " The birds of song had sunk to rest ; 
 
 Stiffening within love's desperate clasp. 
 
 The eagle's tireless wing was furl'd ; 
 
 The sod upon her grave was green, 
 
 On I.\<A-r.\ii-('iio's darkening breast 
 
 The leaflet greening on the oak, 
 
 The last few golden ripples curl'd ; 
 
 The autumn and the winter o'er, 
 
 The distant mountains, bright before^ 
 
 When I once more to sense awoke, — 
 
 Now seem'd to darken more and more 
 
 Awoke to know some joys had been 
 
 Against the eastern sky ; 
 
 Which now to me could be no more. 
 
 Until a white-pine's slender cone, 
 
 Awoke to know that life to me 
 
 Tapering above the hill-top, shone, 
 
 Was henceforth but a girdled tree 
 
 And show'd the moon was nigh. 
 
 Whose tough limbs still must bide the blast 
 
 Our friends, they all stood gravely round 
 
 Until the trunk to earth be cast, 
 
 Waiting until that moon should rise, 
 
 Though fruit nor blossom ne'er can smile 
 
 The bridal moon whose aspect crown'd 
 
 Upon those wrestling limbs the while. 
 
 For good or ill our destinies : 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 The signal too, the hour had come, 
 
 " He still was there, that youth accurst, 
 
 When I could claim my bride and home. 
 
 Who thus through blood his end had sought, 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 He who, with frenzied love athirst, 
 
 "Blushing at that fast-brightening sky, 
 
 Such wreck of loveliness had wrought. 
 
 When on her father's lodge it shone, 
 
 He still was there, for while I breathed, 
 
 How did she shrink within, when I 
 
 With sense and feeling almost gone — 
 
 Would lead that loved one to my own ! 
 
 The aged father, thus bereaved, 
 
 Forth stepp'd e'en then that dismal guest 
 
 Raving the wretch should still live on — 
 
 Who grimly stood amid the rest, 
 
 Of all our friends there was not one 
 
 And, while his knife he drew, 
 
 Would deal the vengeance they believed 
 
 With cry that made us all aghast, 
 
 'Twas mine on him to wreak alone. 
 
 And frantic gesture hurrying past, 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 He sprang the threshold through. 
 
 " He still was there. 'Twas he that kept 
 
 XXX. 
 
 A nurse's watch while thus I slept : 
 
 " A shriek ! and I with soul of flame 
 
 Ever and ever by my side, 
 
 Devour'd the fearful space between, 
 
 With anxious eye and noiseless tread, 
 
 Another and another came 
 
 Hanging about my fever'd bed, 
 
 E'en while my grip was on his throat, 
 
 With none he would his task divide ; 
 
 Where writhing in the dark unseen, 
 
 Trembling, with jealous fears afraid, 
 
 His victim in her gore did float ! 
 
 When near the grave I seem'd to hover, 
 
 And life was oozing through each wound 
 
 Lest that bright land which claim'd the maid 
 
 That gash'd her lovely form about, 
 
 Was opening too upon her lover. 
 
 When hurling him upon the ground, 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 I bore her to the light without. 
 
 " And now, when no more languishing, 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 My mind and strength became renew'd, 
 
 " Aided by that untimely beam, 
 
 Amid the balmy airs of spring, 
 
 Which harbinger'd such bridal woes, 
 
 And I once more could take the wood ; 
 
 I watch'd its ebbing current gleam, 
 
 Think you he fear'd the bloody fate 
 
 And watching would not, could not deem 
 
 Which blood will alway expiate ? 
 
 That blessed life's too precious stream 
 
 Oh no ! he look'd too far before — 
 
 Growing each moment darker, colder, 
 
 Look'd far beyond this fleeting shore, 
 
 E'en while I to my heart did fold her, 
 
 Where bliss will die as soon as born ! 
 
 Already at its close. 
 
 He hoped, he blindly trusted, he, 
 
 She tried to speak — then press'd my hand, 
 
 That on the instant that I woke, 
 
 And look'd — oh, look'd into my eyes 
 
 Revenge would be so fierce in me, 
 
 As if through them the spirit-land 
 
 I'd madly deal some deathful stroke 
 
 Would first upon her vision rise, 
 
 Would send his soul where hers was gone ! 
 
 As if her soul that could not stay 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Through mine might only pass away. 
 
 " But I — I knew too well his guile, 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 'Twas whisper'd me in dreams the while, 
 
 " I know not when that look did fade, ■ 
 
 I saw a form about my bed, 
 
 Nor when did fail that dying grasp, 
 
 That alway shrunk from him with dread : 
 
12 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 'T would come by night, 'twould come by day, 
 But clearest in the moonbeam show, 
 Then alway as it nearer drew 
 Ere melting from my wistful view, 
 With palm reversed it seem'd to say, 
 ' If yet thou wilt not with me go, 
 Keep him — Oh keep but him away ." 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 " And did I not ? ay, while the knell 
 Of youth and hope yet echo'd by, 
 Did I not then allay thy fears, 
 Perturbed soul, that his was nigh ? 
 
 And o'er the waste of dreary years, 
 On which heart-wither'd doom'd to dwell, 
 I look with wearying vision back — 
 Have I not on that desert track, 
 Sweet spirit, kept love's vigil well ? 
 
 Oh have I not ? Yes — though no more 
 I see at night those moon-touch'd fingers, 
 Still beckoning as they did of yore ; 
 
 And though the features of my love, 
 As near me still in dreams she lingers, 
 
 Look bright, as yon bright star above, 
 And peaceful, as in that blest time, 
 When our young loves were in their prime — 
 I know that, from the land of shades, 
 When wandering thus to haunt these glades, 
 The vigil to heT soul is dear 
 I kept, and still am keeping here ! 
 — Enough of this, thou still wouldst know 
 How dealt I with my mortal foe ! 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 " The stag that snuffs the breeze of morn, 
 Where first it lifts the birchen spray, 
 Gazing on lakes all newly born 
 
 From valley mists that roll away, 
 Treads not the upland fern more free, 
 
 Looks not with eye more bright below, 
 Than moved and look'd that man, when he 
 Strode forth and stood beneath the tree 
 
 To bide my avenging hatchet's blow : 
 The crestless doe, whose faint limbs sink 
 
 Beside the rill to which they bore her — 
 Life-stricken on its very brink 
 That instant when she'd gasping drink 
 
 From the bright wave that leaps before her- 
 Lies not more lowly and forlorn, 
 
 All stretch'd upon the forest leaves, 
 Than near the tree that Outcast lay, 
 When, by that gleaming hatchet shorn, 
 His warrior-tuft is cleft away, 
 
 And he the living doom receives 
 To wander thus where'er he may, 
 Of woman and of man the scorn.* 
 
 * In some tribes, when the penalty of death is thus changed 
 for that of degradation, the criminal who so regains his for- 
 feited life is considered as unsexed. He then becomes the 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 "A month went by ; the wigwam's smoke 
 
 No more from that cold hearth ascended 
 Where the old chief no longer woke 
 
 To woes that with his life were ended : 
 A month, and that deserted isle 
 
 Was left alone to me and her ! 
 The summer had begun to smile, 
 
 The winds of June the leaves to stir, 
 And flowers, that budded late the while, 
 To bloom above her sepulchre : 
 Meek, pallid things, grave-nursed below, 
 That feebly there as yet would grow, 
 Brighter in coming years to blow — 
 And where was he whose fell despair 
 The Flower of Love laid bleeding there ? 
 
 XL. 
 
 " Shooting from out the leafy land, 
 
 Right opposite our island home, 
 There was a narrow neck of sand, 
 O'er which the wave, on either hand, 
 
 Would fling at times its crest of foam. 
 And here — as I one morning stood 
 
 Upon a rock which faced that beach — 
 I saw, wild rushing from the wood, 
 Within my loaded rifle's reach, 
 A figure that distracted ran 
 
 Until it gain'd the frothy marge, 
 And there, an unarm'd, kneeling man, 
 Bare his broad bosom to my charge ! 
 XLI. 
 " I stood, but did not raise the gun — 
 
 Although it rattled in my grasp — 
 I stood and coldly look'd upon 
 
 The suppliant, who, still lower bent, 
 
 His hands in agony did clasp, 
 As if the soul within him pent 
 Would rend its penal tenement. 
 At last, with low half smother'd cry 
 
 " And quivering frame, he gain'd his feet, 
 And to the woods began to fly, 
 
 Growing at every step more fleet : 
 But from that hour where'er he fled, 
 As fleetly I too followed ! 
 XLII. 
 " One moment was enough to bind 
 
 Firmly my weapons on my head, 
 The strait was swum, and far behind 
 The crested waves effaced my tread 
 
 menial and slave of the first person who chooses to take 
 possession of hiin, and is obliged to submit to tasks of ex- 
 posure the most toilsome, and domestic offices the most 
 humiliating ; his master or owner (or husband, as he is 
 sometimes whimsically called) being permitted to exercise 
 every species of tyrannical cruelty upon him, provided he 
 shed not the blood of the poor wretch who is thus subjected 
 to his caprices. See Schoolcraft; see also "The Equa- 
 wish,' in ' Life on the Lakes,' by the Author of ' Legends of a 
 Log Cabin.' 
 
THE VIGIL OF FAITH. 
 
 13 
 
 Upon tho beach, o'er which I sped 
 So swiftly that the forest glade 
 At once the wanderer's trail bctray'd. 
 And though it led o'er rocky ledge, 
 Led oft within the pool's black' edge, 
 
 'Twas soon rcveal'd anew — 
 The springy moss just crisping back, 
 I saw upon his recent track, 
 Nor paused to trace it in the brook, 
 Whose alders still behind him shook 
 
 Where he had bounded through. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 "And — when again the stream he cross'd, 
 Where in its forks, awhile I lost 
 His trail, amid the maze 
 Of severing rills, and run-ways wound 
 About the deer-lick's trampled ground — 
 The very living things around, 
 Which in these forest depths abound, 
 The sable darting from the fern, 
 The gliding ermine — each in turn 
 His whereabout betrays : 
 From plunging beaver's warning stroke, 
 From wood-duck whirring from the oak, 
 And screaming loon, alike I learn 
 
 Where lead the wanderer's ways. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 " At length within a broken dell, 
 
 Where a gnarl'd beech the tempest's shock 
 Had parted from the leaning rock, 
 Among its cable roots, he fell ; 
 
 Where, panting, soon I saw him lie, 
 Shrivelling against the blasted trunk 
 
 With knees drawn up and cowering eye, 
 As my avenging tread had shrunk 
 
 The miscreant there as I drew nigh. 
 I spoke not — but I gazed upon 
 That wolf with fangs and courage gone, 
 Gazed on his quailing features till 
 
 Their furtive glance was fix'd by mine, 
 And I could see his writhing will 
 
 Her feeble throne to me resign. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 " He rose an abject, broken man, 
 He dared not fight — he dared not fly, 
 
 His very life in my veins ran, 
 Who would not let him cast it by ! 
 And still he is the thing that then 
 He wilted to, within that glen : 
 
 Living — if life be drawing breath — 
 But dead in all that last should die, 
 
 For him there is no farther death 
 Till from the earth he withereth. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " I hunt for him — I dress his food, 
 I guide his footsteps in the wood, 
 
 B : 
 
 Or, when alone for game I 'd beat, 
 
 Direct where we at night shall meet. 
 
 He cleans my arms — my snow-shoes makes ; 
 
 He bales my shallop on the lakes ; 
 
 And when with fishing-spear I glide 
 
 At midnight o'er the silent tide, 
 
 'T is he who holds the pine-knot torch, 
 
 "That seems her blazing path to scorch 
 
 Where waves o'er reddening shoals divide. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 " With me he now is alway meek, 
 
 But sometimes, chafing in his thrall, 
 He to my dog will sharply speak, 
 
 Who comes, or comes not at his call. 
 They both are in my camp below, 
 
 From which I now in hunting weather 
 For days can often safely go, 
 
 Leaving the two alone together. 
 But in those years my watch began 
 
 His limbs were agile as my own, 
 And sometimes then the tortured man, 
 
 For weeks beyond my search hath flown, 
 
 In shades more deep to breathe alone. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 " Yet ever in his wildest mood, 
 
 He would some mystic power obey, 
 Which from that island's haunted wood 
 
 Ne'er let him wander far away, 
 And always soon or late I could 
 Steal on him in his solitude : 
 While oft, as weaker grew his brain, 
 And he forgot God's law of blood, 
 I 've track'd the poor, bewilder'd thing, 
 Wherever he was famishing ; 
 And snatch'd him o'er and o'er again, 
 
 From death he sought by fell and flood. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 "And thus, as crowding seasons changed, 
 
 When many a year was dead and gone, 
 I round these lakes in manhood ranged, 
 Where yet in age I wander on, 
 
 And still o'er that poor slave I've kept 
 
 A vigil that hath never slept ; 
 And while upon this earth I stay, 
 From her I '11 still keep him away — 
 From her whom I at last shall see 
 My own, my own eternally ! 
 
 L. 
 
 "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 races granted. 
 
14 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 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 vapoury 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. 
 
 LI. 
 
 "There souls again to youth are born, 
 
 A youth that knows no withering ! 
 There, blithe and bland, the breeze of morn 
 
 Fresheneth an eternal Spring 
 Mid trees, and flowers and waterfalls, 
 And fountains bubbling from the moss, 
 And leaves that quiver with delight, 
 As from their shade the warbler calls, 
 Or, choiring, glances to the light 
 On wings which never lose their gloss : 
 There brooks that bear their buds away, . 
 From branches that will bend above them, 
 So closely they could not but love them, 
 To the same bowers again will stray 
 
 From which at first they murmuring sever, 
 Still floating back their blossoms to them, 
 Still with the same sweet music ever, 
 Returning yet once more to woo them : 
 
 There love, like bird and brook and blossom, 
 Is young for ever in each bosom ! 
 
 LII. 
 
 " 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." 
 
 LIII. 
 
 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 
 
 Once witness of his loved one's slaughter — 
 At that same season lof the leaf 
 In which I heard him tell his grief- — 
 I thought some day I 'd weave in rhyme 
 That tale of mellow autumn time. 
 
SONGS -EROS AND ANTEIIOS. 
 
 f" Love, With the ancient sascs, if he he not twin-born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called A ntcros; whom 
 while he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with many false and feigning desires that wander singly up and down in 
 ness, By them, in their borrowed garb, is Love often deceived) partly that his eye is not the quickest in this 
 dark region here below (fvhich is not Love's proper sphere), partly out of the simplicity and credulity which is native 
 to bim, and embraces and consorts him with those suborned striplings as if they were his mother's own sons. But after 
 awhile, soaring ahove the shadow of the earth, he discerns that this is not his genuine brother as he imagined ; he has 
 to hpld fellowship with such a personated mate. For that original and fiery virtue given him by fate 
 all on a Budden goes out and leaves bim undeified and despoiled of all his force; till finding Anteros at last, he kindles 
 and repairs the almost faded ammunition of his deity by the reflection of a coequal and homogencal fire." Milton.] 
 
 They arc mockery all — those skies, those skies- 
 
 Tlicir untroubled depths of blue — 
 They are mockery all — these eyes, these eyes, 
 
 Which seem so warm and true. ' 
 Each tranquil star in the one that lies, 
 Each meteor glance that at random flies 
 
 The other's lashes through ; 
 They are mockery all, these flowers of spring, 
 
 Which her airs so softly woo — 
 And the love to which we would madly cling, 
 
 Ay! it is mockery too; 
 The winds are false which the perfume stir, 
 
 And the looks deceive to which we sue, 
 And love but leads to the sepulchre, 
 
 Which the flowers spring to strew. 
 
 II. 
 
 Why seek her heart to understand, 
 
 If but enough thou knowest 
 
 To prove that all thy love, like sand, 
 
 Upon the wind thou throwest ? 
 The ill thou makest out at last 
 Doth but reflect the bitter past, 
 While all the good thou learnest yet 
 But makes her harder to forget. 
 
 What matters all the nobleness 
 Which in her breast resideth, 
 And what the warmth and tenderness 
 
 Her mien of coldness hideth 
 If but ungenerous thoughts prevail 
 When thou her bosom wouldst assail, 
 While tenderness and warmth doth ne'er 
 By any chance, toward thee appear ? 
 
 Sum up each token thou hast won 
 Of kindred feeling: there — 
 
 How few for Hope to build upon, 
 
 How many for Despair ! 
 And if e'er word or look deelareth 
 Love or aversion, which she bearcth, 
 While of the first, no proof thou hast, 
 How many are there of the last ! 
 
 Then strive no more to understand 
 Her heart, of which thou knowest 
 
 Enough to prove thy love, like sand, 
 Upon the wind thou throwest : 
 
 The ill thou makest out at last 
 
 Doth but reflect the bitter past, 
 
 While all the good thou learnest yet 
 
 But makes her harder to forget. 
 
 III. 
 
 Those eyes — those eyes — I watch them so 
 While radiant with soul they glow, 
 To see if one kind glance of feeling 
 For me is ever from them stealing; 
 If ever one fond thought arise 
 To fill with tenderness those eyes, 
 
 Sometimes a single beaming look 
 Will make my pulses leap like brook 
 Which bounds to meet the sunshine sparkling 
 Through alders long its current darkling — 
 Then like that brook in deepening glade 
 They 're given again to gloom and shade. 
 
 Those e3 r es — those eyes — oh, I '11 no more 
 Their cold and fitful light adore ! 
 The flash of mind that's to them given 
 Is but a borrow'd ray from Heaven ; 
 And not the soft impassion'd glow 
 To warm its worshippers below. 
 
 15 
 
16 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 IV. 
 'Tis hard to share her smiles with many! 
 
 And while she is so dear to me, 
 To fear that I, far less than any, 
 
 Call out her spirit's witchery ! 
 To find my inmost heart when near her 
 
 Trembling at every glance and tone, 
 And feel the while each charm grow dearer 
 
 That will not beam for me alone. 
 
 How can she thus, sweet spendthrift, squander 
 
 The treasures one alone can prize ! 
 How can her eyes to all thus wander, 
 
 When 1 but live in those sweet eyes ! 
 Those syren tones so lightly spoken 
 
 Cause many a heart I know to thrill ; 
 But mine, and only mine, till broken, 
 
 In every pulse must answer still. 
 
 V. 
 
 Ay ! there it is, that winning smile, 
 
 That look that cheats my heart for ever, 
 That tone that will my brain beguile 
 
 Till reason from her seat shall sever. 
 All, all bewitching, as when last 
 
 I for the twentieth time forswore them, 
 Resistless as when first I cast 
 
 My whole adoring soul before them. 
 
 Like carrier doves that hurry back 
 
 To the bright home from which they 're parted, 
 However blind may be their track 
 
 Or far the goal from which they started, — 
 So from Love's jesses if e'er free 
 
 I set my thoughts one moment roving, 
 Somehow the very nest in thee 
 
 They always find their home of loving. 
 
 VI. 
 
 She loves — but 'tis not me she loves: — 
 
 Not me on whom she ponders, 
 When in some dream of tenderness 
 
 Her truant fancy wanders. 
 The forms that flit her visions through 
 
 Are like the shapes of old, 
 Where tales of Prince and Paladin 
 
 On tapestry are told. 
 Man may not hope her heart to win, 
 
 Be his of common mould ! 
 
 Rut I — though spurs are won no more 
 
 Where herald's trump is pealing, 
 Nor thrones carved out for ' ladye fayre ' 
 
 Where steel-clad ranks are wheeling — 
 I loose the falcon of my hopes 
 
 Upon as proud a flight 
 As they who hawk'd at high renown, 
 
 In song-ennobled fight 
 If daring then true love may crown, 
 
 My love she must requite ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Like one who, on some clouded night, 
 
 When wind and tide attend his bark, 
 Waits for the pole-star's steady light 
 
 To shine above the waters dark, 
 Will often for its guiding beam 
 
 Mistake some wandering meteor's ray, 
 But wilder'd by that fitful gleam 
 Doubt yet to launch upon the stream, 
 
 Till wind and tide have passed away, — 
 
 So I, if ever Life's dark sea 
 
 Is swept by some propitious gale, 
 Look for my guiding light in thee, 
 
 Before I e'er can spread my sail ; 
 So, while thy smiles deceitful shine, 
 
 Then leave all darker than before, 
 I for some surer beacon pine, 
 Till breeze and flood no longer mine, 
 
 I'm stranded on the barren shore. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I will love her no more! — 'tis a waste of the heart, 
 This lavish of feeling — a prodigal's part — 
 Who, heedless, the treasure a life could not earn 
 Squanders forth where he vainly m ay look for i eturn. 
 
 I will love her no more — it is folly to give 
 Our best years to one, when for many we live. 
 And he who the world will thus barter for one, 
 I ween by such traffic must soon be undone. 
 
 I will love her no more — it is heathenish thus 
 
 To bow to an idol which bends not to us : 
 
 Which heeds not, which hears not, which recks not 
 
 for aught, 
 That the worship of years to its altar hath brought. 
 
 I will love her no more — for no love is without 
 Its limit in measure, and mine hath run out, 
 She engrosseth it all, and till some she restore, 
 Than this moment I love her — how can I love more ? 
 
 IX. 
 
 I lied — ah yes, I lied like saucy page — 
 
 Singing that more than now I could not love thee ! 
 
 Others, like me, may, at thy budding age, 
 
 Hold every feeling in sweet vassalage 
 
 Unto thy charms. But I — by all above me ! — 
 Will prove thee suzerain of my soul more nearly ; 
 
 When Time his arts shall 'gainst thy beauty wage, 
 To break their serfdom — serving thee more dear. ; y, 
 
 Mark how the sunset, with its parting hues, 
 The heaving bosom of yon river staineth ! 
 To yield those tints the grieving waves refuse, 
 Nor yet that purpling light at last will lose 
 
 Till Night itself, like Death, above them reigneth !' 
 So more and more will brighten to the last 
 The light, which once upon my true soul cast, 
 Reflected there, still true till death remaineth. 
 
SONGS— EROS AND ANTEROS. 
 
 17 
 
 I do not love thee — by my word I do not! 
 I do not love thee — tor thy love I sue not 
 And yet, I fear, there's hardly one that wearcth 
 Thy beauty's chains, who like me for thee carcth: 
 Who joys like me when in thy joy believing — 
 Who like me grieves when thou dost .see in but griev- 
 ing. 
 Hut, though I charms so perilous eschew not, 
 I do not love thec — trust me that I do not ! 
 
 I do not love thee ! — pr'ythcc why so coy, then ? 
 Doth it thy maiden bashfulncss annoy, then ? 
 Sith the heart's homage still will be up-welling, 
 Where Truth and Goodness have so sweet a dwell- 
 ing? 
 Suroly, unjust one, I were, less than mortal, 
 Knelt I not thus before that temple's portal. 
 Others dare to love thee — dare what I do not — 
 Then let me worship, bright one, while I woo not! 
 
 XI. 
 
 I know thou dost love mc — ay ! frown as thou wilt, 
 
 And curl that beautiful lip 
 Which I never gaze on without the guilt 
 
 Of burning its dew to sip : 
 I know that my heart is reflected in thine, 
 And, like flowers that over a brook incline, 
 
 They toward each other dip. 
 
 Though thou lookest so cold in these halls of light, 
 
 Mid the careless, proud, and gay, 
 I will steal like a thief in thy heart at night, 
 
 And pilfer its thoughts away. 
 I will come in thy dreams at the midnight hour, 
 And thy soul in secret shall own the power 
 
 It dares to mock by day. 
 
 XII. 
 I ask not what shadow came over her heart, 
 
 In t!ip moment I thought her my own — 
 If love in that moment could really depart, 
 
 I mourn not such love when 't is flown. 
 I ask not what shadow came over her then, 
 
 What doubt did her bosom appnl, 
 For I know where her heart will turn truly again, 
 
 If it ever turn truly at all ! 
 
 It is not at once that the reed-bird takes wing, 
 
 When the tide rises high round her nest, 
 But again and again, floating back, she will sing 
 
 O'er the spot where her love-treasures rest: 
 And oh, when the surge of distrust would invade, 
 
 Where the heart hoped for ever to dwell, 
 Love long upon loitering pinion is stay'd, 
 
 Ere his wing waves a mournful farewell. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 I waited for thee — but all restless waited, 
 For soul like mine it ever must be moving; 
 
 B2 
 
 I knew one spirit with my own was mated, 
 
 Yet I mistook that restlessness for loving : 
 Of mine own nature an ideal created, 
 And loved because I only thus was fated. 
 
 Fated, bewildcr'd thus in thought and feeling, 
 To waste the freshness of my soul away, 
 
 To sec each bud of spring in turn revealing 
 But canker'd blooms upon a fruitless spray, — 
 
 Why marvel then in prayer I oft am kneeling, 
 
 Sweet minister of grace ! to bless thy spirit-healing? 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Do I not love thec ? Thou knowest I do ; 
 
 And even while feigning to doubt mc, 
 Thou knowest my heart is so tender and true 
 
 It would wither in heaven without thec. 
 Then why, while the spirit of bliss is abroad 
 
 In the blue of the sky and the balm of the flowers, 
 Should the demon Distrust with his visage abhorr'd 
 
 Scare affection from hearts so united as ours ? 
 Do I not love thee ! — Oh think but how long 
 
 Has the soul that should kindle for glory 
 Been wasted away in the breath of a song, 
 
 Consuming alone to adore thee. 
 Then why, dearest, why should a cloud of distrust 
 
 Come thy love-breathing censer to smother, 
 When thou knowest my soul, if once dimm'd by 
 thee, must 
 
 Be silent and cold to each other ? 
 
 XV. 
 
 Nay, plead not thou art dull to-night, 
 
 When I can see tho tear-drop stealing, 
 Soft witness to love's watchful sight, 
 
 Some lurking grief within revealing. 
 Wouldst thou so cheat the friend thou lovest 
 
 Of half the wealth he owns in thee ? 
 Why, sweet one, by that smile thou provest 
 
 Thy tears as well belong to me ! 
 
 Ah, tears again! — well, let them flow, 
 
 In tenderness thus flow for ever, 
 Those last upon my breast I know 
 
 Fresh from affection's fruitful river. 
 What ! smiles once more ! — Sweet April wonder, 
 
 Thy sun and rain thou wilt not miss ; 
 Why should not I then have my thunder, 
 
 And melt each bolt into a kiss? 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Life seems to thee more earnest, dearest ! 
 
 And is it not the same with me ? 
 Why, sweet, each shadow that thou fearest 
 
 To me becomes reality — 
 A thought — a pang to mar my gladness, 
 And cloud my brow with tender sadness — 
 
 And all of loving thee ! 
 
 The jest from which thou often turnest 
 Is only love's fond thoughtless guile, 
 
18 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 And comes from heart in love most earnest 
 
 When it would make thee smile — 
 Is but the stream's bright circles breaking 
 Above thy dropping griefs — which aching 
 My bosom holds the while. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Thou ask'st me why that thought of death 
 
 Should rise within our souls the same — 
 Why now, when dearest grows each breath 
 
 Of life, we shrink not at his name '! 
 What is it, sweet, but faith in each 
 
 The other could not live alone ? 
 What but the wish at once to reach 
 
 The land where change is never known ? 
 
 As, parted here, we dare not think 
 
 Of wearying years to come between, 
 Nay, start not, love, as on the brink 
 
 Of what may be — as it hath been — 
 We only part like twin-born rays 
 
 Diverging from the morning sun, 
 Again within his orb to blaze 
 
 When fused in heaven into one. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Ask me not why I should love her, 
 
 Look upon those soul-full eyes ! 
 Look while mirth or feeling move her, 
 
 And see there how sweetly rise 
 Thoughts gay and gentle from a breast 
 Which is of innocence the nest — 
 Which, though each joy were from it shred, 
 By truth would still be tenanted ! 
 
 See from those sweet windows peeping, 
 
 Emotions tender, bright, and pure, 
 And wonder not the faith I 'm keeping 
 
 Every trial can endure ! 
 Wonder not that looks so winning 
 Still for me new ties are spinning ; 
 Wonder not that heart so true 
 Keeps mine from ever changing too. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Where dost thou loiter, Spring, 
 
 Whilst it behoveth 
 Thee to cease wandering 
 
 Where'er thou roveth, 
 And to my lady bring 
 
 The flowers she loveth. 
 
 Come with thy melting skies 
 Like her cheek blushing, 
 
 Come with thy dewy eyes 
 Where founts are gushing ; 
 
 Come where the wild bee hies 
 When dawn is flushing. 
 
 Lead her where by the brook 
 The first blossom keepeth, 
 
 Where, in the shelter'd nook, 
 
 The callow budsleepeth; 
 Or with a timid look 
 
 Through its leaves peepeth. 
 
 Lead her where on the spray 
 
 Blithely carolling, 
 First birds their roundelay 
 
 For my lady sing — 
 But keep, where'er she stray, 
 
 True-love blossoming. 
 
 XX. 
 
 While he thou lovest were not the same 
 If scatheless all from passion's flame, 
 Wouidst thou the temper'd steel forego 
 At thought of what hath made it so ? 
 Wouidst thou have bann'd the sun to shine 
 In spring upon thy chosen pine, 
 And dwarf'd the stature of the tree 
 That thus had never shelter'd thee ? 
 
 Think'st thou the dream by fancy sent, 
 The fervor by wild passion lent — 
 Think'st thou the wandering tenderness 
 That yearns each loving heart to bless — 
 That either, or that all can be 
 The love my soul still kept for thee ? 
 Still faithful kept, till thou or death 
 Should come to claim her inmost breath ! 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Sleeping ! why now sleeping ? 
 The moon herself looks gay, 
 
 While through thy lattice peeping ; 
 Wilt not her call obey ? 
 
 Wake, love, each star is keeping 
 For thee its brightest ray ; 
 
 And languishes the gleaming 
 
 From fire-flies now streaming 
 Athwart the dewy spray. 
 
 Awake, the skies are weeping 
 Because thou art away, 
 
 But if of me thou 'rt dreaming, 
 Sleep, loved one, while you may ; 
 
 And music's wings shall hover 
 
 Softly thy sweet dreams over, 
 Fanning dark thoughts away, 
 
 While, dearest, 'tis thy lover 
 Who '11 bid each bright one stay. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Thoughts— wild thoughts ! oh why will ye wander, 
 
 Wander away from the task that's before ye ? 
 Heart — weak heart ! oh why art thou fonder, 
 
 Fonder of her than ever of glory ? 
 What though the laurel for thee hath no glitter, 
 
 What though thy soul never yearn'd for a name : 
 When did Love garland a brow that was fitter 
 
 To wake in Love's bosom the wild wish of fame ? 
 
SONGS — EROS AND ANTEROS. 
 
 19 
 
 Doth she Dot watch o'er thins every endeavor ' 
 
 Leans not her heart in warm faith on thine own? 
 If thou Bit doubting and dreaming fi>r ever, 
 
 Too late thou '11 discover that her dream is flown ! 
 Ay ! though each thought that "is tender and glow- 
 ing 
 
 Hath yet no errand, save only to her — 
 She may forget thee, while time is thus flowing; 
 
 Thou waste thy worship — fond idolater ! 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 « 
 
 Think of me, dearest, when day is breaking 
 
 Away from the sable chains of night, 
 When the sun, his ocean-couch forsaking, 
 Like b giant first in his strength awaking, 
 
 1- flinging abroad his limbs of light; 
 As the breeze that first travels with morning forth, 
 (Jiving life to iier steps o'er the quickening earth — 
 As the dream that lias cheated thy soul through the 
 
 night, 
 Let me come fresh in thy thoughts with the light. 
 
 Think of me, dearest, when day is sinking 
 
 In the soft embrace of twilight gray, 
 When the starry eyes of heaven are winking, 
 And the weary flowers their tears are drinking, 
 As they start like gems on the star-lit spray. 
 Let mc come warm in thy thoughts at eve, 
 As the glowing track which the sunbeams leave, 
 When they, blushing, tremble along the deep 
 While stealing away to their place of sleep. 
 
 Think of mc, dearest, when round thee smiling 
 Arc eyes that melt while they gaze on thee ; 
 
 When words are winning and looks are wiling, 
 
 And those words and looks, of others, beguiling 
 Thy fluttering heart from love and me. 
 
 Let mc come true in thy thoughts in that hour ; 
 
 Let my trust and my faith — my devotion — have 
 power, 
 
 When all that can lure to thy young soul is nearest, 
 
 To summon each truant thought back to me, 
 dearest. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Why should I murmur lest she may forget me ? 
 
 Why should I grieve to be by her forgot? 
 Better, then, wish that she had never met me, 
 
 Better, oh far, she should remember not ! 
 
 Yet that sad wish — oh, would it not come o'er her 
 Knew she the heart on which she now relies? 
 
 Strong it is only in beating to adore her — 
 Faint in the moment her loved image flies ! 
 
 Why should I murmur lest she may forget me ? 
 
 Would I not rather be remember'd not 
 Ere have her grieve that she had ever met me ? 
 
 7 only suffer if I am forgot ! 
 
 B 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 "Trust in thee?" Ay, dearest! there's no one but 
 
 must, 
 Unless truth be a fable, in such as thee trust ! 
 For who can see heaven's own hue in those eyes, 
 And doubt that truth with it came down from the 
 
 skies ; 
 While each thought of thy bosom, like morning's 
 
 young light, 
 Almost ere 't is born, flashes there on his sight ? 
 
 " Trust in thee ?" Why, bright one, thou couldst 
 
 not betray, 
 While thy heart and thine eyes are for ever at play ! 
 And he who unloving can study the one, 
 Is so certain to be by the other undone, 
 That if he care aught for his quiet, he must, 
 Like me, my own dearest, in both of them trust. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 They say that thou art alter'd, Amy, 
 
 They say that thou no more 
 Dost keep within thy bosom, Amy, 
 
 The faith that once it wore ; 
 They tell me that another now 
 
 Doth thy young heart assail ; 
 They tell me, Amy, too, that thou 
 
 Dost smile on his love tale. 
 
 But I — I heed them not, my Amy, 
 
 Thy heart is like my own ; 
 And still enshrined in mine, my Amy, 
 
 Thine image lives alone : 
 Whate'er a rival's hopes have fed, 
 
 Thy soul cannot be moved 
 Till he shall plead as I have plead, 
 
 And love as I have loved. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Take back then thy pledges, — and peace to that 
 
 heart 
 In which faith like a shadow can come and depart! 
 From which love, that seems cherish' d most fondly 
 
 to-day, 
 Is cast, without grieving, to-morrow away. 
 
 Such a heart it may sadden mine own to resign, 
 But it never was mated to mingle with mine. 
 Love another ! Nay, shrink not — more wisely thou 
 
 wilt 
 If truth to thy plighted in thine eyes be guilt. 
 
 I claim not, I ask not one thought in thy breast 
 While that thought brings misgiving and doubt to 
 
 the rest. 
 If the heart that thus fails thee can bid me depart, 
 Take back all love's pledges, — and peace to that 
 
 heart ! 
 
20 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 They tell me that my trusting heart 
 
 Thy fondness is deceived in ; 
 They say that thou all faithless art 
 
 Whom I so well believed in ! 
 I heed not, reck not what they say 
 
 So earnestly about thee ; 
 I 'd rather trust my soul away 
 
 Than for one moment doubt thee. 
 
 Like mine thy youth was early lost ; 
 
 Thy vows too rashly plighted ; 
 Thy budding life by wintry frost 
 
 Of grief untimely, blighted. 
 Devotion is most deep and pare 
 
 In souls by sorrow shaded, 
 And love like ours will still endure 
 
 When brighter ties have faded. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Alas ! if she be false to me 
 
 It is for her alone I weep ! 
 'T is that in coming years I see 
 Her sufferings from such frailty 
 
 Than mine, oh, far more deep ! 
 
 So tender, yet so false withal, 
 
 So proud, and yet so frail, 
 Responding to each flatterer's call, 
 Loving, yet often blind to all 
 
 Of love that could not fail — 
 
 Oh who will watch her wayward soul, 
 
 Who minister when I am gone, 
 Who point her spirit to its goal, 
 Who with unwearying love console 
 That truth-abandon'd one ? 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Withering — withering — all are withering — 
 
 All of hope's flowers that youth hath nursed ; 
 Flowers of love too early blossoming ; 
 
 Buds of ambition, too frail to burst. 
 Faintily — faintily — oh ! how faintily 
 
 I feel life's pulses ebb and flow : 
 Yet, Sorrow, I know thou dealest daintily 
 
 AVith one who should not wish to live moe. 
 
 Nay ! why, young heart, thus timidly shrinking ? 
 
 Why doth thy upward wing thus tire ? 
 Why are thy pinions so droopingly sinking, 
 
 When they should only waft thee higher ? 
 
 Upward — upward, let them be waving 
 
 Lifting thy soul toward her place of birth : 
 
 There are guerdons there more worth thy having, 
 Far more than any these lures of earth. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 I knew not how I loved thee — no ! 
 
 I knew it not till all was o'er — 
 Until thy lips had told me so — 
 
 Had told me I must love no more ! 
 I knew not how I loved thee !— yet 
 
 I long had- loved thee wildly well ; 
 I thought 'twere easy to forget — 
 
 I thought a word would break the spell : 
 
 And even when that word was spoken, 
 
 Ay ! even till the very last, 
 I thought, that spell of faith once broken, 
 
 I could not long lament the past. 
 O, foolish heart ! O, feeble brain, 
 
 That love could thus deceive — subdue ! 
 Since hope cannot revive again, 
 
 Why cannot memory perish too ? 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 The conflict is over, the struggle is past, 
 
 I have look'd — I have loved — I have worshipp'd my 
 
 last; 
 And now back to the world, and let fate do her 
 
 worst 
 On the heart that for thee such devotion hath 
 
 nursed — 
 To thee its best feelings were trusted away, 
 And life hath hereafter not one to betray. 
 
 Yet not in resentment thy love I resign ; 
 I blame not — upbraid not, one motive of thine ; 
 I ask not what change has come over thy heart, 
 I reck not what chances have idoom'd us to part ; 
 I but know thou hast told me to love thee no more, 
 And I still must obey where I once did adore. 
 
 Farewell, then, thou loved one — oh ! loved but too 
 
 well, 
 Too deepty, too blindly, for language to tell — 
 Farewell ! thou hast trampled love's faith in the 
 
 dust. 
 Thou hast torn from my bosom its hope and its 
 
 trust ! 
 But if thy life's current with bliss it would swell, 
 I would pour out my own in this last fond farewell ! 
 
SONGS-MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 SPARKLING AND BRIGHT. 
 
 Sparkling and bright in liquid light 
 
 Docs the wine our goblets gleam in, 
 With hue as red as the rosy bed 
 
 Which a bee would choose to dream in. 
 Then fill to-night with hearts as light, 
 
 To loves as gay and fleeting 
 As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, 
 Anid break on the lips while meeting. 
 
 Oh ! if Mirth might arrest the flight 
 Of Time through Life's dominions, 
 We here awhile would now beguile 
 The gray-beard of his pinions 
 
 To drink to-night with hearts as light, 
 
 To loves as gay and fleeting 
 As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, 
 And break on the lips while meeting. 
 
 But since delight can't tempt the wight, 
 
 Nor fond regret delay him, 
 Nor Love himself can hold the elf, 
 Nor sober Friendship stay him, 
 
 We'll drink to-night with hearts as light, 
 
 To loves as gay and fleeting 
 As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, 
 And break on the lips while meeting. 
 
 ROSALIE CLARE. 
 
 Who owns not she 's peerless — who calls her not 
 
 fair — 
 Who questions the beauty of Rosalie Clare ? 
 Let him saddle his courser and spur to the field, 
 And though harness'd in proof, he must perish or 
 
 yield ; 
 For no gallant can splinter — no charger may dare 
 The lance that is couch'd for young Rosalie Clare. 
 
 When goblets are flowing, and wit at the board 
 Sparkles high, while the flood of the red grape is 
 
 pour'd, 
 And fond wishes for fair ones around offer'd up 
 From each lip that is wet with the dew of the cup, — 
 What name on the brimmer floats oftener there, 
 Or is whisper'd more warmly, than Rosalie Clare ? 
 
 They may talk of the land of the olive and vine — 
 Of the maids of the Ebro, the Arno, or Rhine ; — 
 Of the Houris that gladden the East with their 
 
 smiles, 
 Where the sea's studded over with green summer 
 
 isles ; 
 But what flower of far away clime can compare 
 With the blossom of ours — bright Rosalie Clare ? 
 
 Who owns not she's peerless — who calls her not 
 
 fair? 
 Let him meet but the glances of Rosalie Clare ! 
 Let him list to her voice — let him gaze on her 
 
 form — 
 And if, hearing and seeing, his soul do not warm, 
 Let him go breathe it out in some less happy air 
 Than that which is bless'd by sweet Rosalie Clare. 
 
 THE INVITATION. 
 
 Wend, love, with me, to the deep woods wend, 
 
 Where far in the forest the wild flowers keep, 
 Where no watching eye shall over us bend, 
 
 Save the blossoms that into thy bower peep. 
 Thou shalt gather from buds of the oriole's hue, 
 
 Whose flaming wings round our pathway flit, 
 From the saffron orchis and lupin blue, 
 
 And those like the foam on my courser's bit. 
 
 One steed and one saddle us both shall bear, 
 
 One hand of each on the bridle meet ; 
 And beneath the wrist that entwines me there, 
 
 An answering pulse from my heart shall beat. 
 I will sing thee many a joyous lay, 
 
 As we chase the deer by the blue lake-side, 
 While the winds that over the prairie play 
 
 Shall fan the cheek of my woodland bride. 
 
 Our home shall be by the cool, bright streams, 
 
 Where the beaver chooses her safe retreat, 
 And our hearth shall smile like the sun's warm 
 gleams 
 
 Through the branches around our lodge that 
 meet. 
 Then wend with me, to the deep woods wend, 
 
 Where far in the forest the wild flowers keep, 
 Where no watching eye shall over us bend, 
 
 Save the blossoms that into thy bower peep. 
 
 21 
 
22 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 THE MINT JULEP. 
 'Tis said that the gods, on Olympus of old 
 
 (And who the bright legend profanes with a 
 doubt), 
 One night, mid their revels, by Bacchus were told 
 That his last butt of nectar had somehow run 
 out! 
 
 But determined to send round the goblet once more, 
 They sued to the fairer immortals for aid 
 
 In composing a draught, which, till drinking were 
 o'er, « 
 Should cast every wine ever drank in the shade. 
 
 Grave Ceres herself blithely yielded her corn, 
 And the spirit that lives in each amber-hued 
 grain, 
 And which first had its birth from the dew of the 
 morn, 
 Was taught to steal out in bright dewdrops again. 
 
 Pomona, whose choicest of fruits on the board 
 Were scatter'd profusely in every one's reach, 
 
 When call'd on a tribute to cull from the hoard, 
 Express'd the mild juice of the delicate peach. 
 
 The liquids were mingled while Venus look'd on 
 With glances so fraught with sweet magical 
 power, 
 That the honey of Hybla, e'en when they were gone, 
 Has never been miss'd in the draught from that 
 hour. 
 
 Flora then, from her bosom of fragrancy, shook, 
 And with roseate fingers press'd down in the 
 bowl, 
 
 All dripping and fresh as it came from the brook, 
 The herb whose aroma should flavor the whole. 
 
 The draught was delicious, and loud the acclaim, 
 Though something seemed wanting for all to be- 
 wail; 
 
 But Juleps the drink of immortals became, 
 When Jove himself added a handful of hail. 
 
 WAKE, LADY, WAKE. 
 
 WRITTEN FOR AN AIR IN DER FREISCHUTZ. 
 
 Wake, Lady, wake ! the stars on high 
 
 Are twinkling in the vaulted sky, 
 
 The dewdrops on the leafy spray 
 
 Are trembling in the moon's cold ray ; 
 
 But what to me are dewy skies, 
 
 And moon and stars, unless thine eyes 
 
 Will waken, to rival the heaven's blue, 
 
 And the stars and moon in their brightness too ? 
 
 Wake, Lady, wake ! the murmuring breeze 
 Is soft among the swaying trees ; 
 And with the sound of brooks is heard 
 The note of evening's lonely bird : 
 
 But thy loved voice is sweeter far, 
 Than whispering woods, or breezes are, 
 Or the silver sound of the tinkling rill, 
 Or the plaintive call of the whippoorwill. 
 
 Wake, Lady, or my heart alone 
 
 Will like a lute that's lost its tone 
 
 To nature's touch refuse to sound, 
 
 While all her works rejoice around : 
 
 How can I prize the brightest spot, 
 
 If I am there, but thou art not ? 
 
 Then while through thy lattice the moonbeams 
 
 break, 
 'T is thy lover that calls thee, wake, Lady, wake ! 
 
 THE MYRTLE AND STEEL. 
 
 One bumper yet, gallants, at parting, 
 
 One toast ere we arm for the fight ; 
 Fill round, each to her he loves dearest — 
 
 'Tis the last he may pledge her, to-night ! 
 Think of those who of old at the banquet 
 
 Did their weapons in garlands conceal, 
 The patriot heroes who hallow'd 
 
 The entwining of Myrtle and Steel ! 
 
 Then hey for the Myrtle and Steel, 
 
 Then ho for the Myrtle and Steel, 
 Let every true blade that e'er loved a fair maid 
 
 Fill a round to the Myrtle and Steel. 
 
 'Tis in moments like this, when each bosom 
 
 With its highest-toned feeling is warm, 
 Like the music that's said from the ocean 
 
 To rise ere the gathering storm,* 
 That her image around us should hover, 
 
 Whose name, though our lips ne'er reveal, 
 We may breathe through the foam of a bumper, 
 
 As we drink to the Myrtle and Steel. 
 
 Then hey for the Myrtle and Steel, 
 
 Then ho for the Myrtle and Steel, 
 Let every true blade that e'er loved a fair maid 
 
 Fill a round to the Myrtle and Steel. 
 
 Now mount, for our bugle is ringing 
 
 To marshal the host for the fray, 
 Where our flag, to the firmament springing, 
 
 Flames over the battle array : 
 Yet, gallants — one moment — remember, 
 
 When your sabres the death-blow would deal, 
 That mercy wears her shape who 's cherish'd 
 
 By lads of the Myrtle and Steel. 
 
 Then hey for the Myrtle and Steel, 
 
 Then ho for the Myrtle and Steel, 
 Let every true blade that e 'er loved a fair maid 
 
 Fill a round to the Myrtle and Steel. 
 
 * In Pascagoula Bay strange music is heard when certain 
 winds prevail. Naturalists attribute the phenomenon to 
 the vibration of the ' horns' of catfish, which at such times 
 congregate in large schools. 
 
SON(iS — ,M ISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 23 
 
 MY BIRCHEN DARK. 
 My birchen hark, my birclicn bark ! 
 
 When Fortune first 0100*6 bom a rover, 
 He Bliaped it for his own trim ark 
 
 To float Care's deluge gaily over. 
 Then have the boasting pioneer 
 
 To hew his skitF from yonder pine, 
 And, dearest, with young Love to steer, 
 
 I! nunc a passenger in mine: 
 In swan-like grace thy form resembling — 
 With joj beneath thy sweet limbs trembling — 
 For lightsome heart, oh, such a boat 
 On summer wave did never float! 
 
 Think'st thou, my love, that painted barge, 
 
 With gaudy pennant Haunting o'er her, 
 Could kiss, like her, the flowery marge, 
 
 Nor break the foam-hills form'd before her? 
 Look, sweet, the very lotus-cup, 
 
 Trembling as if with bliss o'crbriinm'd, 
 Seem'd now almost to buoy her up 
 
 As o'er the heart-shaped leaves we skimm'd— 
 Those floating hearts, beside their flowers, 
 Half bear the boat and both of ours ! 
 For lightsome heart, oh, such a boat 
 On summer wave did never float ! 
 
 LE FAINEANT. 
 
 "Now arouse thee, Sir Knight, from thine indolent 
 
 case, 
 Fling boldly thy banner abroad in the breeze, 
 Strike home for thy lady — strive hard for the prize, 
 And thy guerdon shall beam from her love-lighted 
 
 eyes !" 
 
 " I shrink not the trial," that bluff knight replied — 
 " But I battle — not / — for an unwilling bride ; 
 Where the boldest may venture to do and to dare, 
 My pennon shall flutter — my bugle peal there ! 
 
 " I quail not at aught in the struggle of life, 
 I 'in not all unproved even now in the strife, 
 But the wreath that I win, all unaided — alone, 
 Round a faltering brow it shall never be thrown !" 
 
 " Now fie on thy manhood, to deem it a sin 
 That she lovcth the glory thy falchion might win, 
 Let them doubt of thy prowess and fortune no more ; 
 Up ! Sir Knight, for thy lady — and do thy devoir!" 
 
 " She hath shrunk from my side, she hath fail'd in 
 
 her trust, 
 Not relied on my blade, but remember 'd its rust; 
 It shall brighten once more in the field of its fame, 
 But it is not for her I would now win a name." 
 
 The knight rode away, and the lady she sigh'd, 
 When he featly as ever his steed would bestride, 
 While the mould from the banner he shook to the 
 
 wind 
 Seem'd to fall on the breast he left aching behind. 
 
 But the rust on his glaive and the rust in his heart 
 Had corroded too long and too deep to depart, 
 And the brand only brightcn'd in honor once more, 
 \N hen the heart ceased to beat on the fray-trampled 
 shore. 
 
 THE BROOK AND THE PINE. 
 
 Tell Die, fair Brook, that long hast sung, 
 
 To yonder Pine hast sung so sweetly — 
 Arc its wild arms more near thee flung, 
 
 When night their motion veils completely? 
 Or, for the morn's caressing rays 
 
 Still eager, will it toss its boughs, — 
 Like hearts that only beat for praise, 
 
 All heedless of affection's vows ? 
 
 I never pause — the Brook replied — 
 
 To know how near it bends above me, 
 I cannot help, whate'er betide, 
 
 To sing for one I fain would love me ; 
 My song flows on, and still must flow, 
 
 My chosen Pine with truth to bless, 
 Though rippling pebbles sometimes show 
 
 The brook athirst with tenderness : 
 
 Nay more — when thus, while troublous, oft 
 
 My wavelets flash some ray redeeming, 
 I think but of the Pine aloft, 
 
 Which first will proudly hail its beaming ! 
 And, wasted thus, a joy it is 
 
 To know ray Pine, — refrcsh'd and bright, 
 While I distill'd each dewy kiss — 
 
 Is worthy of all glorious light ! 
 
 " L' AMOUR SANS AILES." 
 
 Young Love, when tender mood beset him, 
 
 One morn to Libia's casement flew, 
 Who raised it just so far to let him 
 
 Blow half his fragrant kisses through. 
 
 Love brought no perch on which to rest, 
 
 And Lilla had not one to give him, 
 And now the thought her soul distress'd 
 
 What should she do ? — where should she leave 
 him ? 
 
 Love maddens to be thus half caught, 
 
 His struggle Lilla's pain increases ; 
 "He'll fly — he'll fly away (she thought), 
 
 Or beat himself and wings to pieces." 
 
 " His wings ! why them I do not want — 
 The restless things make all this pother : 
 
 Love tries to fly, but finds he can't, 
 And nestles near her like a brother. 
 
 Plumeless, we call him Friendship now ; 
 
 Love smiles at acting such a part — 
 But what cares he for lover's vow 
 
 While thus perdu near Lilla 's heart ? 
 
24 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 THE YACHTER. 
 
 My bark is my courser so gallant and brave ; 
 Like a steed of the prairie she bounds o'er the 
 
 wave, 
 And the breast of the billow as onward I roam, 
 Swelling proudly to meet her is fleck'd by her foam. 
 
 Like the winds which her canvass exultingly fill, 
 I float as I list, and I rove as I will ; 
 The breeze cannot baffle, for with it I veer, 
 Or in the wind's eye like the petrel I steer. 
 
 O'er the pages of story the student may pore, 
 The trumpet the soldier may charm to the war, 
 In the forest the hunter his heaven may see, 
 But the bounding blue water and shallop for me. 
 
 With no haven before me — beneath me my home — 
 All heaven around me wherever I roam, 
 I am free — I am free as the shrill piping gale, 
 That whistles its music as onward I sail. 
 
 NO MORE— NO MORE. 
 
 No more — no more of song to-night ; 
 
 Oh, let no more thy music flow ! 
 Those notes that once could wake delight, 
 Come o'er me like a spirit-blight, 
 A breathing of the faded past, 
 Whose freshest hopes to earth were cast 
 
 Long, long ago. 
 
 A livelier strain? nay, play instead, 
 
 That movement wild and low, 
 That chanting for the early dead 
 Which best beseems spring blossoms fled, 
 A requiem for each tender ray 
 That from life's morning stole away 
 Long, long ago. 
 
 ANACREONTIC. 
 
 Blame not the Bowl— the fruitful Bowl ! 
 
 Whence wit, and mirth, and music spring, 
 And amber drops elysian roll. 
 
 To bathe young Love's delighted wing. 
 What like the grape Osiris gave 
 
 Makes rigid, age so lithe of limb ? 
 Illumines memory's tearful wave, 
 
 And teaches drowning hope to swim ? 
 Did Ocean from his radiant arms 
 
 To earth another Venus give, 
 He ne'er could match the mellow charms 
 
 That in the breathing beaker live. 
 
 Like burning thoughts which lovers hoard 
 In characters that mock the sight, 
 
 Till some kind liquid, o'er them pour'd, 
 Brings all their hidden warmth to light— 
 
 Are feelings bright, which, in the cup 
 Though graven deep, appear but dim, 
 
 Till fill'd with glowing Bacchus up, 
 
 t They sparkle on the foaming brim. 
 
 Each drop upon the first you pour 
 
 Brings some new tender thought to life, 
 
 And as you fill it more and more, 
 The last with fervid soul is rife. 
 
 The island fount, that kept of old 
 
 Its fabled path beneath the sea, 
 And fresh, as first from earth it roll'd, 
 
 From earth again rose joyously ; 
 Bore not beneath the bitter brine, 
 
 Each flower upon its limpid tide, 
 More faithfully than in bright wine, 
 
 Our hearts will toward each other glide. 
 Then drain the cup, and let thy soul 
 
 Learn, as the draught delicious flies, 
 Like pearls in the Egyptian's bowl, 
 
 Truth beaming at the bottom lies. 
 
 THE LOVE TEST. 
 
 I thought she was wayward — inconstant in part, 
 But thought not the weakness e'er reach'd to her 
 
 heart ; 
 'T was a lightness of mood which but tempted a 
 
 lover 
 The more the true way to that heart to discover. 
 
 What changeful seem'd there, was the play of the 
 
 wave 
 Which veileth the depth of the firm ocean cave ; 
 I cared not how fitful that .light wave might flow, 
 I would dive for the pearl of affection below. 
 
 I won it, methought ! and now welcome the strife, 
 The burthen, the toil, the worst struggles of life ; 
 Come trouble — come sorrow — come pain and de- 
 spair, 
 We divide ills, that each for the other would bear ! 
 
 I believed — I could swear there was that in her 
 
 breast, 
 That soul of wild feeling, which needs but the test, 
 To leap like a falchion — bright, glowing, and true, 
 To the hand which its worth and its temper best 
 
 knew. 
 
 And what was the struggle which tested love's 
 
 power ? 
 What fortune, so soon, could bring trial's dark hour ? 
 Did some shadow of evil first make her heart quail ? 
 Or the worst prove at once that her truth could 
 
 ne'er fail ? 
 I painted it sternly, the lot she might share ! 
 I took from Love's wing all the gloss it may bear ; 
 I told her how often his comrade is Care ! 
 I appeal'd to her heart — and her heart it was — 
 
 where ? 
 
SONGS — MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 25 
 
 SONG OF THE DROWNED. 
 
 THE SLEIGH BELLS. 
 
 Down, far down, in the waters deep, 
 
 Merrily, merrily sound the bells 
 
 Where the booming surges above us sweep, 
 
 As o'er the ground wc roll, 
 
 Our revels from night till mom we keep: 
 
 And the snow-drill breaks in silvery flakes 
 
 And though with us the cap foes round 
 
 Before our cariole. 
 
 Upon every shore where the blue waves sound, 
 
 When wrapp'd in buffalos soft and warm, 
 
 Yrt here, as it passes from lip to lip, 
 
 With mantle and tippet dight, 
 
 Alone is found true fellowship; 
 
 Wc cheerily cleave the fleecy storm, 
 
 For "lily the Head, where'er they range, 
 
 Or skim in the cold moonlight. 
 
 'Tie the Dead alone who never change. 
 
 Merrily, merrily ! Merrily, merrily ! 
 
 What boots your pledges, yc sons of Earth ; 
 
 Merrily sound the bells. 
 
 Or to whom yc drink in your hours of mirth, 
 
 Merrily, merrily sound the bells 
 
 When gather'd around your festal hearth? 
 
 Upon the wind without, 
 
 Yc fill to love ! and the toast yc give 
 
 When the wine is mull'd and the waffle cull'd, 
 
 Will hardly the fumes of your wine outlive ! 
 
 And the song is pass'd about. 
 
 To friendship till! and its tale is told, 
 
 While rosy lips and dimpled cheeks 
 
 Almost ere the pledge on your lip grows cold ! 
 
 The welcome joke inspire, 
 
 For only the Dead, where'er they range, 
 
 And mirth in many a bright eye speaks 
 
 'Tie the Dead alone who never change. 
 
 Around the hickory fire, 
 
 Then come, when the ' bolt of death is hurl'd,' 
 
 Merrily, merrily ! Merrily, merrily ! 
 
 Come down to us from that bleak, bleak world, 
 
 Merrily sound the bells. 
 
 Where the wings of Sorrow arc never furled : 
 
 
 
 Come, and we'll drink to the shades of the past; 
 
 BOAT SONG. 
 
 To the hopes that mock'd in life to the last ; 
 
 To the lips and eyes we once did adore, 
 
 We court no gale with wooing sail, 
 
 And the loves that in death can delude no more ! 
 
 We fear no squall a-brewing ; 
 
 For the Dead, the Dead, wherever they range, 
 
 Seas smooth or rough, skies fair or bluff, 
 
 'Tis only the dead who never change. 
 
 Alike our course pursuing. 
 
 
 For what to us are winds, when thus 
 
 
 
 Our merry boat is flying, 
 
 
 While, bold and free, with jocund glee, 
 
 MORNING HYMN. 
 
 Stout hearts her oars are plying ! 
 
 " Let there be light !" The Eternal spoke, 
 
 At twilight dun, when red the sun 
 
 And from the abyss where darkness rode 
 
 Far o'er the water flashes, 
 
 The earliest dawn of nature broke, 
 
 With buoyant song, our bark along 
 
 And light around creation flow'd. 
 
 His crimson pathway dashes. 
 
 The glad earth smiled to see the day, 
 
 And when the night devours the light, , 
 
 The first-born day come blushing in ; 
 
 And shadows thicken o'er us, 
 
 The young day smiled to shed its ray 
 
 The stars steal out, the skies about, 
 
 Upon a world untouch'd by sin. 
 
 To dance to our bold chorus. 
 
 " Let there be light 1" O'er heaven and earth, 
 
 Sometimes, near shore, we ease our oar, 
 
 The God who first the day-beam pour'd, 
 
 While beauty's sleep invading, 
 
 Uttcr'd again his fiat forth, 
 
 To watch the beam through her casement gleam, 
 
 And shed the Gospel's light abroad. 
 
 As she wakes to our serenading ; 
 
 And, like the dawn, its cheering rays 
 
 Then, with the tide, we floating glide 
 
 On rich and poor were meant to fall, 
 
 To music soft, receding, 
 
 Inspiring their Redeemer's praise 
 
 Or drain one cup, to her fill'd up, 
 
 In lowly cot and lordly hall. 
 
 For whom these notes are pleading. 
 
 Then come, when in the orient first 
 
 Thus, on and on, till the night is gone, 
 
 Flushes the signal light for prayer ; 
 
 ' And the garish dawn is breaking ; 
 
 Come with the earliest beams that burst 
 
 While landsmen sleep, we boatmen keep 
 
 From God's bright throne of glory there. 
 
 The soul of frolic waking. 
 
 Come kneel to Him who through the night 
 
 And though cheerless then our craft look, when 
 
 Hath watch'd above thy sleeping soul, 
 
 To her moorings day hath brought her, 
 
 To Him, whose mercies, like his light, 
 
 By the moon amain she is launch'd again, 
 
 Are shed abroad from pole to pole. 
 
 To dance o'er the 'merry water. 
 
26 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 ROOM, BOYS, ROOM. 
 
 There was an old hunter 
 
 Camp'd down by the rill, 
 Who fish'd in this water, 
 
 And shot on that hill. 
 The forest for him had 
 
 No danger, nor gloom, 
 For all that he wanted 
 
 Was plenty of room ! 
 Says he, " The world 's wide, 
 
 There is room for us all ; 
 Room enough in the green-wood, 
 
 If not in the hall. 
 Room, boys,, room, by the light of the moon, 
 For why should n't every man enjoy his own room ?" 
 
 He wove his own nets, 
 
 And his shanty was spread 
 With the skins he had dress'd 
 
 And stretch'd out overhead ; 
 Fresh branches of hemlock 
 
 Made fragrant the floor, 
 For his bed, as he sung 
 
 When the daylight was o'er, 
 " The world's wide enough, 
 
 There is room for us all ; 
 Room enough in the green-wood, 
 
 If not in the hall. 
 Room, boys, room, by the light of the moon, 
 For why should n't every man enjoy his own room ?" 
 
 That spring now half choked 
 
 By the dust of the road, 
 Under boughs of old maples 
 
 Once limpidly flow'd ; 
 By the rock whence it bubbles 
 
 His kettle was hung, 
 Which their sap often fill'd, 
 
 While the hunter he sung, 
 " The world 's wide enough, 
 
 There is room for us all ; 
 Room enough in the green-wood, 
 
 If not in the hall. 
 Room, boys, room, by the light of the moon, 
 For why shouldn't every man enjoy his own room ?" 
 
 And still sung the hunter — 
 
 When one gloomy day, 
 He saw in the forest 
 
 What sadden'd his lay, — 
 A heavy wheel 'd wagon 
 
 Its black rut had made, 
 Where fair grew the greensward 
 
 In broad forest glade — 
 "The world's wide enough, 
 
 There is room for us all ; 
 Room enough in the green-wood, 
 
 If not in the hall. 
 Room, boys, room, by the light of the moon, 
 For why shouldn't every man enjoy his own room?" 
 
 He whistled to his dog, 
 
 And says he, " We can't stay ; 
 I must shoulder my rifle, 
 
 Up traps, and away." 
 Next day, mid those maples, 
 
 The settler's axe rung, 
 While slowly the hunter 
 
 Trudged off as he sung, 
 "The world's wide enough, 
 
 There is room for us all ; 
 Room enough in the green-wood, 
 
 If not in the hall. 
 Room, boys, room, by the light of the moon, 
 For why should n't every man enjoy his own room?" 
 
 LOVE AND FAITH. 
 
 'T was on one morn in springtime weather, 
 
 A rosy, warm, inviting hour, 
 That Love and Faith went out together, 
 
 And took the path to Beauty's bower. 
 Love laugh'd and frolick'd all the way, 
 
 While sober Faith, as on they rambled, 
 Allow'd the thoughtless boy to play, 
 
 But watch'd him, wheresoe'er he gamboll'd.. 
 
 So warm a welcome, Beauty smiled 
 
 Upon the guests whom chance had sent her, 
 That Love and Faith were both beguiled 
 
 The grotto of the nymph to enter ; 
 And when the curtains of the skies 
 
 The drowsy hand of Night was closing, 
 Love nestled him in Beauty's eyes, 
 
 While Faith was on her heart reposing. 
 
 Love thought he never saw a pair 
 
 So softly radiant in their beaming ; 
 Faith deem'd that he could meet no where 
 
 So sweet and safe a place to dream in ; 
 And there, for life in bright content, 
 
 Enchain'd, they must have still been lying, 
 For Love his wings to Faith had lent, 
 
 And Faith he never dream'd of flying. 
 
 But Beauty, though she liked the child, 
 
 With all his winning ways about him, 
 Upon his Mentor never smiled, 
 
 And thought that Love might do without him ; 
 Poor Faith abused, soon sighing fled, 
 
 And now one knows not where to find him ; 
 While mourning Love quick followed 
 
 Upon the wings he left behind him. 
 
 'T is said, that in his wandering 
 
 Love still around that spot will hover, 
 Like bird that on bewilder'd wing 
 
 Her parted mate pines to discover ; 
 And true it is that Beauty's door 
 
 Is often by the idler haunted ; 
 But, since Faith fled, Love owns no more 
 
 The spell that held his wings enchante'd. 
 
SONGS— MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 27 
 
 THE REMONSTRANCE. 
 
 You give up the world ! why, us well might the 
 sun, 
 When tired of drinking the dew from the flowers, 
 While his rays, like young hopes, stealing off one 
 by one, 
 Die away with the muezzin's last note from the 
 towers, 
 Declare that he never would gladden again, 
 
 With one rosy smile, the young morn in its birth ; 
 But leave weeping Day, with her sorrowful train 
 ( >t" hours, to grope o'er a pall-eover'd earth. 
 
 The light of that soul, once so brilliant and steady, 
 
 So far can the incense of flattery smother, 
 That, at thought of the world of hearts conquer'd 
 already, 
 Like Macedon's madman, you weep for another? 
 O ! if sated with this, you would seek worlds un- 
 tried, 
 And fresh as was ours, when first we began it, 
 Let me know but the sphere where you next will 
 abide, 
 And that instant, for one, I am off for that planet. 
 
 BUFF AND BLUE . 
 
 Oh bold and true, 
 
 In buff and blue, 
 Is the soldier-lad that will fight for you. 
 
 In fort or field, 
 
 Untaught to yield 
 Though death may close his story — 
 
 In charge or storm, 
 
 'Tis woman's form 
 That marshals him to glory. 
 
 For bold and true, 
 
 In buff and blue, 
 Is the soldier-lad that will fight for you. 
 
 In each fair fold 
 
 His eyes behold 
 When his country's flag waves o'er him- 
 
 In each rosy stripe, 
 
 Like her lip so ripe, 
 His girl is still before him. 
 
 For bold and true, 
 
 In buff arid blue, 
 Is the soldier-lad that will fight for you. 
 
 MELODY. 
 
 When the flowers of Friendship or Love have de- 
 
 cay'd, 
 In the heart that has trusted and once been be- 
 
 tray'd, 
 No sunshine of kindness their bloom can restore ; 
 For the verdure of feeling will quicken no more ! 
 
 Hope cheated too often when life's in its spring, 
 From the bosom that nursed it for ever takes wing ! 
 And Memory comes, as its promises fade, 
 To brood o'er the havoc that Passion has made. 
 
 As 'tis said that the swallow the tenement leaves 
 Where ruin endangers her nest in the eaves, 
 While the desolate owl takes her place on the wall, 
 And builds in the mansion that nods to its fall. 
 
 WE PARTED IN SADNESS. 
 
 We parted in sadness, but spoke not of parting ; 
 
 We talk'd not of hopes that we both must resign ; 
 I saw not her eyes, and but one teardrop starting 
 
 Fell down on her hand as it trembled in mine : 
 Each felt that the past we could never recover, 
 
 Each felt that the future no hope could restore, 
 She shudder'd at wringing the heart of her lover, 
 
 / dared not to say I must meet her no more. 
 
 Long years have gone by, and the springtime smiles 
 ever 
 As o'er our young loves it first smiled in their 
 birth ; 
 Long years have gone by, yet that parting, oh ! 
 never 
 Can it be forgotten by either on earth. 
 The note of each wild bird that carols toward 
 heaven 
 Must tell her of swift-winged hopes that were 
 mine, 
 While the dew that steals over each blossom at even 
 Tells me of the teardrop that wept their decline. 
 
 TRUST NOT LOVE. 
 
 Oh, trust not Love — the wayward boy, 
 But haste, if you'd detain him, 
 
 Ere time can beauty's bond destroy, 
 
 Or other eyes and lips decoy, 
 With Hymen to enchain him. 
 
 The humming-bird the blossom leaves 
 
 Whene'er its sweets are failing ; 
 The silken web the spider weaves, 
 Yields up the prey to which she cleaves 
 When autumn winds are wailing. 
 
 And Love, when beauty's bloom decays, 
 
 Will spread his fickle pinion, 
 And prove the web in which he plays, 
 Too weak against the rude world's ways 
 To hold the roving minion. 
 
 Then trust not Love — the wayward boy, 
 But haste, if you'd detain him, 
 
 Ere time can beauty's bond destroy, 
 
 Or other eyes and lips decoy, 
 With Hymen to enchain him. 
 
28 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 AWAY TO THE FOREST. 
 
 Away to the forest, away, love, away ! 
 
 My foam-champing courser reproves thy delay, 
 
 And the hrooks are all calling-, Aw ay, love, away ! 
 Away to the forest, my own love, with me ! 
 Away where through ch»cker'd glade sports the 
 wind free, 
 
 Where in the bosky dell 
 
 Watching young leaflets swell, 
 
 Spring on each floral bell 
 Counteth for thee, 
 
 Away to the forest, away ! 
 
 Away to the forest, away, love, away ! 
 
 Each breath of the morning reproves thy delay ; 
 
 Each shadow retiring beckons away ! 
 Hark ! how the blue-birds throat carolling o'er us 
 Chimes with the thrush's note floating before us ! 
 
 Away then, my gentle one, 
 
 Thy voice is miss'd alone. 
 
 Away — let love's whisper'd tone 
 Swell the, bright chorus, 
 
 Away to the forest, away ! 
 
 A HUNTER'S MATIN. 
 
 Up, comrades, up ! the morn 's awake 
 Upon the mountain side, 
 
 The curlew's wing hath swept the lake, 
 And the deer has left the tangled brake, 
 To drink from the limpid tide. 
 
 Up, comrades, up ! the mead-lark's note 
 
 And the plover's cry o'er the prairie float, 
 
 The squirrel he springs from his covert now 
 To prank it away on the chestnut bough, 
 Where the oriole's pendent nest high up, 
 
 Is rock'd on the swaying trees, 
 While the humbird sips from the harebell's cup, 
 
 As it bends to the morning breeze. 
 Up, comrades, up ! our shallops grate 
 
 Upon the pebbly strand, 
 And our stalwart hounds impatient wait 
 
 To spring from the huntsman's hand. 
 
 THE LOVER'S STAR. 
 
 DANISH AIR. 
 
 Oh, when, mid thy wild fancy's dreaming 
 Life's meteors around thee are streaming, 
 Thy tears still belie the false beaming 
 
 That fain would thy spirit control — 
 Look, look to that lone light above thee, 
 The star that seems set there to love thee, 
 
 Look there, and I 'm with thee in soul ! 
 Look, look, &c. 
 
 And, if when thus wilder'd, thou turnest, 
 To lean on the true and the earnest — 
 The friend for whom vainly thou yearnest 
 
 Has pass'd like a mist from life's strand,- 
 Oh, come, come again to me, dearest ! 
 Thou still to my soul shalt be nearest, 
 
 All mine in that bright spirit land ! 
 Oh ! come, come again, &,c. 
 
OCCASIONAL POEMS. 
 
 MOONLIGHT ON THE HUDSON. 
 
 WRITTEN AT WEST TOINT. 
 
 I 'si not romantic, but, upon my word, 
 
 There are some moments when one can't help 
 feeling 
 As if his heart's chords were so strongly stirr'd 
 
 By things around him, that 'tis vain concealing 
 A little music in his soul still lingers 
 Whene'er its keys are touch'd by Nature's fingers : 
 
 And even here, upon tliis settee lying, 
 
 With many a sleepy traveller near me snoozing, 
 Thoughts warm and wild are through my bosom 
 flying, 
 
 Like founts when first into the sunshine oozing : 
 For who can look on mountain, sky and river, 
 Like these, and then be calm and cold as ever ! 
 
 Bright Dian, who, Camilla-like, dost skim yon 
 Azure fields — Thou who, once earthward bend- 
 ing, 
 
 Didst loose thy virgin zone to young Endymion, 
 On dewy Latinos to his arms descending — 
 
 Thou whom the world of old on every shore, 
 
 Type of thy sex, Triformis, did adore : 
 
 Tell me — where'er thy silver bark be steering, 
 By bright Italian or soft Persian lands, 
 
 Or o'er those island-studded seas careering, 
 Whose pearl-charged waves dissolve on coral 
 strands ; 
 
 Tell if thou visitest, thou heavenly rover, 
 
 A lovelier stream than this the wide world over? 
 
 Doth Acheldus or Araxes flowing 
 Twin-born from Pindus, but ne'er meeting bro- 
 thers — 
 Doth Tagus o'er his golden pavement glowing, 
 Or cradle-freighted Ganges, the reproach of mo- 
 thers, 
 The storied Rhine, or far-famed Guadalquiver, 
 Match they in beauty my own glorious river ? 
 
 What though no cloister gray nor ivied column 
 Along these cliff's their sombre ruins rear ? 
 
 C2 
 
 What though no frowning tower nor temple so- 
 lemn 
 Of tyrants tell and superstition here — 
 What though that mouldering fort's fast crum- 
 
 bling walls 
 Did ne'er enclose a baron's banner'd halls- 
 Its sinking arches once gave back as proud 
 An echo to the war-blown clarion's peal, 
 As gallant hearts its battlements did crowd 
 
 As. ever beat beneath a vest of steel, 
 When herald's trump on knighthood's haughtiest 
 
 day 
 Call'd forth chivalric host to battle fray : 
 
 For here amid these woods He once kept court 
 Before whose mighty soul the common crowd 
 
 Of heroes, who alone for fame have fought, 
 
 Are like the patriarch's sheaves to heaven's cho- 
 sen bow'd — 
 
 He who his country's eagle taught to soar, 
 
 And fired those stars which shine o'er every shore. 
 
 And sights and sounds at which the world have 
 wonder'd 
 Within these wild ravines have had their birth ; 
 Young Freedom's cannon from these glens have 
 thunder'd, 
 And sent their startling voices o'er the earth ; 
 And not a verdant glade nor mountain hoary 
 But treasures up within the glorious story. 
 
 And yet not rich in high-soul'd memories only, 
 Is every moon-kiss'd headland round me gleam- 
 ing, 
 Each cavern'd glen and leafy valley lonely, 
 And silver torrent o'er the bald rock stream- 
 ing: 
 But such soft fancies here may breathe around, 
 As make Vaucluse and Clarens hallow'd ground. 
 
 Where, tell me where, pale watcher of the night — 
 Thou that to love so oft hast lent its soul, 
 
 Since the lorn Lesbian languish'd 'neath thy light, 
 Or fated Romeo to his Juliet stole — 
 
 Where dost thou find a fitter place on earth 
 
 To nurse young love in hearts like theirs to birth? 
 
 29 
 
30 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 Oh, loiter not upon ihax fairy shore 
 
 To watch the lazy barks indistance glide, 
 
 When sunset brightens on their sails no more, 
 And stern-lights twinkle in the dusky tide ; 
 
 Loiter not there, young heart, at that soft hour, 
 
 What time the Queen of night proclaims love's 
 power. 
 
 Even as I gaze, upon my memory's track 
 Bright as yon coil of light along the deep, 
 
 A scene of early youth comes dream-like back, 
 Where two stand gazing from the tide-wash'd 
 steep, 
 
 A sanguine stripling, just toward manhood flushing, 
 
 A girl, scarce yet in ripen'd beauty blushing. 
 
 The hour is his ! and while his hopes are soaring 
 Doubts he that maiden will become his bride ? 
 
 Can she resist that gush of wild adoring 
 
 Fresh from a heart full-volumed as the tide ? 
 
 Tremulous, but radiant, is that peerless daughter 
 
 Of loveliness, as is the star-strewn water ! 
 
 The moist leaves glimmer as they glimmer'd then, 
 Alas ! how oft have they been since renew'd, 
 
 How oft the whippoorwill, from yonder glen, 
 Each year has whistled to her callow brood, 
 
 How oft have lovers by yon star's same gleam, 
 
 Dream'd here of bliss — and waken'd from their 
 dream ! 
 
 But now, bright Peri of the skies, descending 
 Thy pearly car hangs o'er yon mountain's crest, 
 
 And Night, more nearly now each step attending, 
 As if to hide thy envied place of rest, 
 
 Closes at last thy very couch beside, 
 
 A matron curtaining a virgin bride. 
 
 Farewell ! Though tears on every leaf are starting, 
 While through the shadowy boughs thy glances 
 quiver, 
 
 As of the good, when Heavenward hence departing, 
 Shines thy last smile upon the placid river. 
 
 So — could I fling o'er glory's tide one ray — 
 
 Would I too steal from this dark world away. 
 
 WRITTEN IN SPRINGTIME. 
 Thou wak'st again, oh Earth ! 
 
 From winter's sleep ! — 
 Bursting with voice of mirth 
 
 From icy keep ; 
 And laughing at the Sun, 
 Who hath their freedom won, 
 
 Thy waters leap ! 
 
 Thou wak'st again, oh Earth ! 
 
 Freshly again, 
 And who by fireside hearth 
 
 Will now remain ? 
 Come on the rosy hours — 
 Come on thy buds and flowers 
 As when in Eden's bowers 
 
 Spring first did reign. 
 Birds on thy breezes chime 
 Blithe as in that matin time, 
 
 Their choiring begun : 
 Earth, thou hast many a prime — 
 
 Man hath but one ! 
 
 Thou wak'st anew, oh Earth — 
 
 Freshly anew ! 
 As when at Spring's first birth 
 
 First flow'rets grew. 
 Heart ! that to Earth doth cling, 
 While boughs are blossoming, 
 
 Why wake not too ? 
 
 Long thou in sloth hast lain, 
 Listing to Love's soft strain — 
 
 Wilt thou sleep on ? 
 Playing, thou sluggard heart, 
 In life no manly part, 
 
 Though youth be gone. 
 Wake ! 'tis Spring's quickening breath 
 
 Now o'er thee blown ; 
 Awake thee ! and ere in death 
 Pulseless thou slumbereth, 
 Pluck but from Glory's wreath 
 
 One leaf alone ! 
 
 TOWN REPININGS. 
 
 River, oh river, thou rovest free 
 
 From the mountain height to the fresh blue sea, 
 
 Free thyself, while in silver chain 
 
 Linking each charm, of land and main. 
 
 Calling at first thy banded waves 
 
 From hill-side thickets and fern-hid caves, 
 
 From the splinter'd crag thou leap'st below, ' 
 
 Through leafy glades at will to flow: — 
 
 Idling now mid the dallying sedge, 
 
 Slumbering now by the steep's moss'd edge, 
 
 With statelier march once more to break 
 
 From wooded valley to breezy lake ; 
 
 Yet all of these scenes, though fair they be, 
 
 River, oh river, are bann'd to me ! 
 
 River, oh river ! upon thy tide 
 Gaily the freighted vessels glide, 
 Would that thou thus couldst bear away 
 The thoughts that burthen my weary day, 
 Or that I, from all, save them, set free, 
 Though laden still, might rove with thee. 
 True that thy waves brief lifetime find, 
 And live at the will of the wanton wind — 
 True that thou seekest the ocean's flow 
 To be lost therein for evermoe ! 
 Yet the slave who worships at Glory's shrine, 
 But toils for a bubble as frail as thine, 
 But loses his freedom here, to be 
 Forgotten as soon as in death set free. 
 
OCCASIONAL POEMS. 
 
 31 
 
 A PORTS UT. 
 SraTfc— My features ne'er shall try the limner'a art! 
 
 GrjY.— Will thoil nut have thy picture taken, lad] ? 
 
 01 believe me, already, it in one fond heart 
 
 Is laid in colours which can never fade. Ptbe Artist, 
 
 Not hers the charms which Laura's lover drew, 
 Or Titian's pencil on the canvass threw ; 
 No sou] enkindled beneath southern skies 
 (Jlow'd mi her cheek and sparkled in her eyes; 
 No prurient charms set off her slender form 
 With swell Voluptuous and with contour warm; 
 "While eaeh proportion was by Nature told 
 tn maiden beauty's most bewitching mould. 
 
 on her peerless brow — a radiant throne 
 Unmix'd with auglit of earth — pule genius sat 
 
 alone. 
 And yet, at. times, within her eye there dwelt 
 Soilness that would the sternest bosom melt, 
 \ depth of tenderness which show'd, when woke, 
 That woman there as well as angel spoke. 
 Yet well that eye could flash resentment's r;;ys, 
 Or, proudly scornful, check the boldest gaze; 
 Chill burning passion with a calm disdain, 
 Or with one glance rekindle it again. 
 Her mouth — ! never fascination met 
 Near woman's lips half so alluring yet : 
 For round her mouth there play'd, at times, a smile, 
 Such as did man from Paradise beguile ; 
 Such, could it light him through this world of pain, 
 As he'd not barter Eden to regain. 
 Whafo though that smile might beam alike on 
 
 all; 
 What though that glance on each as kindly fall ; 
 What though you knew, while worshipping their 
 
 power, 
 Your homage hut the pastime of the hour, 
 Still they, however guarded were the heart, 
 Could every feeling from its fastness start — 
 Deceive one still, howe'er deceived before, 
 And make him wish thus to be cheated more, 
 Till, grown at last in such illusions gray, 
 Faith follow'd Hope and stole with Love away. 
 Such was Alinda ; such in her combined 
 Those charms which round our very nature wind; 
 Which, when together they in one conspire, 
 He who admires must love — who sees, admire. 
 Variably perilous ; upon the sight 
 Now bcam'd her beauty in resistless light, 
 And subtly now into the heart it stole, - 
 And, ere it startled, occupied the whole. 
 'Twas well for-hcr, that lovely mischief, well 
 That she could not the pangs it waken'd tell ; . 
 That, like the princess in the fairy tale, 
 No soft emotions could her soul assail ; 
 For Nature, — that Alinda should not feek 
 For wounds her eyes might make, but never heal,-— 
 In mercy, while she. did each gift impart 
 Of rarest excellence, withheld a heart ! 
 
 A FRONTIER INCIDENT. 
 
 The Indian whoop is heard without, 
 
 Within the Indian arrow lies; 
 There's horror in that fiendish shout, 
 
 There s death where'er that arrow flics. 
 
 Two trembling women there alone, 
 
 Alone to guard a feeble child ; 
 What shield, oh Cod ! is round them thrown 
 
 Amid that scene of peril wild ? 
 
 Thy Book upon the table there, 
 
 Reveals at once from whence could flow 
 The strength to dash aside despair, 
 
 The meekness to abide the blow. 
 Already, half rcsign'd, she kneels, 
 
 And half imploring, kneels the mother, 
 Awdiilc angelic courage steels 
 
 The gentle nature of the other. 
 They thunder on the oaken door, 
 
 They pierce the air with furious yell, 
 And soon that plume upon the floor 
 
 May grace some painted warrior well. 
 
 Oh, why cannot one stalwart arm 
 
 But wield the brand that hangeth by ? 
 
 And snatch the noble girl from harm, 
 Who hecdeth not the hellish cry / 
 
 A shot ! the savage leader falls — 
 
 The maiden's eye, which aim'd the gun — 
 
 That eye, whose deadly aim appals, 
 Is tearful when its task is done. 
 
 He falls — and straight with baffled cries, 
 
 His tribesmen fly in wild dismay ; 
 And now, beneath the evening skies, 
 
 That Household may in safety pray. 
 
 THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
 
 Teach thee their language ! sweet, I know no 
 tongue, 
 
 No mystic art those gentle things declare, 
 I ne'er could trace the schoolman's trick among 
 
 Created things, so delicate and rare : 
 Their language? Prytheel why they are themselves 
 
 But bright thoughts syllabled to shape and hue, 
 The tongue that erst was spoken by the elves, 
 
 When tenderness as yet within the world was new. 
 
 And oh, do not their soft and starry eyes — 
 
 Now bent to earth, to heaven now meekly plead- 
 ing— 
 Their incense fainting as it seeks the skies, 
 
 Yet still from earth with freshening hope re- 
 ceding — 
 Say, do not these to every heart declare, 
 
 With all the silent eloquence of truth, 
 The language that they speak is Nature's prayer, 
 
 To give her back those spotless days of youth ? 
 
 J 
 
32 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER, 1828. 
 
 Light as love's smile the silvery mist at morn 
 Floats in loose flakes along the limpid river ; 
 The blue-bird's notes upon the soft breeze borne, 
 
 As high in air he carols, faintly quiver ; 
 The weeping birch, like banners idly waving, 
 Bends to the stream, its spicy branches laving ; 
 
 Beaded with dew the witch-elm's tassels shiver ; 
 The timid rabbit from the furze is peeping, 
 And from the springy spray the squirrel gaily leap- 
 ing. 
 
 I love thee, Autumn, for thy scenery, ere 
 
 The blasts of winter chase the varied dyes 
 That richly deck the slow-declining year ; 
 I love the splendor of thy sunset skies, 
 The gorgeous hues that tinge each failing leaf 
 Lovely as beauty's cheek, as woman's love too, brief; 
 
 I love the note of each wild bird that flies, 
 As on the wind he pours his parting lay, 
 And wings his loitering flight to summer climes 
 away. 
 
 Oh Nature ! fondly I still turn to thee 
 
 With feelings fresh as e'er my childhood's were ; 
 Though wild and passion-tost my youth may be, 
 
 Toward thee I still the same devotion bear ; 
 To thee — to thee — though health and hope no more 
 Life's wasted verdure may to me restore — 
 
 Still — still, childlike I come, as when in prayer 
 I bow'd my head upon a mother's knee, 
 And deem'd the world like her, all truth and purity. 
 
 EPITAPH UPON A DOG. 
 
 An ear that caught my slightest tone, 
 
 In kindness or in anger spoken ; 
 An eye that ever watch'd my own, 
 
 In vigils death alone has broken ; 
 Its changeless, ceaseless, and unbought 
 
 Affection to the last revealing ; 
 Beaming almost with human thought, 
 
 And more — for more than human feeling I 
 Can such in endless sleep be chill'd, 
 
 And mortal pride disdain to sorrow, 
 Because the pulse that here was still'd 
 
 May wake to no immortal morrow ? 
 Can faith, devotedness, and love, 
 
 That seem to humbler creatures given 
 To tell us what we owe above, — 
 
 The types of what is due to Heaven. — 
 
 Can these be with the things that were, 
 
 Things cherish'd — but no'more returning, 
 And leave behind no trace of care, 
 
 No shade that speaks a moment's mourning ? 
 Alas ! my friend, of all of worth 
 
 That years have stolen or years yet leave me, 
 I 've never known so much on earth, 
 
 But that the loss of thine mast grieve ine. 
 
 ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. 
 
 The snow yet in the hollow lies ; 
 
 But, where by shelvy hill 't is seen, 
 A thousand rills — its waste supplies-— 
 
 Are trickling over beds of green. 
 Down in the meadow glancing wings 
 
 Flit in the sunshine round a tree, 
 Where still a frosted apple clings, 
 
 Regale for early Chickadee : 
 And chesnut buds begin to swell, 
 
 Where flying-squirrels peep to know 
 If from the tree-top, yet, 'twere well 
 
 To sail on leathery wing below — 
 As gently shy and timorsome, 
 
 Still holds she back who should be mine ; 
 Come, Spring, to her coy bosom, come, 
 
 And warm it toward her Valentine ! 
 
 Come, Spring, and with the breeze that calls 
 
 The wind-flower by the hill-side rill, 
 The soft breeze that by orchard walls 
 
 First dallies with 'the daffodil — 
 Come lift the tresses from her cheek, 
 
 And let me see the blush divine, 
 That mantling there, those curls would seek 
 
 To hide from her true Valentine. 
 
 Come, Spring, and with the red-breast's note, 
 
 That tells of bridal tenderness, 
 Where on the breeze he'll warbling float 
 
 Afar his nesting mate to bless — 
 Come, whisper 'tis not alway Spring ! 
 
 When birds may mate on every spray — 
 That April boughs cease blossoming ! 
 
 With love it is not always May ! 
 
 Come, touch her heart with thy soft tale, 
 
 Of tears within the floweret's cup, 
 Of fairest things that soonest fail, 
 
 Of hopes we vainly garner up — 
 And while, that gentle heart to melt, 
 
 Like mingled wreath, such tale you twine, 
 Whisper what lasting bliss were felt 
 
 In lot shared with her Valentine. 
 
 TO AN AUTUMN ROSE. 
 Tell her I love her — love her for those eyes 
 
 Now soft with feeling, radiant now with mirth 
 Which, like a lake reflecting autumn skies, 
 
 Reveal two heavens here to us on Earth — 
 The one in which their soulful beauty lies, 
 
 And that wherein such soulfulness has birth : 
 Go to my lady ere the season flies, 
 
 And the rude winter comes thy bloom to blast — 
 Go ! and with all of eloquence thou hast, 
 
 The burning story of my love discover, 
 
 And if the theme should fail, alas ! to move her, 
 Tell her when youth's gay budding-time is past, 
 
 And summer's gaudy flowering is over, 
 Like thee, my love will blossom to the last ! 
 
 
OCCASIONAL POEMS. 
 
 33 
 
 THY NAME. 
 It comes to me when healths go round, 
 
 And o'er the wine tlirir garlands wreathing 
 The flowers of wit, with music wound, 
 
 Arc freshly from the goblet breathing; 
 From sparkling song and sally gay 
 It comes to sti-;il my heart away, 
 And till my soul, mid festal glee, 
 With sad, sweet, silent thoughts of thee. 
 
 It comes to me upon the mart, 
 
 Where care in jostling crowds is rife; 
 Where Avarice goads the sordid heart, 
 Or cold Ambition prompts the strife; 
 It comes to whisper if I'm there, 
 'Tis but with lliee each prize to share, 
 For Fame were not success to me, 
 Nor riches wealth, unshared with thee. 
 
 It comes to me when smiles are bright 
 ( >n gentle lips that murmur round me, 
 
 And kindling glances flash delight 
 
 In eyes whose spell might once have bound me. 
 
 It comes — but comes to bring alone 
 
 Remembrance of some look or tone, 
 
 Dearer than aught I hear or see, 
 
 Because 'twas worn or breathed by thee. 
 
 It comes to me where cloister'd boughs 
 
 Their shadows cast upon the sod ; 
 Awhile in Nature's fane my vows 
 
 Arc lifted from her shrine to God ; 
 It comes to tell that all of worth 
 I dream in heaven, or know on earth, 
 However bright or dear it be, 
 Is blended with my thought of thee. 
 
 WHAT IS SOLITUDE? 
 
 Not in the shadowy wood, 
 
 Not in the crag-hung glen, 
 Not where the echoes brood 
 
 In caves untrod by men ; 
 Not by the bleak seashore, 
 
 Where barren surges break, 
 Not on the mountain hoar, 
 
 Not by the breezeless lake ; 
 Not on the desert plain 
 
 Where man hath never stood, 
 Whether on isle or main — 
 
 Not there is solitude ! 
 
 Birds are in woodland bowers ; 
 
 Voices in lonely dells ; 
 Streams to the listening hours 
 
 Talk in earth's secret cells ; 
 Over the gray-ribb'd sand 
 
 Breathe Ocean's frothy lips; 
 Over the still lake's strand 
 
 The wild flower toward it dips; 
 
 Pluming the mountain's crest 
 
 I lift losses in its pines ; 
 Coursing the desert's breast 
 
 Life in the steed's mane shines. 
 
 Leave — if thou wouldst be lonely — 
 
 Leave Nature for the crowd ; 
 Seek there for one — one only 
 
 With kindred mind endow'd ! 
 There — as with Nature erst 
 
 Closely thou wouldst commune — 
 The deep soul-music nursed 
 
 In either heart, attune ! 
 Heart-wearied thou wilt own, 
 
 Vainly that phantom woo'd, 
 That thou at least hast known 
 
 What is true Solitude ! 
 
 BIRTH-DAY THOUGHTS. 
 
 At twenty-five — at twenty-five, 
 
 The heart should not be cold ; 
 It still is young in deeds to strive, 
 
 Though half life's tale is told ; 
 And Fame should keep its youth alive, 
 
 If Love would make it old. 
 
 But mine is like that plant which grew 
 
 And wither'd in a night, 
 Which from the skies of midnight drew 
 
 Its ripening and its blight — 
 Matured in Heaven's tears of dew, 
 
 And faded ere her light. 
 
 Its hues in sorrow's darkness born, 
 
 In tears were foster'd first; 
 Its powers from passion's frenzy drawn, 
 
 In passion's gloom were nurs'd — 
 And perishing ere manhood's dawn, 
 
 Did prematurely burst. 
 
 Yet all I've learnt from hours rife 
 
 With painful brooding here, 
 Is, that amid this mortal strife, 
 
 The lapse of every year 
 But takes away a hope from life, 
 
 And adds to death a fear. 
 
 THE BLUSH. 
 
 The lilies faintly to the roses yield, 
 
 As on thy lovely cheek they struggling vie, 
 
 (Who would not strive upon so sweet a field 
 To win the mastery ?) 
 
 And thoughts are in thy speaking eyes reveal'd, 
 
 Pure as the fount the prophet's rod unseal'd. 
 
 I could not wish that in thy bosom aught 
 
 Should e'er one moment's transient pain awaken, 
 
 Yet can't regret that thou — forgive the thought — 
 As flowers when shaken 
 
 Will yield their sweetest fragrance to the wind, 
 
 Should, ruffled thus, betray thy heavenly mind. 
 
34 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 THE BOB-O-LINKUM. 
 
 Thou vocal sprite — thou feather'd troubadour ! 
 
 In pilgrim weeds through many a clime a ranger, 
 Com'st thou to doff thy russet suit once more, 
 
 And play in foppish trim the masquing stranger? 
 Philosophers may teach thy whereabouts and na- 
 ture; 
 
 But wise, as all of us, perforce, must think 'em, 
 The school-boy best hath fixed thy nomenclature, 
 
 And poets, too, must call thee Bob-O-Linkum. 
 
 Say ! art thou, long mid forest glooms benighted, 
 
 So glad to skim our laughing meadows over — 
 With our gay orchards here so much delighted, 
 
 It makes thee musical, thou airy rover ? 
 Or are those buoyant notes the pilfer'd treasure 
 
 Of fairy isles, which thou hast learn'd to ravish 
 Of all their sweetest minstrelsy at pleasure, 
 
 And, Ariel-like, again on men to lavish ? 
 
 They tell sad stories of thy mad-cap freaks 
 
 Wherever o'er the land thy pathway ranges ; 
 And even in a brace of wandering weeks, 
 
 They say, alike thy song and plumage changes ; 
 Here both are gay ; and when the buds put forth, 
 
 And leafy June is shading rock and river, 
 Thou art unmatch'd, blithe warbler of the North, 
 
 While through the balmy air thy clear notes 
 quiver. 
 
 Joyous, yet tender — was that gush of song 
 
 Caught from the brooks, where mid its wild 
 flowers smiling 
 The silent prairie listens all day long, 
 
 The only captive to such sweet beguiling ; 
 Or didst thou, flitting through the verdurous halls 
 And column'd isles of western groves sympho- 
 nious, 
 Learn from the tuneful woods, rare madrigals, 
 To make our flowering pastures here harmoni- 
 ous? 
 Caught'st thou thy carol from Ot'awa maid, 
 Where, through the liquid fields of wild rice 
 plashing, 
 Brushing the ears from off the burden'd blade, 
 
 Her birch canoe o'er some lone lake is flashing ? 
 Or did the reeds of some savannah South, 
 
 Detain thee while thy northern flight pursuing, 
 To place those melodies in thy sweet mouth, 
 The spice-fed winds had taught them in their 
 wooing ? 
 
 Unthrifty prodigal ! — is no thought of ill 
 
 Thy ceaseless roundelay disturbing ever ? 
 Or doth each pulse in choiring cadence still 
 
 Throb on in music till at rest for ever ? 
 Yet now in wilder'd maze of concord floating, 
 
 'T would seem that glorious hymning to prolong, 
 Old Time in hearing thee might fall a-doating, 
 
 And pause to listen to thy rapturous song ! 
 
 DISTRUST. 
 
 My life's whole pilgrimage have I not told — 
 
 Mapping my Past before those loving eyes, 
 With such minuteness that they might behold 
 
 Each hair-line of my soul, without disguise ? 
 Was Truth not woven, every line acrost — 
 
 An iron thread mid silver subtleties 
 Of Fancy or of Feeling, howe'er gloss'd, 
 
 Was Faith not there, at rein or helm the while, 
 A guide, a check, for fancy's luring smile, 
 
 A guide, a check, for feeling passion-toss'd ; 
 Oh, how then, now can, thought of me so vile, 
 
 Thought as of one to truth and faith, both lost, 
 Ignobly come thy bosom to beguile, 
 
 And kill affection with suspicion's frost I 
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 Well ! call it Friendship ! have I ask'd for more, 
 Even in those moments, when I gave the most ? 
 'Twas but for thee, I look'd so far before ! 
 I saw our bark was hurrying blindly on, 
 A guideless thing upon a dangerous coast — 
 With thee — with thee, where would I not have gone ? 
 But could I see thee drift upon the shore, 
 Unknowing drift upon a shore, unknown ? 
 Yes, call it Friendship, and let no revealing 
 If love be there, e'er make love's wild name heard, 
 It will not die, if it be worth concealing ! 
 Call it then Friendship — but oh, let that word 
 Speak but for me — for me, a deeper feeling 
 Than ever yet a lover's bosom stirr'd ! 
 
 THE WISH. 
 
 Bright as the dew, on early buds that glistens, 
 Sparkle each hope upon thy flower-strewn path ; 
 
 Gay as a bird to its new mate that listens, 
 Be to thy soul each winged joy it hath ; 
 
 Thy lot still lead through ever-blooming bowers, 
 
 And Time for ever talk to thee in flowers. 
 
 Adored in youth, while yet the summer roses 
 Of glowing girlhood bloom upon thy cheek, 
 
 And, loved not less when fading, there reposes 
 The lily, that of springtime past doth speak. 
 
 Never from Life's garden to be rudely riven, 
 
 But softly stolen away from Earth to Heaven. 
 
 "OUR FRIENDSHIP." 
 
 It will endure ! It hath the seal upon it 
 
 That once alone in life is ever set ; 
 It will endure ! we both by suffering won it ; 
 
 It will endure — for neither can forget. 
 It must endure ! for is not Truth immortal ? 
 
 And those same tears which saw our hopes de- 
 part, 
 Brought her, the comforter, from Heaven's bright 
 portal, 
 
 In rainbow radiance spanning heart to heart ! 
 
OCCASIONAL POEMS. 
 
 35 
 
 " BRUNT THE FIGHT." 
 
 [SUGGESTED I'.V AN EMBALMED INDIAN BEAD PRESENTED 
 BY THE WRITER TO THE LYCEUM OF NATURAL 
 HISTORY. NEW YORK.] 
 
 " Tims iinniiv live heroic men, 
 
 A coftsecrated baud ; 
 Life is to thi'in a battle Beld, 
 
 Their hearts a holy land."— TOCKERMAN. 
 
 Not to the conflict, whore those death wounds came 
 That still discolor thine undaunted brow, 
 
 Not to the wildwood, whore thy soul of flame 
 Found vent alone in deeds — all nameless now, 
 
 Though startled fancy first by those is caught — 
 
 Not, not to these dost thou enchain my thought ! 
 
 The tuft of honor, streaming there unshorn, 
 The separate gashes, every one in front, 
 
 Prove knightly crest was ne'er more bravely borne 
 By charging champion through the battle's brunt, 
 
 While those old scars, from forays long since past, 
 
 Bespeak the warrior's life from first to last. 
 
 Bespeak the man who acted out the ichole — 
 The whole of all he knew of high and true, 
 
 All that was vision'd in his savage soul, 
 
 All that his barbarous powers on earth could do, 
 
 Bespeak the being perfect to the plan 
 
 Of Nature when she moulded such a man. 
 
 His simple law of duty and of right — 
 
 Oneness of soul in action, thought and feeling, 
 
 His mind, disturb'd by no conflicting light, 
 His narrow faith, so clear in each revealing, 
 
 His will untrammcll'd to act out the part 
 
 So plainly graved on his untutor'd heart: 
 
 Envy I these? Would I for these forego 
 The broader scope of being that is mine ? 
 
 His bond of sense with spirit once to know 
 Would I the strife for truth and good resign ? 
 
 How can I — when, according to my light, 
 
 My law, like his, is still to brunt the fight ! 
 
 WALLER TO SACHARISSA. 
 
 [It is said they met at court after Waller was wedded to 
 another, and that the lady coolly asked the poet to address a 
 copy of verses to her : Johnson has commented upon the 
 bitterness of his reply.] 
 
 To-night! to-night! what memories to-night 
 
 Came thronging o'er me as I stood near thee. 
 Thy form of loveliness, thy brow of light, 
 
 Thy voice's thrilling flow, 
 All, all were there ; to me — to me as bright 
 As when they claim'd my soul's idolatry 
 Years, long years ago ! 
 
 That gulf of years ! Oh, God ! hadst thou been 
 mine, 
 Would all that 's precious have been swallow'd 
 there ? 
 
 Youth's meteor hope, and manhood's high design, 
 
 Lost, lost, for ever lost — 
 Lost with the love that with them all would twine, 
 The love that left no harvest but despair. 
 
 Unwon at such a cost ! 
 
 Was it ideal that wild, wild love I bore thee ? 
 
 Or thou thyself — didst thou my soul enthral ? 
 Such as thou art to-night did I adore thee ! 
 
 Ay, idolize — in vain ! 
 Such as thou art to-night — could time restore me 
 That wealth of loving — shouldst thou have it all 
 To waste perchance again ? 
 
 No ! Thou didst break the coffers of my heart, 
 
 And set so lightly by the hoard within, 
 That / too lcarn'd at last the squanderer's art, — 
 
 Went idly here and there, 
 Filing my soul and lavishing a part 
 
 On each, less cold than thou, who cared to win 
 And seem'd to prize a share. 
 
 No ! Thou didst wither up my flowering youth. 
 
 If blameless, still the bearer of a blight ! 
 The unconscious agent of the deadliest ruth 
 
 That human heart hath riven ! 
 Teaching me scorn of my own spirit's truth ! 
 Holding — not me — but that fond worship light 
 Which link'd my soul to Heaven ! 
 
 No ! — No ! — For me the weakest heart before 
 
 One so untoueh'd by tenderness as thine ! 
 Angels have enter'd through the frail tent door 
 
 That pass the palace now — 
 And He who spake the words " Go sin no more," 
 Mid human passions saw the spark divine, 
 But not in such as thou ! 
 
 PRIMEVAL WOODS. 
 
 i. 
 
 Yes ! even here, not less than in the crowd, 
 Here, where yon vault in formal sweep seems piled 
 Upon the pines, monotonously proud, 
 Fit dome for fane, within whose hoary veil 
 No ribald voice an echo hath defiled — 
 W T here Silence seems articulate ; up-stealing 
 Like a low anthem's heavenward wail : — 
 Oppressive on my bosom weighs the feeling 
 Of thoughts that language cannot shape aloud ; 
 For song too solemn, and for prayer too wild, — 
 Thoughts, which beneath no human power could 
 
 quail, 
 For lack of utterance, in abasement bow'd, — 
 The cavern'd waves that struggle for revealing, 
 Upon whose idle foam alone God's light hath smiled. 
 
 Ere long thine every stream shall find a tongue, 
 Land of the Many Waters ! But the sound 
 
36 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 Of human music, these wild hills among, 
 Hath no one save the Indian mother flung 
 Its spell of tenderness ? Oh, o'er this ground 
 So redolent of Beauty, hath there play'd no breath 
 Of human poesy — none beside the word 
 Of Love, as, murmur'd these old boughs beneath, 
 Some fierce and savage suitor it hath stirr'd 
 To gentle issues — none but these been heard ? 
 No mind, no soul here kindled but my own ? 
 Doth not one hollow trunk about resound 
 With the faint echoes of a song long flown, 
 By shadows like itself now haply heard alone, 
 
 And Ye, with all this primal growth must go ! 
 And loiterers beneath some lowly spreading shade, 
 Where pasture-kissing breezes shall, ere then, have 
 
 play'd, 
 A century hence, will doubt that there could grow 
 From that meek land such Titans of the glade ! 
 Yet wherefore primal ? when beneath my tread 
 Are roots whose thrifty growth, perchance hath 
 
 arm'd 
 The Anak spearman when his trump alarm'd ! 
 Roots that the Deluge wave hath plunged below ; 
 Seeds that the Deluge wind hath scattered ; 
 Berries that Eden's warblers may have fed ; 
 Safe in the slime of earlier worlds embalm'd : 
 Again to quicken, germinate and blow, 
 Again to charm the land as erst the land they 
 
 charm'd. 
 
 THE FIRST AND LAST PARTING. 
 
 We parted at the midnight hour, — 
 
 We parted then as lovers part. 
 The stars which pierced that trellis'd bower, 
 
 They saw me press her to my heart ! 
 I left her with no fear — no doubt ! 
 
 I left with her my hopes — my all — 
 I left her then !— O God ! — without 
 
 A dream of what would soon befall. 
 
 I went to toil — far from her sight, 
 
 Far from her blessed voice away — 
 But still she haunted me by night, 
 
 Still murmur'd in my ears by day. 
 The hours flew by in dreams of her, 
 
 Those hours which claim'd far. other care, 
 I wasted them — fond worshipper — 
 
 In dreams, whose waking was despair ! 
 
 A month — no, not a month, — by Heaven ! 
 
 Had fled since she was pledged to me — 
 Since / love's parting kiss had given 
 
 To seal her vows of constancy ! 
 The very moon was not yet old, 
 
 Whose crescent beam our loves had lighted- 
 
 Yet ere those few short weeks were told, 
 She had forgot the faith she plighted ! 
 
 I heard her lips that faith forswear — 
 
 And, while those lips reveal'd the tale, 
 My very soul it blush' d that e'er 
 
 It could have loved a thing so frail ! 
 Yet scorn — it was not scorn that stung — 
 
 'T was pity — horror — grief, that moved me — 
 I felt the wrong — the shameless wrong, 
 
 But spared the heart that once had loved me ! 
 
 Yes, faithless, false, as now I found it, 
 
 That heart had beat against my own, 
 And I — I could not bear to wound it, 
 
 When all its shielding worth was flown. 
 What though I could believe no more 
 
 In such as her own lips reveal'd her ! 
 Yet still when all Love's faith was o'er, 
 
 Love's tenderness remain'd to shield her. 
 
 And when the moment came to break 
 
 The subtle chain around me cast, 
 Like me she seem'd in soul to ache 
 
 At riving of its links at last. 
 Could they betray my mind once more, 
 
 Those pleading looks ? yes ! even then, 
 So sweet the guise of truth they wore, 
 
 I wish'd to be deceived again. 
 
 Ay ! strangely, as at first we met — 
 
 There did, by Heaven ! around her hover 
 Such light of warmth and truth, that yet 
 
 I, at the last, was still her lover ! 
 And when I saw her brow o'ercast — 
 
 Saw tears from those soft eyelids melt, 
 I reck'd not, cared not for the past, 
 
 But there, adoring, could have knelt ! 
 
 That moment to her lip and eye 
 
 There came that calm and loveless air, 
 Light Beauty, when her triumph's nigh, 
 
 Will toward its easy victim wear.. 
 No test — no time— no fate had wrought 
 
 O'er soul like mine so strong a spell, 
 As in that moment chill'd to nought 
 
 Love that did seem unquenchable ! 
 
 We parted — not as lovers part — 
 
 No kind farewell — no fond regret 
 Was utter'd then from either heart— 
 
 We parted only to forget ! 
 We parted, not as lovers part, 
 
 As lovers we can meet no more. 
 Let Time decide in either heart 
 
 Which most such parting shall deplore. 
 
 WRITTEN IN A LADY'S PRAYER BOOK. 
 
 Thy thoughts are Heavenward ! and thy heart, they 
 say, 
 Which love, oh ! more than mortal, fail'd to move, 
 
OCCASIONAL POEMS. 
 
 37 
 
 Now in its precious casket melts away, 
 And owns the impress of a Saviour's love! 
 
 Many, in days gone by, full many a prayer, 
 
 Pore, though niipassion'd, has been breathed for 
 
 tlll'O 
 
 B] one who once thy hallow'd name would dare 
 
 Prefi r with bis to the Divinity ! 
 Requite them now — not with an earthly love — 
 
 Hut since with that his lot thou mayst not bless, 
 Ask — what he dare not pray for from above — 
 
 For him the mercy of Forgetfulncss. 
 
 "WHERE WOULD I REST?" 
 Under old boughs, where moist the livelong sum- 
 mer 
 The moss is green, and springy to your tread, 
 When you, my friend, shall be an often comer 
 To pierce the thicket, seeking for my bed : 
 
 For thickets heavy all around should screen it 
 From careless gazer that might wander near, 
 
 Nor even to him who by some chance" had seen it, 
 Would I have aught to catch his eye, appear : 
 
 One lonely stem — a trunk those old boughs lifting, 
 Should mark the spot; and, haply, new thrift 
 owe 
 To that which upward through its sap was drift- 
 ing 
 From what lay mouldering round its roots be- 
 low. 
 
 There my freed spirit with the dawn's first gleam- 
 ing 
 Would come to revel round the dancing spray : 
 There would it linger with the day's last beam- 
 ing. 
 To watch thy footsteps thither track their way. 
 
 The quivering leaf should whisper in that hour 
 Things that for thee alone would have a sound, 
 
 And parting boughs my spirit-glances shower 
 In gleams of light upon the mossy ground. 
 
 There, when long years and all thy journeyings 
 over — 
 
 Loosed from this world thyself to join the free, 
 Thou too wouldst come to rest beside thy lover 
 
 In that sweet cell beneath our Trysting-Tree. 
 
EARLY MISCELLANIES. 
 
 THE AMBUSCADE.* 
 
 The mountain-tops are bright above, 
 
 The lake is bright beneath — 
 And the mist is seen, the rocks between, 
 
 In a silver shroud to wreathe. 
 Merrily on the maple spray 
 The redbreast trills his roundelay, 
 And the oriole blithely flits among 
 The boughs where her pendent nest is hung ; 
 The squirrel his morning revel keeps 
 
 In the chestnut's leafy screen, 
 And the fawn from the thicket gayly leaps 
 
 To gambol upon the green. 
 Now on the broad lake's waters blue 
 Dances many a light canoe ; 
 And banded there, in wampum sheen, 
 Many a crested chief is seen : 
 Now as the foamy fringe they break, 
 Which the waves, where they kiss the margin, 
 
 make, 
 The shallops shoot on the snowy strand, 
 And the plumed warriors leap to land. 
 
 They bear their pirogues of birchen bark 
 
 Far in the shadowy forest glade, 
 And plunge them deep in covert dark 
 
 Of the closely woven hazel shade ; 
 Then stealthily tread in each other's track, 
 And with wary step come gliding back. 
 And when the water again is won, 
 Unlace the beaded mockason, 
 And covering first with careful hand 
 The footmarks dash'd in the yielding sand, , 
 Round jutting point and dented bay 
 Through the wave they take their winding way. 
 
 Awhile their painted forms are seen 
 Gleaming along the margin green, 
 And then the sunny lake is left— 
 Where issuing from a mountain cleft— 
 
 * " There was one incident, particularly, reminding me so 
 strongly of some passages in the Lady of the Lake, that I 
 used to think with a kind of fevered impatience that the 
 romantic pen of Scott should be for ever wanting to do it 
 justice: and I ventured at last to attempt picturing it in 
 an imitation of his glorious verse, which found its way 
 into print many years since, nearly in the form in which it 
 is here copied from the N. Y. American of June 1830." See 
 Wild Scenes of the Forest and Prairie, Colyer's edition. 
 
 Above whose bold impending height 
 The dusky larch excludes the light, 
 The current of a rivulet 
 Conceals their wary footsteps yet. 
 
 Scaling the rocks, where strong and deep 
 Abrupt the waters foaming leap, 
 Along the stream they bending creep, 
 Where the hanging birch's tassels sweep, 
 Thrid the witch-hazel and alder-maze, 
 Where in broken rills the streamlet strays, 
 And reach the spot where its oozy tide . 
 Steals from the mountain's shaggy side. 
 
 Now where wild vines their tendrils fling, 
 
 From crag to crag their forms they swing, 
 
 Some boldly find a footing where 
 
 The mountain cat would hardly dare ; 
 
 Others as lightly onward bound 
 
 As the frolic chipmonk skips the ground, 
 
 Till all the midway mountain gain 
 
 And there once more collected meet, 
 Where on the eagle's wild domain 
 
 The morning sunbeams fiercely beat. 
 
 There's a glen upon that mountain-side, 
 
 A sunny dell expanding wide, 
 
 Where the eye that looks through the green arcade 
 
 Of cliffs in vines and shrubs array'd, 
 
 Sees many a silver stream and lake 
 
 Upon its raptured vision break ; 
 
 That sunny dell has its opening bright 
 
 Almost within an arrow's flight 
 
 Of a fearful gorge, whose upper side 
 
 Rank weeds and furze as closely hide, 
 
 As if some woodland elf had plied 
 
 His skill in weaving osiers green, 
 And thus in thievish freak had tried 
 
 Its gloomy mouth to screen. 
 
 'Tis a chasm beneath the wooded steep, 
 
 Where the brain will swim and the blood will creep 
 
 When its dizzy edge is seen, 
 And the Fiend will prompt the heart to leap 
 When the eye would measure the yawning deep 
 
 Of that hideous ravine ! 
 Far down the gulf in distance dim 
 The bat will oft at noontide skim, 
 The rattlesnake like a shadow glides 
 Through poisonous weeds in its shelvy sides, 
 
 — 
 
EARLY MISCELLANIES. 
 
 39 
 
 While Bworming lizards loathsome crawl 
 Where the green-damp stands on the slimy wall, 
 And the venomous copper-snake's heard to hiss 
 On the frightful edge of that black abyss. 
 
 Here, in the feathery fern — between 
 The tangled thicket's matted screen, 
 
 Their weapons hid, save where a blade 
 From straggling ray reflection made, 
 
 The Adirondach warriors lay. 
 The morning sees them gather there 
 And crouch within their leafy lair — 
 
 The scorching beams of noontide hour, 
 If boughs should lift, would only play 
 On bronzed and motionless array 
 
 Within that silent bower : 
 Still silent when the mantle gray 
 
 Of sombre twilight slowly fell, 
 
 O'er rocky height and wooded dell, 
 Those men of bronze all silent they 
 Still waited for their prey ! 
 
 How slow the languid moments move, 
 
 How long to him their lapse appears 
 In whom remorse, or fear, or love, 
 
 Concentres griefs untold by tears, 
 
 The gathcr'd agony of years ! 
 But o'er the Indian warrior's soul 
 Uncounted and unheeded roll 
 
 Long hours, like these in watching spent, 
 The moments that he knows within, 
 
 When on the glorious War-Path sent, 
 Are calm as those which usher in 
 
 The thunders of the firmament! 
 
 The moose hath left the rushy brink 
 
 Where he stole to the lake at eve to drink, 
 
 And sought his lair in thicket dark, 
 
 liit only by the fire-fly's spark. 
 
 Now myriad stars arc twinkling through 
 
 The vaulted heaven's veil of blue, 
 
 And seem reflected in the wave 
 
 With golden studs its bed to pave. 
 
 Now as upon the western hills 
 
 The moon her mystic circle fills, 
 
 Against the sky each cliff is flung, 
 
 As if at magic touch it sprung ; 
 
 And as the wood her beam receives, 
 
 The dewdrop in that virgin light 
 Pendent from the quivering leaves, 
 
 Sparkles upon the pall of night. 
 
 Deep in the linden's foliage hid, 
 
 Complains the peevish katydid, 
 
 And the shrill screech-owl answers back 
 
 From tulip-tree and tamarack. 
 
 At times along the placid lake 
 
 A solitary trout will break, 
 
 And rippling eddies on the stream 
 
 In trembling circles faintly gleam ; 
 
 While near the sedgy shore is heard 
 
 The plash of that ill-omen'd bird, 
 Whose dismal note and boding cry 
 
 Will oil the startled ear assail, 
 When lowering clouds obscure the sky, 
 And when the tempest gathers nigh 
 
 Come quivering in the rising gale. 
 
 Oh, why cannot that loon's wild shriek 
 To them a feeble warning speak, 
 Whose proudly waving banner now 
 Comes floating round the mountain brow 
 Whose gallant ranks in close array 
 Now gleam along the moonlit way ; 
 And now with many a bieak between, 
 Are winding through the long ravine ? 
 
 Oh, why cannot that loon's wild shriek 
 To them a feeble warning speak, 
 Who careless press a foeman's sod, 
 As if in banquet-hall they trod ; 
 
 Who rashly thus undaunted dare 
 To chase in woods the forest child, 
 
 To hunt the panther to his lair, 
 The Indian in his native wild ? 
 
 Unapprehensive thus, at night 
 
 The wild doe looking from the brake, 
 To where there gleams a fitful light 
 
 Dotted upon the rippling lake, 
 Sees not the silver spray-drop dripping 
 From the lithe oar which, softly dipping, 
 
 Impels the wily hunter's boat ; 
 But on his ruddy torch's rays, 
 
 As nearer, clearer now they float, 
 The fated quarry stands to gaze, 
 
 Arid dreaming not of cruel sport, 
 Withdraws not thence her gentle eyes 
 
 ■ Until the rifle's sharp report 
 The simple creature hears and dies. 
 
 Buoyant with youth, as heedless they 
 
 Pursue the death-besetted way, 
 
 As cautionless each one proceeds, 
 
 W x here his doom'd steps the pathway leads 
 
 As if the peril of that hour 
 
 But led those steps to beauty's bower. 
 
 They come with stirring fife and drum, 
 
 With flaunting plume and pennon come, 
 
 To solitudes where never yet 
 
 Hath gleam'd the glistening bayonet — 
 
 Banner upon the breeze hath flown, 
 
 Or bugle note before been blown. 
 
 The cautious beaver starts with fear, 
 
 That strange unwonted sound to hear ; 
 
 But still her grave demeanor keeps, 
 
 As from her hovel-door she peeps — 
 
 Observing thence with curious eye 
 
 The pageant as it passes by ; 
 
 Pauses the wailing whippoorwill 
 
 One moment, in her plaintive trill, 
 
40 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 As echoing on the mountain-side 
 Their martial music wanders wide ; 
 Then, as the last note dies away, 
 Pursues once more her broken lay. 
 
 At length they reach that fatal steep, 
 Which, hanging o'er the chasm deep, 
 With stunted copse and tangled heath, 
 Conceals the gulf that yawns beneath. 
 The watchful Indian, from his lair, 
 One moment sees them falter there — 
 One moment looks, with eagle eye, 
 To mark their forms against the sky ; 
 Then through the night air, wild and high, 
 Peals the red warrior's battle-cry. 
 
 From sassafras and sumach green, 
 From shatter'd stump, and riven rock — 
 
 From the dark hemlock boughs between, 
 Is lanch'd the gleaming tomahawk. 
 
 And savage eyes glare fiercely out 
 
 From every bush and vine about ; 
 
 And savage forms the branches throw 
 
 In dusky masses on the foe. 
 
 In vain their leaders strive to form 
 Their ranks beneath that living storm ! 
 As whoop on whoop discordant fell 
 
 Loudly on their astounded ears, 
 As if at once each fiendish yell 
 Awoke, within that narrow dell, 
 
 The echoes of a- thousand years ! 
 No rallying cry, no hoarse command 
 Can marshal that bewilder'd band ; 
 Nor clarion-call to standard, more 
 Those panic-stricken ranks restore ; 
 Now strown like pines upon the path 
 Where bursts the fierce tornado's wrath.- 
 
 Yet some there are who undismay'd 
 
 Seek sternly, back to back array'd, 
 
 With eye and blade alert, in vain 
 
 A moment's footing to maintain. 
 
 Though gallant hearts direct the steel, 
 
 And stalwart arms the buffets deal, 
 
 What can a score of brands avail 
 
 When each as many foes assail ? 
 
 Like scud before the wintry blast, 
 
 That through the sky comes sweeping fast, 
 
 Like leaves upon the tempest whirl'd 
 
 They toward the steep are struggling hurl'd. 
 
 Valour in vain, in vain despair 
 Nerves many a frantic, bosom there 
 Furious with the unequal strife, 
 To cling with desperate force to life. 
 There, fighting still, with mad endeavor, 
 As on the dizzy edge they hover, 
 Their bugle breathes one rallying note, 
 Pennon and plume one moment float ; 
 
 Then, swept beyond the frightful brink 
 
 Like mist, into the chasm sink ; 
 
 Within whose bosom, as they fell, 
 
 Arose as hideous, wild a yell 
 
 As if the very earth were riven, 
 
 And shrieks from hell were upward driven. 
 
 LOVE'S VAGARIES, 
 i. 
 
 'T was wrongly done, to let her know the feeling . 
 
 Which mask'd so long within my heart lay hid, 
 Yet now I wonder at so well concealing 
 
 My soul's full tenderness, as long I did; — 
 'Twas wrongly done — and yet, howe'er it move 
 
 Her fervid nature thus to love in vain, 
 'T were better vainly even thus to love 
 
 Than not to know she was beloved again ! 
 
 Those hours of passion now for ever pass'd, 
 
 Those wild endearments that we oft have known, 
 Needed they not the veil around them cast 
 
 That love, acknowledged love, at last hath 
 thrown ? 
 Long in remembrance as they now may live, 
 
 However sad that living place may be, 
 That love a hallow'd tenderness will give 
 
 To things all bitter else in memory. 
 
 In dreams — in dreams she answers to my yearning, 
 And fondly lays her downy cheek to mine ; 
 
 In dreams each night that faithful form returning 
 Will on my breast with sweet content recline : 
 
 Awhile my heart keeps time to her soft breathing, 
 
 Heaving in motion to her bosom heaving. 
 
 I wake — and oh, there is an inward sinking, 
 
 A drear soul-faintness coming o'er me then, 
 That through the livelong day but makes my 
 thinking 
 One fond, fond aching thus to dream again. — 
 Soul — soul, where art thou through the day em- 
 
 ploy'd, 
 Only to fill at night my bosom's void ? 
 
 What though I sigh to think that after all 
 'Twas half some erring fancy of the mind, 
 
 Half that illusion which they • love ' miscall 
 Whose sense dreams not of sentiment refined : 
 
 They to whom ne'er that gush of soul was given 
 
 Which melts the heart to mould it but for Heaven — 
 
 What though to think it was but this perchance 
 Prompts the half-wistful — half-disdainful sigh ; 
 
 Makes the fond tone — the tear — the tender glance 
 Seem less than valueless in memory : 
 
 Still would I rather my love ran to waste 
 
 Than she I love « love's bitterness ' should taste. 
 
 =!l 
 
EARLY MISCELLANIES. 
 
 41 
 
 THE SUICIDE. 
 
 a fra<;mknt. 
 "Put out tin- light, and then," &c— Siiakspeare. 
 
 I Ik roain'd, an Ar.il> on life's desert waste — 
 Its waters fleeting when they seem'd most near — 
 
 Love's phantom lea\ ing, when long vainly chased — 
 No aim to animate, no hope to cheer. 
 
 His was a heart where love, when once it sprung, 
 With every feeling would its tendrils twine; 
 
 And still it grew, though baffled, crush'd, and 
 wrung, 
 Rankly, as round an oak some noxious vine, 
 
 Within the poisonous folds of whose embraee 
 W il Ik rs each generous shoot that quickens there, 
 
 Till the proud features we no more can trace, 
 Which once that noble stem was wont to wear. 
 
 And time pass'd on — Time who both joy and grief 
 Bears on his tireless wings alike away, 
 
 As storms the bursting bud and withcr'd leaf 
 Will sweep together from the fragile spray. 
 
 Her form matured, with all its girlish grace, 
 A woman's softer, full proportion wore ; 
 
 And none could look upon that radiant fa.ee, 
 And not the soul enthroned there adore. 
 
 Her eye was bright, or should a thought of him 
 Its laughing lustre for a moment shade, 
 
 'T was but a passing cloud which could not dim 
 The buoyant spirit in its beams that play'd. 
 
 And others bow'd where he before had knelt, 
 And she to one, who even at such a shrine 
 
 Could only feign what he alone had felt, 
 Did the rich guerdon of her heart resign. 
 
 She loved him for — for God knows what — 'tis true 
 In Fashion's field a brilliant name he'd earn'd; 
 
 And, with his full-dress pantaloons on too, 
 
 His legs and compliments were both well turn'd. 
 
 We love, we know not why — in joy or sadness 
 We waste on one the fountains of the heart, 
 
 The mind's best energies, the — pshaw ! — 'tis mad- 
 ness — 
 'Tis worse than frenzy — 'tis an idiot's part. 
 
 This Bertram knew — for his was not the dreaming 
 Cherish'd illusion of a feeble mind ; 
 
 He knew, too, that in hours there's no redeeming 
 A soul like his from bonds which years have 
 twined. 
 
 That she ne'er had loved him, came the cold assu- 
 rance 
 Home to his heart, when all its springs were 
 wasted ; 
 He felt that his had been the vain endurance 
 Of pangs to her unknown — by her untasted. 
 
 6 D2 
 
 Dazzled by the prize his soul, his senses ravish'd, 
 Rashly he ventured on a dangerous game : 
 
 Lost, beyond hope, the stake so madly lavish'd, 
 And felt his folly was_ alone to blame. 
 
 And then he knew they had not each been weighing 
 An equal hazard in the chance gone by : 
 
 She had but been with the heart's counters playing — 
 He, he had set his all upon a die. 
 
 But to what purpose now avail'd the seeing 
 
 That love, such as ne'er did human pulses stir — 
 
 Which was to him the very food of being — 
 Was but as pastime and a toy to her ? 
 
 Her empire o'er his soul had been too deeply founded 
 Too long establish'd to reconquer now ; 
 
 Still was she doom'd to be the heaven which 
 bounded 
 The world of all his hopes and fears below. 
 
 And were it not so, could the charm around him 
 Even by a word of his at last be broken, , 
 
 Fully as now that spell would yet have bound him — 
 That magic word would still remain unspoken. 
 
 One night it chanced, when homeward sadly stray- 
 ing, 
 Beneath her window that he paused, unmoved, 
 To watch the light which, through the casement 
 playing, 
 At times was darken'd by the form he loved — 
 
 When through the half raised sash, the summer air 
 Brought, through the blind which screen'd the 
 lady's bower, 
 
 Words to the throbbing ear, which listsn'd there, 
 That told him first it was her bridal hour ! 
 
 The sounds of revelry had ceased — the lights 
 Were all extinguish'd, except one alone ; 
 
 'Tis that, 'tis that his straining vision blights, 
 Dimly as through the half-shut blind it shone ! 
 
 That little light ! The burning Afric sun, 
 
 Which pour'd its fierce and scorching noonday 
 blaze 
 
 The heroic Roman's lidless eyes upon, 
 
 Was not more maddening than that taper's rays. 
 
 The light's removed — but still a shadow dim 
 
 Upon the curtain's folds reflected falls ! 
 The light 's extinguished — and the world to him 
 
 THE THAW-KING'S VISIT TO NEW YORK. 
 
 He comes on the wings of the warm south-west, 
 
 In the 'saffron hues of the sunbeam dress'd, 
 
 And lingers awhile on the placid bay, 
 
 As the ice-cake languidly steals away, 
 
 To drink those gems which the wave turns up, 
 
 Like Egyptian pearls in the Roman's cup. 
 
42 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 Then hies to the wharves where the hawser binds 
 The impatient ship from the wistful winds, 
 And slackens each rope till it hangs from on high, 
 Less firmly pencill'd against the sky ; 
 And sports in the stiffen'd canvass there 
 Till its folds float out in the wooing air : 
 Then leaves these quellers of Ocean's pride 
 To swing from the pier on the lazy tide. 
 
 He reaches the Battery's grassy bed, 
 
 And the earth smokes out from beneath his tread ; 
 
 And he turns him about to look wistfully back 
 
 On each charm that he leaves on his beautiful track ; 
 
 Each islet of green which the bright waters fold, 
 
 Like emeralds, fresh from their bosom roll'd, 
 
 The sea just peering the headlands through, 
 
 AVhere the sky is lost in its deeper blue, 
 
 And the thousand barks which securely sweep 
 
 With silvery wing round the land-lock'd deep. 
 
 He loiters awhile on the springy ground, 
 To watch the children gambol around, 
 And thinks it hard that a touch from him 
 Cannot make the aged as lithe of limb; 
 That he has no power to melt the rime, 
 The stubborn frost that is made by Time ; 
 And sighing he leaves the urchins to play, 
 And lanches at last on the world of Broadway. 
 
 There were faces and figures of heavenly mould, 
 
 Of charms not yet by the poet told ; 
 
 There were dancing plumes, there were mantles gay, 
 
 Flowers and ribbons flaunting there, 
 Such as of old on a festival day 
 
 The Idalian nymphs were wont to wear. 
 And the Thaw-king felt his cheek flush high, 
 
 And his pulses flutter in every limb, 
 As he gazed on many a beaming eye, 
 And many a form that flitted by, 
 
 With twinkling foot and ankle trim. 
 
 And he practised many an idle freak, 
 
 As he lounged the morning through ; 
 He sprung the frozen gutters aleak, 
 
 For want of aught else to do ; 
 And left them black as a libeller's ink, 
 To gurgle away to the sewer-sink. 
 He sees a beggar, gaunt and grim, 
 
 Arouse a miser's choler, 
 And he laughs while he melts the soul of him 
 
 To fling the wretch a dollar ; 
 And he thinks how small a heaven 'twould take 
 For a world of souls like his to make. 
 
 He read placarded upon a wall, 
 
 " That the country now on its friends did call, 
 
 For Liberty was in danger ;" 
 And he went to a room ten feet by four, 
 Where a chairman and sec. and a couple more 
 
 (Making Jive with our friendly stranger), 
 
 By the aid of four slings and two tallow tapers, 
 Were preparing to tell in the morning papers 
 
 That the Union was broken 
 
 By this very token, 
 " That the People in mass last night had spoken !" 
 
 He saw an Oneida baskets peddling 
 
 Around the place where the polls were held ; 
 And a Fed' the Red-skin kick for meddling, 
 As the Indian a Democrat's ballot spell'd. 
 That son of the soil 
 Who had no vote, 
 How dared he to spoil 
 A trick so neat, 
 Meant only to cheat 
 The voters who hither from Europe float ! 
 
 And now as the night falls chill and gray, 
 
 Like a drizzling rain on a new-made tomb, 
 And his father, the Sun, has slunk away, 
 
 And left him alone to gas and gloom, 
 The Thaw-king steals in a vapor thin, 
 Through the lighted porch of a house, wherein 
 Music and mirth were gayly mingled ; 
 
 And groups like hues in one bright flower 
 Dazzled the Thaw-king while he singled 
 
 Some one on whom to try his power. 
 
 He enters first in a lady's eyes, 
 
 And thrusts at a dandy's heart ; 
 But the vest that is made by Frost, defies 
 
 The point of the Thaw-king's dart ; 
 And the baffled spirit pettishly flies 
 
 On a pedant to try his art ; 
 But his aim is equally foil'd by the dust- 
 y lore that envelopes the man of must. 
 
 And next he tries with a fiddler's sighs 
 
 To melt the heart of a belle ; 
 But around her waist there 's a stout arm placed, 
 
 Which shields that lady well. 
 And that waist ! oh ! that waist — it is one that you 
 
 would 
 Like to clasp in a waltz, or — wherever you 
 could. 
 
 Her figure was fashion'd tall and slim, 
 
 But with rounded bust and shapely limb; 
 And her queen-like step as she trod the floor, 
 
 And her look as she bridled in beauty's pride, 
 Was such as the Tyrian heroine wore 
 When she blush'd alone on the conscious shore, 
 
 The wandering Dardan's unwedded bride. 
 
 And the Thaw-king gazed on that lady bright, 
 With her form of love and her looks of light, 
 Till his spirits began to wane, 
 
 And his wits were put to rout ; 
 
 And entering into an editor's brain, 
 
 He thaw'd this " article" out. 
 
EARLY MISCELLANIES. 
 
 43 
 
 RHYMES ON WEST POINT. 
 I've trod thy mountain paths, thy valleys deep, 
 Through mazy thickets, and through tangled 
 heath ; 
 I We climb'd thy piled up rocks, from steep to steep, 
 And gazed with rapture on the scene beneath. 
 
 The noble plain that lies cmbosom'd there, 
 The jutting headlands in thy mimic bay — 
 
 The stream, impatient of his curb'd career, 
 Sweeping through mighty mountains far away, 
 
 His bosom bumish'd by the setting sun, 
 
 Who, loath to leave his own illumined west, 
 
 Dyes with his huts the wave he shines upon, 
 And gilds the clouds which cradle him to rest. 
 
 I love West Point, and long could fondly dwell 
 On scenes which must through life my memory 
 haunt, 
 
 But you, too, reader, have been there as well 
 As I — if not, you'd better take the jaunt. 
 
 You rise at six, and by half after ten 
 
 You 're at the Point — I was when last I went — 
 You rest awhile at Cozzens's, and then 
 
 May stroll toward the upper Monument. 
 
 At two- you dine — (you'll think it not too soon, 
 Being sharp set from your long morning's ram- 
 ble)— 
 And to Fort Port Putnam in the afternoon, 
 
 O'er rocks and brushwood up the mountain 
 scramble. 
 
 The view which this majestic height commands 
 Repays the trouble of its rough access ; 
 
 For he beholds, who on the rampart stands, 
 A scene of grandeur and of loveliness : 
 
 The chain of mountains, sweeping far away — 
 The white encampment spread beneath his feet — 
 
 The sloop, slow dropping down the placid bay — 
 Her form reflected in its glassy sheet. 
 
 And where the river's banks less boldly swell, 
 Villas upon some sunny slope are seen ; 
 
 And white huts buried in some wooded dell — 
 With chimneys peering through their leafy 
 screen. 
 
 'Tis sweet to watch from hence at close of day, 
 While shadows lengthen on the mountain side, 
 
 The sunbeams steal from peak to peak away, 
 And white sails gleam along the dusky tide. 
 
 And sweet to woman's eye, at evening hour, 
 The gay parade that animates the plain, 
 
 When martial music lends its kindling power, 
 To thrill the bosom with some stirring strain — 
 
 Who, when they to their gleaming ranks repair, 
 Delight to gaze upon the bright array 
 
 Of young, good-looking fellows marshall'd there 
 In pigeon-breasted coats of iron-gray. 
 
 For girls the glare of warlike pomp adore, • 
 Since, cased in steel, with lance and curtlc-axe on, 
 
 Bold Cccur-de-Lion led his knights to war, 
 Down to the days of Major-General Jackson. 
 
 At night, when home returning, it is sweet, 
 While stars arc twinkling in the fields above, 
 
 And whispering breezes in the foliage meet, 
 To move in such a scene with one we love. 
 
 To feel the spell of woman's witchery near, 
 And while the magic o'er our senses steals, 
 
 Believe the being whom we hold most dear, 
 As deeply as ourselves that moment feels. 
 
 The dolphin's hues are brightest while he dies, 
 The rainbow's glories in their birth decay, 
 
 And love's bright visions, like our autumn skies, 
 Will fade the soonest when they seem most gay. 
 
 In " true love" now I am an arrant skeptic, 
 My heart's best music is for ever hush'd ; 
 
 Perhaps because I 'm briefless and dyspeptic, 
 Perhaps my hopes were once too rudely crush'd. 
 
 But to return — to lawyerling too poor, 
 Leaving his duns and office to a friend, 
 
 To take the northern or the eastern tour, 
 This short excursion I will recommend. 
 
 'Tis but two dollars and a day bestow'd, 
 And far from town, its dust and busy strife, 
 
 You '11 find the jaunt a pleasing episode 
 In the dull epic of a city life. 
 
 A BIRTH-DAY MEDITATION. 
 
 Another year ! alas, how swift, 
 
 Alinda, do these years flit by, 
 Like shadows thrown by clouds that drift 
 
 In flakes along a wintry sky. 
 Another year ! another leaf 
 Is turn'd within life's volume brief, 
 And yet not one bright page appears 
 Of mine within that book of years. 
 
 There are some moments when I feel 
 
 As if it should not yet be so ; 
 As if the years that from me steal 
 
 Had not a right alike to go, 
 And lose themselves in Time's dark sea, 
 Unbuoy'd up by aught from me ; 
 Aught that the future yet might claim 
 To rescue from their wreck a name. 
 
 But it was love that taught me rhyme, 
 And it was thou that taught me love ; 
 
 And if I in this idle chime 
 
 Of words a useless sluggard prove, 
 
 It was thine eyes the habit nursed, 
 
 And in their light I learn'd it first. 
 
 It is thine eyes which, day by day, 
 
 Consume my time and heart away. 
 
44 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 And often bitter thoughts arise 
 Of what I've lost in loving thee, 
 
 And in my breast my spirit dies, 
 The gloomy cloud around to see, 
 
 Of baffled hopes and ruin'd powers 
 
 Of mind, and miserable hours — 
 
 Of self-upbraiding, and despair — 
 
 Of heart, too strong and fierce to bear. 
 
 " Why, what a peasant slave am I," 
 
 To bow my mind and bend my knee 
 To woman in idolatry, 
 
 Who takes no thought of mine or me. 
 O, God ! that I could breathe my life 
 On battle-plain in charging strife — 
 In one mad impulse pour my soul 
 Far beyond passion's base control. 
 
 Thus do my jarring thoughts revolve 
 
 Their gather'd causes of offence, 
 Until I in my heart resolve 
 
 To dash thine angel image thence ; 
 When some bright look, some accent kind, 
 Comes freshly in my heated mind, 
 And scares, like newly-flushing day 
 These brooding thoughts like owls away. 
 
 And then for hours and hours I muse 
 
 On tilings that might, yet will not be, 
 Till, one by one, my feelings lose 
 
 Their passionate intensity, 
 And steal away in visions soft, 
 Which on wild wing those feelings waft 
 Far, far beyond the drear domain 
 Of reason and her freezing reign. 
 
 And now again from their gay track 
 
 I call, as I despondent sit, 
 Once more these truant fancies back, 
 
 Which round my brain so idly flit ; 
 And some I treasure, some I blush 
 To own — and these I try to crush — 
 And some, too wild for reason's rein, 
 I loose in idle rhyme again. 
 
 And even thus my moments fly, 
 
 And even thus my hours decay, 
 And even thus my years slip by, 
 
 My life itself is wiled away ; 
 But distant still the mounting hope, 
 The burning wish with men to cope 
 In aught that minds of iron mould 
 May do or dare for fame or gold. 
 
 Another year ! another year, 
 
 Alinda, it shall not be so ; 
 Both love and lays forswear I here, 
 
 As I 've forsworn thee long ago. 
 That name, which thou wouldst never share, 
 Proudly shall fame emblazon where 
 On pumps and corners posters stick it, 
 The highest on the Jackson ticket. 
 
 PLATONICS. 
 A place for me — one place for me, 
 
 Within that wild young heart be kept ; 
 Howe'er Affection's chords may there 
 
 By other hands than mine be swept ; 
 However unto Love's mad thrill . 
 
 Their music may responsive be, 
 As now let sober Friendship still 
 
 Preserve one note — one place for me. 
 
 When thy bright spirit, grave or gay, 
 
 Some other chains delighted near, 
 To catch thy features' varying play, 
 
 And watch each lightning thought appear, 
 However thou his soul mayst touch, 
 
 Let him not wholly thine enthral 
 From one who ever loved so much 
 
 To chase its meteor windings all. 
 
 When mid some scene where Nature flings 
 
 Her loveliest enchantments round, 
 And in thy kindling soul upsprings 
 
 Thoughts which no mortal breast can bound. 
 Or when upon some deathless page 
 
 Thy mind communes with kindred mind, 
 Still let me there one thought engage, 
 
 And round thy soaring spirit wind. 
 
 When first the bride-like dawn is blushing 
 
 Within the arms of joyous Day, 
 Or when the twilight dews are hushing 
 
 His footsteps o'er the hills away ; 
 When from the fretted vault above, 
 
 God's ever burning lamps are hung, 
 And when in dreams of Heaven and love, 
 
 His mercies are around thee flung. 
 
 A place for me — one place for me, 
 
 Within thy memory live enshrined, 
 Whatever idols Time may raise 
 
 Upon the altars of thy mind. 
 And while youth's hopes before me sweep, 
 
 Like bubbles on a freshening sea — 
 My bark of life shall ever keep 
 
 One sacred berth for thee — for thee. 
 
 "COMING OUT"— A DREAM 
 
 Young Lesbia slept. Her glowing cheek 
 Was on her polish' d arm reposing, 
 
 And slumber closed those fatal eyes 
 
 Which keep so many eyes from closing. 
 
 For even Cupid, when fatigued 
 
 Of playing with his bow and arrows, 
 
 Will harmless furl his weary wings, 
 And nestle with his mother's sparrows. 
 
 Young Lesbia slept — and visions gay 
 Before her dreaming soul were glancing, 
 
 Like sights that in the moonbeams show, 
 When fairies on the green are dancing. 
 
EARLY MISCELLANIES. 
 
 45 
 
 And, first, amid a joyous throng 
 She seem'd to move in festive measure, 
 
 Willi many a courtly worshipper, 
 
 That waited cm hex queenly pleasure. 
 
 And then, by one of those strange turns 
 
 That witch the mind so when we're dreaming, 
 She was a planet in the sky, 
 
 And they were stars around her beaming. 
 Yet hardly had that lovely light 
 
 (To which one cannot here help kneeling) 
 Its radiance in the vault above 
 
 Been for a few short hours revealing, 
 
 When, like a blossom from the bough, 
 By some remorseless whirlwind riven, 
 
 Swiftly upon its lurid path, 
 
 'Twas back to earth like lightning driven. 
 
 Yet, brightly still, though coldly, there 
 Those other stars were calmly shining, 
 
 As if they did not miss the rays 
 
 That were but now with their own twining. 
 
 And half with pique, and half with pain, 
 To be from that gay chorus parting, 
 
 Young Lesbia from her dream awoke, 
 
 With swelling heart and teardrop starting. 
 
 INTERPRETATION. 
 
 Had she but thought of those below, 
 
 Who thus were left with breasts benighted, 
 
 Till Heaven dismiss'd that star to earth, 
 By which alone our hearts are lighted — 
 
 Or, had she recollected, when 
 
 Each virtue from the world departed, 
 
 How Hope, the dearest, came again, 
 And stay'd to cheer the lonely-hearted : 
 
 Sweet Lesbia could not thus have grieved, 
 From that cold, dazzling throng to sever, 
 
 And yield her warm, young heart again 
 To those that prize its worth for ever. 
 
 THE WAXEN ROSE* 
 
 Go, mocking flower, 
 
 Thou plastic child of art, 
 Back to my lady's bower ; 
 Go and ask if thou, 
 False rose, art proven now 
 An emblem of her heart ? 
 
 Tell her, that like thee, 
 
 That heart's of little worth, 
 However kind it be, 
 
 Which any hand with skill 
 May mould unto its will ; 
 Too pliant from its birth. 
 
 * "Go, lovely rose." — Waller. 
 
 Go, cheating blossom, 
 
 Scentless as morning dew, 
 Go ask if in her bosom, 
 
 Although love's bud may be 
 In brightness like to thee, 
 It owns no fragrance too. 
 
 But if fadeless, yet 
 
 Like thee her love blooms on ; 
 
 Tell her — oh, ne'er forget 
 
 To tell her, from my heart 
 Affection will not part 
 
 When all life's flowers are sfone. 
 
 TO A LADY, 
 
 WITH A COLLECTION OP VERSES. 
 
 A passing sigh, perhaps — perchance a sneer — 
 Is all these lines, if ever read, may claim ; 
 
 And the wild thoughts, so vainly written here, 
 A worldly mind, perhaps, will calmly name 
 The sickly record of ' a stripling's flame.' 
 
 Yet, Lady, should you chance when years are jfled, 
 Some hour when Memory from each burial-place 
 
 Gives up once more her long-forgotten dead, 
 Recalls the looks of each familiar face, 
 And in the heart renews each time-worn trace — 
 
 At such an hour, when others claim the sigh 
 Remembrance gives to early ties decay'd, 
 
 To hopes and fears now gone for ever by, 
 To scenes in memory's twilight charms array'd, 
 And loves and friendships long ago betray'd — 
 
 Should you then chance these faded lines to meet, 
 I know they will thy transient gaze arrest ; 
 
 And he whose heart while yet Hope's pulses beat 
 Was thine, within thy pensive breast 
 Will claim one gentle thought among the rest. 
 
 MYNE HEARTTE. 
 
 I sommetymes thinnke thye womannes artte 
 
 Hathe fromme mye bosomme whytchd my heartte, 
 
 Yt dothe soe oftenne feele to mee 
 
 Lyke caskette where no jewelles be ; 
 
 Or, oceanne shelle wilk breathes dystresse, 
 
 I ween fromme verye emptynesse ; 
 
 And thenne I wishe sic faythlesse heartte 
 
 Of mee hadde never beene a parte. 
 
 And sommetymes doe I thynnke yts tyde 
 
 Is bye thye coldnesse petryfyd ; 
 
 Or, thatte thyne eyne scorche uppe ye sayme 
 
 Fromme healthfulle boundynges through mye 
 
 fraymme, 
 Yt laggs soe in its course lyke staynes, 
 Wilk blushynge creepe through cowardes veynes ; 
 And thenne I thynke that sic an heartte 
 Of manne hadde bettere notte be parte. 
 
46 
 
 HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 And sommetymes doe I thynke 'twere welle 
 Thys heartte shouldde breake beneathe thye spelle, 
 Since lonnge yt onlye thoughtes of paynne 
 Hathe sentte untoe my wearye brainne. 
 Soe manaye that ye sabel suite 
 Dothe crowde mye reasonne fromme her seatte, 
 And mayke me thynnke I 'd ray ther parte 
 Wythe lyfe in sic an faythlesse heartte. 
 
 WRITING FOR AN ALBUM. 
 I'll try no more — 'tis all in vain 
 
 To rack for wit my head, 
 Wit left the mansion of my brain 
 When ye inhabited. 
 Thoughts will not come — words will not flow 
 Except when thus toward thee they go. 
 
 Oh ! thou wert born to be my blight, 
 
 My bane upon this earth — 
 Fate did my doom that moment write 
 In which those eyes had birth. 
 'Tis strange that aught so good, so pure, 
 Should work the evil I endure. 
 
 Thou darkenest each hope that flings 
 
 O'er life one sunny ray ; 
 And to each joy thou lendest wings 
 To take itself away. 
 Yet hope and joy — oh what to me 
 Are they, unless they spring from thee ! 
 
 I'll try no more — 'tis all in vain 
 
 To rack for wit my head, 
 While every chamber of my brain 
 By thee is tenanted. 
 Thoughts will not come — words will not flow 
 Except when thus toward thee they go. 
 
 TO A LADY WEEPING IN CHURCH. 
 
 When tears from such as thee bedew the cheek, 
 In scenes like this — 'twould seem that heavenly 
 eyes 
 
 The soften'd glories of religion speak, 
 
 And claim the dewdrop from their kindred skies. 
 
 'Tis said that female saints of other days, 
 
 From grovelling guilt could purge the foulest 
 breast, 
 
 And teach the poor deluded wretch the ways 
 That lead to mansions of eternal rest. 
 
 And who could look upon thy heavenly face, 
 Nor feel his breast with sacred fervor glow ; 
 
 While every tear that fell from thee would chase 
 Each thought that link'd him to this world below. 
 
 If then one tear of thine — one murmur'd sigh, 
 Can tune the heart to sacred scenes like this ; 
 
 Why doubt the power to lure the soul on high, 
 And lead it captive to the realms of bliss ? 
 Albany, 1825. 
 
 BYRON. 
 
 His hopes would fade like sunset clouds, 
 Which melt in blackening skies, 
 
 Until he sought that peace in crowds 
 A cheerless home denies. 
 
 He roam'd, an Arab on life's waste, 
 
 Its kindly springs to drink ; 
 A Tantalus, from whose hot taste 
 
 The cooling waters shrink. 
 
 And when he would each trace forget 
 That mark'd his early course, 
 
 Remembrance brought but regret, 
 Regret became remorse. 
 
 And then he watched life's lamps go out, 
 
 Its friendships one by one 
 Decay, and leave his soul without 
 
 A light beneath the sun. 
 
 HOLDING A GIRL'S JUMPING ROPE. 
 
 'Tis true thou art no silken band 
 That knits my own with Zoe's hand, 
 
 No fairy's chosen fetter ; 
 Yet Love himself, if strength alone 
 Were in his shackles to be shown, 
 
 Could hardly find a better. 
 
 Thy stoutly twisted hempen strand 
 Would hang each felon in the land, 
 
 As high as e'er was Haman : 
 And — unless heavier than his head, 
 Are hearts by love inhabited, 
 
 Would hold the wildest Damon. 
 
 But thou — like rods magicians bear, 
 Of secret power art not aware, 
 
 Nor yet to trace art able 
 The story of one coil that lingers 
 So lovingly on Zoe's fingers — 
 
 Thou highly favor'd cable ! 
 
 Since first in June, when hemp is green, 
 And bees and butterflies are seen 
 
 Along its blossoms sailing, 
 Through mellow Autumn's jocund hours, 
 When warblers from the brown wood's bowers 
 
 Are on its seeds regaling — 
 
 Till steadying on some top-most spar 
 The footsteps of the gallant tar, 
 
 Upon the wave careering, 
 Or pendent from the stately mast, 
 Through glowing palms thy cordage pass'd, 
 
 Some banner bold uprearing. 
 
 'T is strange that aught so void of life 
 Should have, as if with feeling rife, 
 
 The electric power to mingle 
 The pulses that, upon my word, 
 I felt just now, together stirr'd, 
 
 Through all thy twistings tingle ! 
 
EARLY MISCELLANIES. 
 
 47 
 
 THE DECLAMATION. 
 1 un the li:ill. as late it wore, 
 „ And glad to be in her boudoir 
 From surveillance exempt, I 
 Goied on the boohs she last had read, 
 The chair her form had hallowed, 
 \uii grieved that it was empty* 
 
 And sleep his web-was round me weaving 
 While listening to that wind-harp's breathing 
 
 Whose melody so wild is, 
 When one, whose charms are not of earth, 
 (Her father just a jdum is worth, 
 
 And she his only fluid is), 
 
 With stealthy step before me stood, 
 As if to kiss in mad-cap mood, 
 
 My eyes, in slumber folded. 
 Her form was full — too full, you'd say, 
 And marvel ! — at the graceful play 
 
 Of charms so plumply moulded. 
 
 Her eyes were of a liquid blue, 
 Like sapphires limpid water through 
 
 Their soften'd lustre darting; 
 Her mind-illumined brow was white 
 As snow-drift in the pale moonlight; 
 
 The hair across it parting 
 
 Was of that paly brown, we're told 
 By poets takes a tinge of gold 
 
 When sunbeams through it tremble, 
 While round her mouth two dimples play'd 
 Like — nothing e'er on earth was made 
 
 Those dimples to resemble. 
 
 And there she stood in girlish glee 
 To win a pair of gloves, or see 
 
 How odd I'd look when waking, 
 When I her round and taper waist 
 So unexpectedly embraced, 
 
 The bond there was no breaking. 
 
 Her snowy bosom swcll'd as though 
 The lava there beneath the snow 
 
 Would heave it from its moorings ; 
 Her eye scem'd half with anger fired, 
 And half with tenderness inspired 
 
 In lightning-like endurings. 
 
 But when I loosed the eager grasp 
 In which I to my breast did clasp 
 
 Her struggling and unwilling, 
 I felt somehow her fragile fingers 
 (The tingling in my own yet lingers) 
 
 Within my pressure thrilling. 
 
 I spoke to her — she answer'd not — 
 I told her — now I scarce know what — > 
 
 I only do remember 
 My feelings when in words cxpress'd, 
 Though warm as August in my breast, 
 
 Seem'd colder than December. 
 
 But how can words the thoughts express 
 Of love so deep, BO measureless 
 As that which I have cherish'd ? 
 
 God ! if my scar'd heart had given 
 The same devotedness to Heaven, 
 
 It would not thus have pcrish'd ! 
 
 1 said, " You know— you must have known- 
 I long have loved — loved you alone, 
 
 But cannot know how dearly." 
 I told her if my hopes were cross'd, 
 My every aim in life was lost — 
 
 She knew I spoke sincerely ! 
 
 She answer'd — as I breathless dwelt 
 Upon her words, and would have knelt> 
 
 " Nay, move not thus the least, 
 You have— you long have had" — " Say on, 
 Sweet girl ! thy heart ?" — " Your foot upon 
 
 The flounce of my battiste." 
 
 CLOSING ACCOUNTS. 
 
 I placed — it was not ten years since — 
 
 Sweet coz, a heart within thy keeping, 
 In which there was no pulse of prince, 
 
 Of poet, or of hero, leaping, 
 But it was generous, warm and true, 
 
 True to itself, and true to thee : 
 And toward thine own it fondly drew— 
 
 Drew almost in idolatry. 
 
 I came to thee when years had fled, 
 
 To learn how well the charge was kept, 
 That heart — it was so altered, 
 
 Upon the change I could have wept : 
 The buoyant hope, the daring aim, 
 
 The independence, stern and high ; 
 Spirit, misfortune could not tame, 
 
 And pride that might the worst defy- 
 All, all were gone— and in their stead, 
 
 Were bitter and were blasted feelings : 
 And thoughts Despair so far had led 
 
 They shudderd at their own revealings. 
 Yet I — although Distrust did prey 
 
 Within that heart so wildly then- 
 It ate the better half away, 
 
 I left the rest with thee again. 
 
 Perhaps that heart in worthier case, 
 
 I thought thou wouidst at last restore ; 
 Perhaps I hoped thou mightst replace 
 
 With thine, the one abused before : 
 Perhaps there was — the truth as well 
 
 May out at once — perhaps there was in 
 Those matchless eyes so strong a spell 
 
 I could not help it, witching cousin. 
 
 Well, it was thine — thine only still, 
 A little worse, perhaps, for wear ; 
 
 But firm, despite of every ill 
 
 Which Fate and thou had gather'd there. 
 
HOFFMAN'S POEMS. 
 
 Yet now, when Youth and Hope are' past, 
 And Care will soon make manhood grajr, 
 
 I think — I think from thee at last 
 That I must take that heart away. 
 
 Still, if it grieve thee to restore 
 
 ' A trust that's held so carelessly, 
 Or if, when asking back once more, 
 
 The heart I left in pledge with thee, 
 It may, in spite of all I've said, 
 
 By some odd chance with thine be blended, 
 Why, cousin, give me that instead, 
 
 And all our business here is ended, 
 
 FOREST MUSINGS. 
 The hunt is up — 
 The merry woodland shout, 
 That rung these echoing glades about 
 
 An hour agone, 
 Hath swept beyond the eastern hills, 
 
 Where, pale and lone, 
 The moon her mystic circle fills ; 
 A while across the setting sun's broad disc 
 The dusky larch, 
 
 As if to pierce the blue o'erhanging arch, 
 Lifts its tall obelisk. 
 And now from thicket dark, 
 
 Where, by the mist-wreathed river, 
 The fire-fly's spark 
 Will fitful quiver, 
 And bubbles round the lily's cup 
 From lurking trout come coursing up, 
 Where stoops the wading fawn to drink ; 
 
 While, scared by step so near, 
 Uprising from the sedgy brink 
 The lonely bittern's cry will sink 
 
 Upon the startled ear. 
 And thus upon my dreaming youth, 
 
 When boyhood's gambols pleased no more, 
 And young Romance, in guise of Truth, 
 Usurp'd the heart all theirs before ; 
 Thus broke ambition's trumpet-note 
 
 On visions wild, 
 Yet blithesome as this river 
 
 On which the smiling moonbeams float, 
 That thus have there for ages smiled, 
 And will thus smile for ever. 
 And now no more the fresh green-wood, 
 
 The forest's fretted aisles 
 And leafy domes above them bent, 
 And solitude 
 So eloquent ! 
 Mocking the varied skill that 's blent 
 
 In art's most gorgeous piles — 
 No mord can soothe my soul to sleep 
 Than they can awe the sounds that sweep 
 To hunter's horn and merriment 
 Their verdant passes through, 
 When fresh the dun-deer leaves his scent 
 
 Upon the morning dew. 
 The game 's afoot !— and let the chase 
 
 Lead on, whate'er my destiny — 
 Though fate her funeral drum may brace 
 
 Full soon for me ! 
 And wave death's pageant o'er me — 
 Yet now the new and untried world 
 Like maiden banner first unfurl'd, 
 Is glancing bright before me ! 
 The quarry soars ! and mine is now the sky, 
 Where, " at what bird I please, my hawk shall fly !" 
 Yet something whispers through the wood 
 
 A voice like that perchance 
 Which taught the haunter of Egeria's grove 
 To tame the Roman's dominating mood 
 
 And lower, for awhile, his conquering lance 
 Before the images of Law and Love — 
 Some mystic voice that ever since hath dwelt 
 
 Along with Echo in her dim retreat, 
 A voice whose influence all, at times, have felt 
 
 By wood, or glen, or where on silver strand 
 The clasping waves of Ocean's belt 
 Do clashing meet 
 
 Around the land ; 
 It whispers me that soon — too soon 
 
 The pulses which now beat so high, 
 Impatient with the world to cope, 
 Will, like the hues of autumn sky, 
 Be changed and fallen ere life's noon 
 Should tame its morning hope. 
 Yet why, 
 While Hope so jocund singeth [eth, 
 
 And with her plumes the gray-beard's arrow wing- 
 Should I 
 Think only of the barb it bringeth ? 
 Though every dream deceive 
 
 That to my youth is dearest, 
 Until my heart they leave 
 
 Like forest leaf when searest — 
 Yet still, mid forest leaves, 
 
 Where now 
 Its tissue thus my idle fancy weaves, 
 Still with heart new-blossoming 
 While leaves, and buds, and wild flowers spring, 
 
 At Nature's shrine I '11 bow ; 
 Nor seek in vain that truth in her 
 She keeps for her idolater. 
 
 THE END. 
 
UOTSM & HILMDSTiK], 
 
 WILL PUBLISH, ON THE FIRST DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 
 
 THE ILLySTMTEE) B©®JC 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 REV. RTJFUS W. GRISWOLD. 
 
 This -work has been executed in a style perfectly unique, at the celebrated 
 Stereotype Foundry of L. JOHNSON, Philadelphia, the most tasteful artist 
 of his department in the United States. The wood engravings -were designed 
 and executed in Germany ; and the splendid Illuminated Cover and other em- 
 bellishments are by PINKERTON, WAGNER & McGUIGAN, and W. CROOME. 
 It is, altogether, one of the most elegant volumes produced in this country. 
 
 KING & BAIED, PRINTERS, PHILADELPHIA. 
 
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