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​POETS OF AMERICA.

THE

POETS OF AMERICA:
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bremm
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DRA
Lear
EDITED BY JOHN KEESE.
S COLMAN NEW YORK.
AAAANKAAAAAAAAAAAAANI
H. LUDWIG, PRINTER,
72, Vesey-st. N. Y.
THE
465-5-3
POETS OF AMERICA:
ILLUSTRATED
BY ONE OF HER PAINTERS.
"The world is full of Poetry.—Its words
Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break
Fresh from the fount of feeling."- Percival.
EDITED BY JOHN KEESE.
=
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY S. COLMAN,
VIII ASTOR HOUSE.
1840.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839,
By S. COLMAN,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern Dis-
trict of New-York.
recal.
28
}
39
DOR
TO THE
}
12
POETS OF OUR COUNTRX,
THIS VOLUME,
THE CREATION OF THEIR GENIUS,
IS RESPECTFULLY
DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
AMERICAN POETRY has hitherto been little more
than a happy accident, and seems to have arisen in
spite of the practical tendencies of our country,
and the prosaic character of our time. It has been
produced mostly by minds devoted to sterner
studies, and in brief intervals of leisure, snatched
from more engrossing toils. The intellectual en-
ergy of our land, has as yet consecrated itself,
perhaps too exclusively to the mighty work of
preparing a spacious home for the thronging mul-
titudes of our population, and building up for their
protection, a great national polity. The main part
of our poetical literature, therefore, has been oc-
10
PREFACE.
casional and fugitive. It has usually come before
the public eye in small detached portions, with
slight pretension to permanence in the form of
its publication, and has been rescued from speedy
oblivion only by its own beauty and power. The
genius of the artist, and the liberality of the pub-
lisher, have done far too little towards presenting
in an attractive shape, and with due advantages the
finest productions of our poets. We have left our
pearls unstrung. We have made few attempts to
heighten the brilliancy of our gems, by the beauty
of their setting. This is to be regretted; and the
design of the present volume, is in some degree,
to repair the deficiency.
The spirited and graceful sketches designed and
executed expressly for this work, by one of our
most distinguished artists, are of themselves, ele-
gant and attractive; and their beauty and delicacy
are strikingly conspicuous, when seen beside the
effusions of fancy and feeling which they are in-
tended to illustrate and adorn. No collection of
PREFACE.
11
American Poetry has, to the knowledge of the
Editor, been hitherto presented to the public with
a like claim-independent of its literary merit-
upon their attention and favour. Should the re-
ception of this volume be such as may reasonably
be anticipated, it is the intention of its publisher
to issue another similar in character and style.
Ample materials, untouched in the present work,
are at hand, and the Editor will embrace with
pleasure, an opportunity of presenting specimens
from the pens of many writers not represented in
the present collection.
Of the literary character of this work, it is not
necessary that the Editor should speak.. He has
sought to present in a fitting form, some of the
finest specimens-the true spirit of American
Poetry; and if he has not failed in his attempt,
the volume surely is worthy of perusal and pres-
ervation. He commends it then to the library
and the boudoir. He trusts that the bright glance
of the beautiful and the accomplished, will al-
12
PREFACE.
ways rest upon its pages with pleasure, and that
even the sobriety of scholarship, and the sternness
of criticism, will sometimes kindle into the enthu-
siasm of praise.
CONTENTS.
Culprit Fay
American Flag
Song from "Fanny"
Ode
•
Epithalamium
The Bucket
Page.
DRAKE 19
(C 48
HALLECK 50
SPRAGUE 53
BRAINARD 55
WOODWORTH 56
To a Waterfowl .
The Silkworm
Autumn Evening
BRYANT 58
HALE 60
PEABODY 61
Sabbath Evening Twilight
CUTTER 63
Sunrise on the Hills
LONGFELLOW 66
The Pebble and the Acorn
Consumption
Thanatopsis
The Indian Hunter
The Song at Twilight
GOULD 68
PERCIVAL 71
BRYANT 75
LONGFELLOW 79
DAVIDSON 82
Notes of the Birds
September
M'LELLAN 84
WILCOX 88
14
The Annoyer
Stanzas
The Dying Raven
Hymn of Nature
A Visit from St. Nicholas
The Frost
Greece
The Coral Grove
CONTENTS.
Scene after a Summer Shower
The Pleasure Boat
Love and Friendship
Lines for Music
Look Aloft
WILLIS 90
WILDE 92
•
DANA 94
PEABODY 99
MOORE 101
GOULD 105
BROOKS 107

PERCIVAL 111
NORTON 113
DANA 115
LEGGET 119
•
FAY 120
To a Humming Bird
Little Red Riding Hood
LAWRENCE 122
SUTERMEISTER 124
BARKER 126
MITCHELL 133
HOLMES 134
NEAL 137
The Withered Rosebud
The Last Leaf
Birth of a Poet
Marco Bozzaris
Thoughts of a Student
Love and Fame
TUCKERMAN 147
HALLECK 139
LAWRENCE 144
Napoleon at Rest
Shakspeare Ode
PIERPONT 150
SPRAGUE 152
Alnwick Castle
HALLECK 162
Dirge of Alaric
EVERETT 167
Last Evening before Eternity
HILHOUSE 171
Death of an Infant
SIGOURNEY 173
The Smile of Innocence
Memory
New England
A Health
DAVIDSON 174
CLARKE 176
WHITTIER 178
PINKNEY 181
3
To a Lady
Green River
•
Extract from Geraldine
دیگر
CONTENTS.
15
PRENTICE 183
BRYANT 185
DAWES 189
The Fringilia Melodia
Pickering 191
The Falls of the Passaic
IRVING 194
Niagara
SIGOURNEY 196
Ode
MELLEN 198
America to Great Britain
ALSTON 202
That Silent Moon
The Bugle
'Tis a Lowly Grave
Song from "Yamoyden"
Death of the Flowers
The Parting-a Picture
To a Wave
A Pledge to the Dying Year
Passing Away
To the Condor
The Future
Happiness
Moonlight on the Hudson
The Huma
The Settler
Ballad
Saturday Afternoon
The China Tree
Love and Friendship
Spirit of Beauty
The Wife
•
DOANE 204
MELLEN 207
SIMMS 209
Sands 211
BRYANT 213
MELLEN 215
ROCKWELL 217
BROOKS 219
PIERPONT 221
ELLET 225
WELLS 227
DINNIES 229
HOFFMAN 231
SMITH 236
STREET 238
EMBURY 242
WILLIS 244
BIRD 246
MRS. **** 248
DAWES 251
DENNIES 253
Sonnets
Music
SARGENT 255
HALLECK 257
·
16
CONTENTS.
Song of the Zephyr Spirit
Jamestown
On the Death of a Child
Anna Boleyn
•
An American Forest in Spring.
Edge of the Swamp
Song of the Stromkerl
A Sketch
The Dead Mariner
To the Evening Wind
•
SIMMS 260
PAULDING 262
DAPONTE 268
DAWES 269
•
STREET 270
SIMMS 274
BENJAMIN 276
GILMAN 278
PRENTICE 280
BRYANT 282
THE CULPRIT FAY.
BY
J. RODMAN DRAKE.
!
:

"My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo!
Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales
I see old fairy land's miraculous show!
Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales,
Her Ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze,
And fairies, swarming
*
انه ای که



a
CULPRITSI
I.
'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night-
The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright;
Nought is seen in the vault on high
But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cronest,
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below;
20
THE CULPRIT FAY.
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the firefly's spark-
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack.
I.
The stars are on the moving stream,
And fling, as its ripples gently flow,
A burnished length of wavy beam
In an eel-like, spiral line below;
The winds are whist, and the owl is still,
The bat in the shelvy rock is hid,
And nought is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did;
And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will,
Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings,
Ever a note of wail and wo,
Till morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow.
III.
"Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell:
The wood-tick has kept the minutes well,
THE CULPRIT FAY.
+
He has counted them all with click and stroke,
Deep in the heart of the mountain oak,
And he has awakened the sentry elve
Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,
To bid him ring the hour of twelve,
And call the fays to their revelry;
Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell-
("Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell:-)
"Midnight comes, and all is well!
Hither, hither, wing your way!
"Tis the dawn of the fairy day."
21
IV.
They come from beds of lichen green,
They creep from the mullen's velvet screen;
Some on the backs of beetles fly
From the silver tops of moon-touched trees,
Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high,
And rocked about in the evening breeze;
Some from the hum-bird's downy nest-
They had driven him out by elfin power,
And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast,
Had slumbered there till the charmed hour;
Some had lain in the scoop of the rock,
With glittering ising-stars inlaid
And some had opened the four-o'clock,
And stole within its purple shade.
22
THE CULPRIT FAY.
And now they throng the moonlight glade,
Above-below―on every side,
Their little minim forms arrayed
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride!
V.
They come not now to print the lea,
In freak and dance around the tree,
Or at the mushroom board to sup,
And drink the dew from the buttercup;
A scene of sorrow waits them now,
For an Ouphe has broken his vestal vow;
He has loved an earthly maid,
And left for her his woodland shade;
He has lain upon her lip of dew,
And sunned him in her eye of blue,
Fanned her cheek with his wing of air,
Played in the ringlets of her hair,
And, nestling on her snowy breast,
Forgot the lily-king's behest.
For this the shadowy tribes of air
To the elfin court must haste away :-
And now they stand expectant there,
To hear the doom of the Culprit Fay.
ist
THE CULPRIT FAY.
23
VI.
The throne was reared upon the grass
Of spice-wood and of sassafras;
On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell
Hung the burnished canopy-
And o'er it gorgeous curtains fell
Of the tulip's crimson drapery.
The monarch sat on his judgment-seat,
On his brow the crown imperial shone,
The prisoner Fay was at his feet,
And his peers were ranged around the throne.
He waved his sceptre in the air,
He looked around and calmly spoke;
His brow was grave and his eye severe,
But his voice in a softened accent broke :
66
VII.
Fairy! Fairy! list and mark,
Thou hast broke thine elfin chain,
Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark,
And thy wings are died with a deadly stain-
Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity
In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye;
Thou hast scorned our dread decree,
And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high,
But well I know her sinless mind
24
THE CULPRIT FAY.
Is pure as the angel forms above,
Gentle and meek, and chaste and kind.
Such as a spirit well might love;
Fairy! had she spot or taint,
Bitter had been thy punishment.
Tied to the hornet's shardy wings;
Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings;
Or seven long ages doomed to dwell
With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell;
Or every night to writhe and bleed
Beneath the tread of the centipede;
Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim,
Your jailer a spider huge and grim,
Amid the carrion bodies to lie,
Of the worm, and the bug, and the murdered fly:
These it had been your lot to bear,
Had a stain been found on the earthly fair.
Now list, and mark our mild decree-
Fairy, this your doom must be :
VIII.
"Thou shalt seek the beach of sand
Where the water bounds the elfin land,
Thou shalt watch the oozy brine
Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine,
Then dart the glistening arch below,
And catch a drop from his silver bow,
THE CULPRIT FAY.
The water-sprites will wield their arms,
And dash around, with roar and rave,
And vain are the woodland spirits' charms,
They are the imps that rule the wave.
Yet trust thee in thy single might,
If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right,
Thou shalt win the warlock fight.
IX.
"If the spray-bead gem be won,
The stain of thy wing is washed away,
But another errand must be done
Ere thy crime be lost for aye;
Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark,
Thou must reillume its spark.
Mount thy steed and spur him high
To the heaven's blue canopy;
And when thou seest a shooting star,
Follow it fast, and follow it far-
The last faint spark of its burning train
Shall light the elfin lamp again.
Thou hast heard our sentence, Fay;
Hence! to the water-side, away!"
25
26
THE CULPRIT FAY.
X.
The goblin marked his monarch well;
He spake not, but he bowed him low,
Then plucked a crimson colen-bell,
And turned him round in act to go.
The way is long, he cannot fly,
His soiled wing has lost its power,
And he winds adown the mountain high,
For many a sore and weary hour.
Through dreary beds of tangled fern,
Through groves of nightshade dark and dern,
Over the grass and through the brake,
Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake;
Now o'er the violet's azure flush
He skips along in lightsome mood;
And now he thrids the bramble-bush,
Till its points are died in fairy blood.
He has leaped the bog, he has pierced the briar,
He has swum the brook, and waded the mire,
Till his spirits sank, and his limbs grew weak,
And the red waxed fainter in his cheek.
He had fallen to the ground outright,
For rugged and dim was his onward track,
But there came a spotted toad in sight,
And he laughed as he jumped upon her back;
He bridled her mouth with a silkweed twist,
He lashed her sides with an osier thong;
THE CULPRIT FAY.
And now through evening's dewy mist,
With leap and spring they bound along,
Till the mountain's magic verge is past,
And the beach of sand is reached at last.
XI.
Soft and pale is the moony beam,
Moveless still the glassy stream,
The wave is clear, the beach is bright
With snowy shells and sparkling stones;
The shore-surge comes in ripples light,
In murmurings faint and distant moans;
And ever afar in the silence deep
Is heard the splash of the sturgeon's leap,
And the bend of his graceful bow is seen-
A glittering arch of silver sheen,
Spanning the wave of burnished blue,
And dripping with gems of the river dew.
XII.
The elfin cast a glance around,
As he lighted down from his courser toad,
Then round his breast his wings he wound,
And close to the river's brink he strode;
He sprang on a rock, he breathed a prayer,
Above his head his arms he threw,
27
28
THE CULPRIT FAY.
Then tossed a tiny curve in air,
And headlong plunged in the waters blue.
XIII.
Up sprung the spirits of the waves,
From sea-silk beds in their coral caves,
With snail-plate armour snatched in haste,
They speed their way through the liquid waste;
Some are rapidly borne along
On the mailed shrimp or the prickly prong,
Some on the blood-red leeches glide,
Some on the stony star-fish ride,
Some on the back of the lancing squab,
Some on the sideling soldier-crab;
And some on the jellied quarl, that flings
At once a thousand streamy stings;
They cut the wave with the living oar,
And hurry on to the moonlight shore,
To guard their realms and chase away
The footsteps of the invading Fay.
Fearlessly he skims along,
XIV.
His hope is high, and his limbs are strong,
He spreads his arms like the swallow's wing,
And throws his feet with a frog-like fling;
:
THE CULPRIT FAY.
His locks of gold on the waters shine,
At his breast the tiny foam-beads rise,
His back gleams bright above the brine,
And the wake-line foam behind him lies.
But the water-sprites are gathering near
To check his course along the tide;
Their warriors come in swift career
29
And hem him round on every side;
On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold,
*
The quarl's long arms are round him rolled,
The prickly prong has pierced his skin,
And the squab has thrown his javelin,
The gritty star has rubbed him raw,
And the crab has struck with his giant claw;
He howls with rage, and he shrieks with pain,
He strikes around, but his blows are vain;
Hopeless is the unequal fight,
Fairy! nought is left but flight.
XV.
He turned him round and fled amain
With hurry and dash to the beach again,
He twisted over from side to side,
And laid his cheek to the cleaving tide.
The strokes of his plunging arms are fleet,
And with all his might he flings his feet,
But the water-sprites are round him still,
To cross his path and work him ill.
30
THE CULPRIT FAY.
They bade the wave before him rise;
They flung the sea-fire in his eyes,
And they stunned his ears with the scallop stroke,
With the porpoise heave and the drum-fish croak.
Oh! but a weary wight was he
When he reached the foot of the dogwood tree
-Gashed and wounded, and stiff and sore,
He laid him down on the sandy shore;
He blessed the force of the charmed line,
And he banned the water-goblins' spite,
For he saw around in the sweet moonshine,
Their little wee faces above the brine,
Giggling and laughing with all their might
At the piteous hap of the Fairy wight.

THE CULPRIT FAY.
31
XVI.
Soon he gathered the balsam dew
From the sorrel-leaf and the henbane bud;
Over each wound the balm he drew,
And with cobweb lint he stanched the blood.
The mild west wind was soft and low,
It cooled the heat of his burning brow,
And he felt new life in his sinews shoot,
As he drank the juice of the cal'mus root;
And now he treads the fatal shore,
As fresh and vigorous as before.
XVII.
Wrapped in musing stands the sprite :
"Tis the middle wane of night,
His task is hard, his way is far,
But he must do his errand right.
Ere dawning mounts her beamy car,
And rolls her chariot wheels of light;
And vain are the spells of fairy-land,
He must work with a human hand:
XVIII.
He cast a saddened look around,
But he felt new joy his bosom swell,
32
THE CULPRIT FAY.
When, glittering on the shadowed ground,
He saw a purple muscle shell;
Thither he ran, and he bent him low,
He heaved at the stern and he heaved at the bow,
And he pushed her over the yielding sand,
Till he came to the verge of the haunted land.
She was as lovely a pleasure-boat
As ever fairy had paddled in,
For she glowed with purple paint without,
And shone with silvery pearl within;
A sculler's notch in the stern he made,
An oar he shaped of the bootle blade;
Then sprung to his seat with a lightsome leap,
And launched afar on the calm blue deep.
XIX.
The imps of the river yell and rave;
They had no power above the wave,
But they heaved the billow before the prow,
And they dashed the surge against her side,
And they struck her keel with jerk and blow,
Till the gunwale bent to the rocking tide.
She wimpled about in the pale moonbeam,
Like a feather that floats on a wind-tossed stream;
And momently athwart her track
The quarl upreared his island back,
And the fluttering scallop behind would float,
THE CULPRIT FAY.
And spatter the water about the boat;
But he bailed her out with his colen-bell,
And he kept her trimmed with a wary tread,
While on every side like lightning fell
The heavy strokes of his bootle-blade.
XX.
Onward still he held his way,
Till he came where the column of moonshine lay,
And saw beneath the surface dim
The brown-backed sturgeon slowly swim:
Around him were the goblin train
But he sculled with all his might and main,
And followed wherever the sturgeon led,
Till he saw him upward point his head;
Then he dropped his paddle blade,
And held his colen-goblet up
To catch the drop in its crimson cup.
XXI.
With sweeping tail and quivering fin,
Through the wave the sturgeon flew,
And, like the heaven-shot javelin,
He sprung above the waters blue.
Instant as the star-fall light,
He plunged him in the deep again,
33
34
THE CULPRIT FAY.
But left an arch of silver bright
The rainbow of the moony main.
It was a strange and lovely sight
To see the puny goblin there;
He seemed an angel form of light,
With azure wing and sunny hair,
Throned on a cloud of purple fair,
Circled with blue and edged with white,
And sitting at the fall of even
Beneath the bow of summer heaven.
XXII.
A moment and its lustre fell,
But ere it met the billow blue,
He caught within his crimson bell,
A droplet of its sparkling dew-

THE CULPRIT FAY.
35
Joy to thee, Fay! thy task is done,
Thy wings are pure, for the gem is won—
Cheerly ply thy dripping oar,
And haste away to the elfin shore.
XXIII.
He turns, and lo! on either side
The ripples on his path divide ;
And the track o'er which his boat must pass
Is smooth as a sheet of polished glass.
Around, their limbs the sea-nymphs lave,
With snowy arms half swelling out,
While on the glossed and gleamy wave
Their sea-green ringlets loosely float;
They swim around with smile and song;
They press the bark with pearly hand,
And gently urge her course along,
Toward the beach of speckled sand;
And, as he lightly leaped to land,
They bade adieu with nod and bow,
Then gayly kissed each little hand,
And dropped in the crystal deep below.
XXIV.
A moment stayed the fairy there;
He kissed the beach and breathed a prayer,
36
THE CULPRIT FAY.
Then spread his wings of gilded blue,
And on to the elfin court he flew;
As ever ye saw a bubble rise,
And shine with a thousand changing dies,
Till lessening far through ether driven,
It mingles with the hues of heaven;
As, at the glimpse of morning pale,
The lance-fly spreads his silken sail,
And gleams with blendings soft and bright,
Till lost in the shades of fading night;
So rose from earth the lovely Fay—
So vanished, far in heaven away!
*
*
Up, Fairy! quit thy chick-weed bower,
The cricket has called the second hour,
Twice again, and the lark will rise
To kiss the streaking of the skies-
Up! thy charmed armour don,
Thou 'lt nced it ere the night be gone.
XXV.
He put his acorn-helmet on;
It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down;
The corslet-plate that guarded his breast
Was once the wild-bee's golden vest;
His cloak, of a thousand mingled dies,
Was formed of the wings of butterflies;
THE CULPRIT FAY.
His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen,
Studs of gold on a ground of green;
And the quivering lance which he brandished bright,
Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight.
Swift he bestrode his firefly steed;
He bared his blade of the bent grass blue;
He drove his spurs of the cockle-seed,
And away like a glance of thought he flew,
To skim the heavens and follow far
The fiery trail of the rocket-star.
XXVI.
The moth-fly, as he shot in air,
Crept under the leaf, and hid her there;
The katy-did forgot its lay,
The prowling gnat fled fast away,
The fell moscheto checked his drone
And folded his wings till the Fay was gone,
And the wily beetle dropped his head,
And fell on the ground as if he were dead;
They crouched them close in the darksome shade,
They quaked all o'er with awe and fear,
For they had felt the blue-bent blade,
And writhed at the prick of the elfin spear;
Many a time on a summer's night,
When the sky was clear, and the moon was bright,
37
38
THE CULPRIT FAY.
They had been roused from the haunted ground,
By the yelp and bay of the fairy hound;
They had heard the tiny bugle-horn,
They had heard the twang of the maize-silk string,
When the vine-twig boughs were tightly drawn,
And the nettle shaft through air was borne,
Feathered with down of the hum-bird's wing.
And now they deemed the courier ouphe,
Some hunter sprite of the elfin ground;
And they watched till they saw him mount the roof
That canopies the world around;
Then glad they left their covert lair,
And freaked about in the midnight air.
XXVII.
Up to the vaulted firmament
His path the firefly courser bent,
And at every gallop on the wind,
He flung a glittering spark behind;
He flies like a feather in the blast
Till the first light cloud in heaven is past,
But the shapes of air have begun their work,
And a drizzly mist is round him cast,
He cannot see through the mantle murk,
He shivers with cold, but he urges fast,
Through storm and darkness, sleet and shade,
He lashes his steed and spurs amain,
THE CULPRIT FAY.
For shadowy hands have twitched the rein,
And flame-shot tongues around him played,
And near him many a fiendish eye
Glared with a fell malignity,
And yells of rage, and shrieks of fear,
Came screaming on his startled ear.
His wings are wet around his breast,
The plume hangs dripping from his crest,
His eyes are blurred with the lightning's glare,
And his ears are stunned with the thunder's blare,
But he gave a shout, and his blade he drew,
He thrust before and he struck behind,
Till he pierced their cloudy bodies through,
And gashed their shadowy limbs of wind;
212
39

40
THE CULPRIT FAY.
Howling the misty spectres flew,
They rend the air with frightful cries,
For he has gained the welkin blue,
And the land of clouds beneath him lies
XXIX.
Up to the cope careering swift
In breathless motion fast,
Fleet as the swallow cuts the drift,
Or the sea-roc rides the blast,
The sapphire sheet of eve is shot,
The sphered moon is past,
The earth but seems a tiny blot
On a sheet of azure cast.
O! it was sweet in the clear moonlight,
To tread the starry plain of even,
To meet the thousand eyes of night,
And feel the cooling breath of heaven;
But the Elfin made no stop or stay
Till he came to the bank of the milky-way,
Then he checked his courser's foot,
And watched for the glimpse of the planet-shoot.
XXX.
Sudden along the snowy tide
That swelled to meet their footsteps' fall,
THE CULPRIT FAY.
The sylphs of heaven were seen to glide,
Attired in sunset's crimson pall;
Around the Fay they weave the dance,
They skip before him on the plain,
And one has taken his wasp-sting lance,
And one upholds his bridle rein;
With warblings wild they lead him on
To where through clouds of amber seen,
Studded with stars, resplendent shone
The palace of the sylphid queen.
Its spiral columns gleaming bright
Were streamers of the northern lignt;
Its curtain's light and lovely flush
Was of the morning's rosy blush,
And the ceiling fair that rose aboon
The white and feathery fleece of noon.
XXXI.
But oh! how fair the shape that lay
Beneath a rainbow bending bright,
She seemed to the entranced Fay
The loveliest of the forms of light;
Her mantle was the purple rolled
At twilight in the west afar;
"Twas tied with threads of dawning gold,
And buttoned with a sparkling star.
41
42
THE CULPRIT FAY.
Her face was like the lily roon
That veils the vestal planet's hue;
Her eyes, two beamlets from the moon,
Set floating in the welkin blue.
Her hair is like the sunny beam,
And the diamond gems which round it gleam,
Are the pure drops of dewy even
That ne'er have left their native heaven.
XXXII.
She raised her eyes to the wondering sprite,
And they leaped with smiles, for well I ween
Never before in the bowers of light
Had the form of an earthly Fay been seen.
Long she looked in his tiny face;
Long with his butterfly cloak she played;
She smoothed his wings of azure lace,
And handled the tassel of his blade;
And as he told in accents low
She story of his love and wo,
She felt new pains in her bosom rise,
And the tear-drop started in her eyes.
And "O, sweet spirit of earth," she cried,
"Return no more to your woodland height,
But ever here with me abide
In the land of everlasting light!
Within the fleecy drift we'll lie,
We'll hang upon the rainbow's rim;
THE CULPRIT FAY.
43
And all the jewels of the sky
Around thy brow shall brightly beam!
And thou shalt bathe thee in the stream
That rolls its whitening foam aboon,
And ride upon the lightning's gleam,
And dance upon the orbed moon!
We'll sit within the Pleiad ring,
We'll rest on Orion's starry belt,
And I will bid my sylphs to sing
The song that makes the dew-mist melt;
Their harps are of the umber shade,
That hides the blush of waking day,
And every gleamy string is made
Of silvery moonshine's lengthened ray;
And thou shalt pillow on my breast,
While heavenly breathings float around,
And, with the sylphs of ether blest,
Forget the joys of fairy ground."
XXXIII.
She was lovely and fair to see,
And the elfin's heart beat fitfully;
But lovelier far, and still more fair,
The earthly form imprinted there;
Nought he saw in the heavens above
Was half so dear as his mortal love,
44
THE CULPRIT FAY.
For he thought upon her looks so meek,
And he thought of the light flush on her cheek;
Never again might he bask and lie
On that sweet cheek and moonlight eye,
But in his dreams her form to see,
To clasp her in his revery,
To think upon his virgin bride,
Was worth all heaven and earth beside.
XXXIV.
'Lady," he cried, "I have sworn to-night,
On the word of a fairy knight,
To do my sentence-task aright;
My honour scarce is free from stain,
I may not soil its snows again;
Betide me weal, betide me wo,
Its mandate must be answered now."
Her bosom heaved with many a sigh,
The tear was in her drooping eye;
But she led him to the palace gate,
And called the sylphs who hovered there,
And bade them fly and bring him straight
Of clouds condensed a sable car.
With charm and spell she blessed it there,
From all the fiends of upper air;
Then round him cast the shadowy shroud,
And tied his steed behind the cloud;
THE CULPRIT FAY.
And pressed his hand as she bade him fly
Far to the verge of the northern sky,
For by its wane and wavering light
There was a star would fall to-night.
XXXV.
Borne afar on the wings of the blast,
Northward away, he speeds him fast,
And his courser follows the cloudy wain
Till the hoof-strokes fall like pattering rain.
The clouds roll backward as he flies,
Each flickering star behind him lies,
And he has reached the northern plain,
And backed his firefly steed again,
Ready to follow in its flight
The streaming of the rocket-light.
XXXVI.
The star is yet in the vault of heaven,
But it rocks in the summer gale;
And now 'tis fitful and uneven,
And now 'tis deadly pale;
And now 'tis wrapped in sulphur smoke,
And quenched is its rayless beam,
And now with a rattling thunder-stroke
It bursts in flash and flame.
45
46
THE CULPRIT FAY.
As swift as the glance of the arrowy lance
That the storm-spirit flings from high,
The star-shot flew o'er the welkin blue,
As it fell from the sheeted sky
As swift as the wind in its trail behind
The elfin gallops along,
The fiends of the clouds are bellowing loud,
But the sylphid charm is strong;
He gallops unhurt in the shower of fire,
While the cloud-fiends fly from the blaze;
He watches each flake till its sparks expire,
And rides in the light of its rays.
But he drove his steed to the lightning's speed,
And caught a glimmering spark;
Then wheeled around to the fairy ground,
And sped through the midnight dark.
Ouphe and goblin! imp and sprite!
Elf of eve! and starry Fay
Ye that love the moon's soft light,
Hither-hither wend your way;
Twine ye in a jocund ring,
Sing and trip it merrily,
Hand to hand, and wing to wing,
Round the wild witch-hazel tree.
Hail the wanderer again,
With dance and song, and lute and lyre,
THE CULPRIT FAY.
47
Pure his wing and strong his chain,
And doubly bright his fairy fire.
Twine ye in an airy round,
Brush the dew and print the lea:
Skip and gambol, hop and bound,
Round the wild witch-hazel tree.
The beetle guards our holy ground,
He flies about the haunted place,
And if mortal there be found,
He hums in his ears and flaps his face:
The leaf-harp sounds our roundelay,
The owlet's eyes our lanterns be;
Thus we sing, and dance, and play,
Round the wild witch-hazel tree.
But hark! from tower on tree-top high,
The sentry elf his call has made,
A streak is in the eastern sky,
Shapes of moonlight! flit and fade!
The hill-tops gleam in morning's spring,
The sky-lark shakes his dappled wing,
The day-glimpse glimmers on the lawn,
The cock has crowed, and the Fays are gone.

THE AMERICAN FLAG.
BY J. R.DRAKE.
WAEN FREEDOм from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dies
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white,
With streakings of the morning light;
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand,
The symbol of her chosen land.
Majestic monarch of the cloud,
Who rearst aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumpings loud
And see the lightning lances driven,
When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven,
Child of the sun! to thee 't is given
To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!
Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumplı high,
When speaks the signal trumpet tone.
And the long line comes gleaming on.
IN

Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,
Each soldier eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn;
And as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance
And when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall;
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall shrink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.
Flag of the seas! on ocean wave
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave;
When death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendours fly
In triumph o'er his closing eye.
Flag of the free heart's hope and home ſ
By angel hands to valour given;
The stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
For ever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?
SONG FROM "FANNY."
BY F. G. HALLECK.
YOUNG thoughts have music in them, love
And happiness their theme;
And music wanders in the wind
That lulls a morning dream.
And there are angel voices heard,
In childhood's frolic hours,
When life is but an April day,
Of sunshine and of showers.
There's music in the forest leaves,
When summer winds are there,
And in the laugh of forest girls,
That braid their sunny hair.
The first wild bird that drinks the dew,
From violets of the spring,
Has music in his song, and in
The fluttering of his wing.
SONG.
There's music in the dash of waves,
When the swift bark cleaves their foam;
There's music heard upon her deck-
The mariner's song of home-
When moon and starbeams, smiling, meet,
At midnight, on the sea;
And there is music once a week
In Scudder's balcony.
But the music of young thoughts too soon
Is faint, and dies away,
And from our morning dreams we wake
To curse the coming day.
And childhood's frolic hours are brief,
And oft, in after years,
Their memory comes to chill the heart,
And dim the eye with tears.
To-day the forest leaves are green;
They'll wither on the morrow,
And the maiden's laugh be changed, ere long,
To the widow's wail of sorrow.
Come with the winter snows, and ask
Where are the forest-birds;
The answer is a silent one,
More eloquent than words.
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52
SONG.
The moonlight music of the waves
In storms is heard no more,
When the livid lightning mocks the wreck
At midnight on the shore;
And the mariner's song of home has ceased-
His corse is on the sea;
And music ceases, when it rains,
In Scudder's balcony.
*
ODE.
BY CHARLES SPRAGU E.
WHEN from the sacred garden driven,
Man fled before his Maker's wrath,
An Angel left her place in heaven,
And crossed the wanderer's sunless path.
'Twas Art! sweet Art! new radiance broke,
Where her light foot flew o'er the ground,
And thus with seraph voice she spoke:
"The Curse a Blessing shall be found."
She led him through the trackless wild,
Where noontide sunbeam never blazed;-
The thistle shrunk-the harvest smiled,
And Nature gladdened as she gazed.
Earth's thousand tribes of living things,
At Art's command, to him are given;
The village grows, the city springs,
And point their spires of faith to heaven.
He rends the oak—and bids it ride,
To guard the shores its beauty graced;
54
ODE.
He smites the rock-upheaved in pride,
See towers of strength and domes of taste.
Earth's teeming caves their wealth reveal,
Fire bears his banner on the wave,
He bids the mortal poison heal,
And leaps triumphant o'er the grave.
He plucks the pearls that stud the deep,
Admiring Beauty's lap to fill;
He breaks the stubborn marble's sleep,
And mocks his own Creator's skill.
With thoughts that fill his glowing soul,
He bids the ore illume the page,
And proudly scorning time's control,
Commerces with an unborn age.
In fields of air he writes his name,
And treads the chambers of the sky,
He reads the stars, and grasps the flame
That quivers round the Throne on high.
In war renowned, in peace sublime,
He moves in greatness and in grace;
His power subduing space and time,
Links realm to realm, and race to race.
EPITHALAMIU M.
BY J. G. C. BRAINARD.
I saw two clouds at morning,
Tinged with the rising sun;
And in the dawn they floated on,
And mingled into one :
I thought that morning cloud was blest,
It moved so sweetly to the west.
I saw two summer currents
Flow smoothly to their meeting,
And join their course, with silent force,
In peace each other greeting:
Calm was their course through banks of green,
While dippling eddies played between.
Such be your gentle motion,
Till life's last pulse shall beat;
Like summer's beam, and summer's stream,
Float on in joy, to meet
A calmer sea, where storms shall cease—
A purer sky, where all is peace.

THE BUCKET.
BY S. WOODWORTH.
How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollection presents them to view!
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood,
And every loved spot which my infancy knew ;
THE BUCKET.
57
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it,
The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it,
And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well!
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket, which hung in the well.
That moss-covered vessel I hail as a treasure;
For often, at noon, when returned from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
The purest and sweetest that nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing,
And quick to the white pebbled bottom it fell;
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket arose from the well.
How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,
As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips!
Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
Though filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips.
And now, far removed from the loved situation,
The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,
And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket, which hangs in his well.
TO A WATERFOWL.
BY W. C. BRYANT.
WHITHER, 'midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seekst thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power, whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast
The desert and illimitable air-
Lone wandering, but not lost.
59.-
TO A WATERFOWL.
7
All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere;
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.
Thou 'rt gone; the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
+
THE SILKWORM.
J. HALE.
BY S. J.
THERE is no form upon our earth,
That bears the mighty Maker's seal,
But has some charm-to draw this forth,
We need but hearts to feel.
I saw a fair young girl-her face
Was sweet as dream of cherished friend
Just at the age when childhood's grace
And maiden softness blend.
A silkworm in her hand she laid;
Nor fear, nor yet disgust, was stirred;
But gayly with her charge she played,
As 'twere a nestling bird.
She raised it to her dimpled cheek,
And let it rest and revel there :
O, why for outward beauty seek!
Love makes its favourites fair.
That worm-I should have shrunk, in truth,
To feel the reptile o'er me move-
THE AUTUMN EVENING.
But, loved by innocence and youth,
I deemed it worthy love.
Would we, I thought, the soul imbue,
In early life, with sympathies
For every harmless thing, and view
Such creatures formed to please-
And, when with usefulness combined,
Give them our love and gentle care—
O, we might have a world as kind
As God has made it fair!
There is no form upon our earth,
That bears the mighty Maker's seal,
But has some charm-to call this forth,
We need but hearts to feel.
THE AUTUMN EVENING.
BY W. O. B. PEABODY.
BEHOLD the western evening light!
It melts in deepening gloom;
So calmly Christians sink away,
Descending to the tomb.
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THE AUTUMN EVENING.
The winds breathe low; the withering leaf
Scarce whispers from the tree;
So gently flows the parting breath,
When good men cease to be.
How beautiful on all the hills
The crimson light is shed!
'Tis like the peace the Christian gives
To mourners round his bed.
How mildly on the wandering cloud
The sunset beam is cast!
'Tis like the memory left behind
When loved ones breathe their last.
And now, above the dews of night,
The yellow star appears;
So faith springs in the heart of those
Whose eyes are bathed in tears.
But soon the morning's happier light
Its glory shall restore,
And eyelids that are sealed in death
Shall wake to close no more.
SABBATH EVENING TWILIGHT.
BY W. CUTTER.
DELIGHTFUL hour of sweet repose,
Of hallowed thoughts, of love, of prayer!
I love thy deep and tranquil close,
For all the sabbath-day is there.
Each pure desire, each high request
That burned before the temple shrine-
The hopes, the fears, that moved the breast-
All live again in light like thine.
I love thee for the fervid glow
Thou shed'st around the closing day-
Those golden fires, those wreaths of snow,
That light and pave his glorious way!
Through them, I've sometimes thought, the eye
May pierce the unmeasured deeps of space,
And track the course where spirits fly,
On viewless wings, to realms of bliss.
I love thee for the unbroken calm,
That slumbers on this fading scene,
And throws its kind and soothing charm
O'er "all the little world within."
64
SABBATH EVENING TWILIGHT.
It trances every roving thought,
Yet sets the soaring fancy free-
Shuts from the soul the present out,
That all is musing memory.
I love those joyous memories,
That rush, with thee, upon the soul-
Those deep, unuttered symphonies,
That o'er the spell-bound spirit roll.
All the bright scenes of love and youth
Revive, as if they had not fled;
And Fancy clothes with seeming truth
The forms she rescues from the dead.
Yet holier is thy peaceful close,
For vows love left recorded there;
This is the noiseless hour we chose
To consecrate to mutual prayer.
"Twas when misfortune's fearful cloud
Was gathering o'er the brow of heaven,
Ere yet despair's eternal shroud
Wrapped every vision hope had given.
When these deep purpling shades came down,
In softened teints, upon the hills,
We swore, that, whether fate should crown
Our future course with joys or ills-
SABBATH EVENING TWILIGHT.
Whether safe moored in love's retreat,
Or severed wide by mount and sea-
This hour, in spirit, we would meet,
And urge to Heaven our mutual plea.
O, tell me if this hallowed hour
Still finds thee constant at our shrine,
Still witnesses thy fervent prayer
Ascending warm and true with mine!
Faithful through every change of wo,
My heart still flies to meet thee there :
"Twould sooth this very heart to know
That thine responded every prayer.
65

SUNRISE ON THE HILLS.
BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.
I STOOD upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch
Was glorious with the sun's returning march,
And woods were brightened, and soft gales
Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales.
The clouds were far beneath me :-bathed in light
They gathered midway round the wooded height,
And in their fading glory shone
Like hosts in battle overthrown,
As many a pinnacle with shifting glance,
Through the gray mist thrust up its shattered lance,
And rocking on the cliff was left
The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft.
The veil of cloud was lifted—and below
Glowed the rich valley, and the river's flow
Was darkened by the forest's shade,
Or glistened in the white cascade,
Where upward in the mellow blush of day
The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way.
SUNRISE ON THE HILLS.
I heard the distant waters dash-
I saw the current whirl and flash-
And richly by the blue lake's silver beach
The woods were bending with a silent reach.
Then o'er the vale with gentle swell
The musick of the village-bell
Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills,
And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills,
Was ringing to the merry shout
That faint and far the glen sent out,
Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke
Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke.
If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows that thou wouldst forget-
If thou wouldst read a lesson that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills!-no tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears,
67
THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN.
BY H. F. GOULD.
I AM a Pebble! and yield to none !”
Were the swelling words of a tiny stone,
"Nor time nor seasons can alter me;
I am abiding, while ages flee.
The pelting hail and the drizzling rain
Have tried to soften me, long, in vain;
And the tender dew has sought to melt,
Or touch my heart; but it was not felt.
There's none that can tell about my birth,
For I'm as old as the big,round earth.
The children of men arise, and pass
Out of the world, like the blades of grass;
And many a foot on me has trod,
That's gone from sight, and under the sod!
I am a Pebble! but who art thou,
Rattling along from the restless bough?”
The Acorn was shocked at this rude salute,
And lay for a moment abashed and mute;
THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN.
She never before had been so near
This gravelly ball, the mundane sphere;
And she felt for a time at a loss to know
How to answer a thing so coarse and low.
But to give reproof of a nobler sort
Than the angry look, or the keen retort,
At length she said, in a gentle tone:-
"Since it has happened that I am thrown
From the lighter element, where I grew,
Down to another, so hard and new,
And beside a personage so august,
Abased, I will cover my head with dust,
And quickly retire from the sight of one
Whom time, nor season, nor storm, nor sun,
Nor the gentle dew, nor the grinding heel,
Has ever subdued or made to feel!"
And soon, in the earth, she sunk away
From the comfortless spot where the Pebble lay.
But it was not long ere the soil was broke
By the peering head of an infant oak!
And, as it arose and its branches spread,
The Pebble looked up, and wondering said:
"A modest Acorn! never to tell
What was enclosed in its simple shell;
That the pride of the forest was folded up
In the narrow space of its little cup!
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70
THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN.
And meekly to sink in the darksome earth,
Which proves that nothing could hide her worth!
And oh! how many will tread on me,
To come and admire the beautiful tree,
Whose head is towering toward the sky,
Above such a worthless thing as I!
Useless and vain, a cumberer here,
I have been idling from year to year.
But never, from this, shall a vaunting word
From the humbled Pebble again be heard,
Till something without me or within,
Shall show the purpose for which I've been!"
The Pebble its vow could not forget,
And it lies there wrapped in silence yet.
CONSUMPTION.
BY J. G. PERCIVAL.
THERE is a sweetness in woman's decay,
When the light of beauty is fading away,
When the bright enchantment of youth is gone,
And the tint that glowed, and the eye that shone,
And darted around its glance of power,
And the lip that vied with the sweetest flower,
That ever in Pæstum's garden blew,
Or ever was steeped in fragrant dew,
When all that was bright and fair, has fled,
But the loveliness lingering round the dead.
O! there is a sweetness in beauty's close,
Like the perfume scenting the withered rose ;
For a nameless charm around her plays,
And her eyes are kindled with hallowed rays,
And a veil of spotless purity
Has mantled her cheek with its heavenly dye,
Like a cloud whereon the queen of night
Has poured her softest tint of light;
72
CONSUMPTION.
And there is a blending of white and blue,
Where the purple blood is melting through
The snow of her pale and tender cheek;
And there are tones, that sweetly speak
Of a spirit, who longs for a purer day,
And is ready to wing her flight away.
In the flush of youth and the spring of feeling,
When life, like a sunny stream, is stealing
Its silent steps through a flowery path,
And all the endearments, that pleasure hath,
Are poured from her full, o'erflowing horn,
When the rose of enjoyment conceals no thorn,
In her lightness of heart, to the cheery song
The maiden may trip in the dance along,
And think of the passing moment, that lies
Like a fairy dream, in her dazzled eyes,
And yield to the present, that charms around
With all that is lovely in sight and sound,
Where a thousand pleasing phantoms flit,
With the voice of mirth, and the burst of wit,
And the music that steals to the bosom's core,
And the heart in its fulness flowing o'er
With a few big drops, that are soon repressed,
For short is the stay of grief in her breast:
In this enlivened and gladsome hour
The spirit may burn with a brighter power;
CONSUMPTION.
But dearer the calm and quiet day,
When the heaven-sick soul is stealing away.
And when her sun is low declining,
And life wears out with no repining,
And the whisper, that tells of early death,
Is soft as the west wind's balmy breath,
When it comes at the hour of still repose,
To sleep in the breast of the wooing rose,
And the lip, that swelled with a living glow,
Is pale as a curl of new-fallen snow;
And her cheek, like the Parian stone, is fair,
But the hectic spot that flushes there,
When the tide of life, from its secret dwelling,
In a sudden gush, is deeply swelling,
And giving a tinge to her icy lips,
Like the crimson rose's brightest tips,
As richly red and as transient too,
As the clouds, in autumn sky of blue,
That seem like a host of glory met
To honour the sun at his golden set:
O! then, when the spirit is taking wing,
How fondly her thoughts to her dear one cling,
As if she would blend her soul with his
In a deep and long-imprinted kiss;
So fondly the panting camel flies,
Where the glassy vapour cheats his eyes,
L
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CONSUMPTION.
And the dove from the falcon seeks her nest,
And the infant shrinks to his mother's breast.
And though her dying voice be mute,
Or faint as the tones of an unstrung lute,
And though the glow from her cheek be fled,
And her pale lips cold as the marble dead,
Her eye still beams unwonted fires
With a woman's love and a saint's desires,
And her last fond, lingering look is given
To the love she leaves, and then to heaven,
As if she would bear that love away
To a purer world and a brighter day.
:
རྩྭ
THANATOPSIS.
BY W. C. BRYANT.
To him who, in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language. For his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;-
Go forth unto the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice:-Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
76
THANATOPSIS.
In all his course. Nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thy eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone; -nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty; and the complaining brooks,
That make the meadows green: and, poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste-
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
THANATOPSIS.
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce;
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings; yet-the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest-and what if thou shalt fall
Unheeded by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come,
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-haired man-
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those, who, in their turn, shall follow them.
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78
THANATOPSIS.
So live, that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams..

THE INDIAN HUNTER.
BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.
WHEN the summer harvest was gathered in,
And the sheaf of the gleaner grew white and thin,
And the ploughshare was in its furrow left,
Where the stubble land had been lately cleft,
An Indian hunter, with unstrung bow,
Looked down where the valley lay stretched below.
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THE INDIAN HUNTER.
He was a stranger there, and all that day
Had been out on the hills, a perilous way,
But the foot of the deer was far and fleet,
And the wolf kept aloof from the hunter's feet,
And bitter feelings passed o'er him then,
As he stood by the populous haunts of men.
The winds of Autumn came over the woods,
As the sun stole out from their solitudes.
The moss was white on the maple's trunk,
And dead from its arms the pale vine shrunk,
And ripened the mellow fruit hung, and red
Were the tree's withered leaves round it shed.
The foot of the reaper moved slow on the lawn,
And the sickle cut down the yellow corn-
The mower sung loud by the meadow side,
Where the mists of evening were spreading wide,
And the voice of the herdsman came up the lea,
And the dance went round by the greenwood tree.
Then the hunter turned away from that scene,
Where the home of his fathers once had been,
And heard by the distant and measured stroke,
That the woodman hewed down the giant oak,
And burning thoughts flashed over his mind
Of the white man's faith, and love unkind.
THE INDIAN HUNTER.
The moon of the harvest grew high and bright,
As her golden horn pierced the cloud of white-
A footstep was heard in the rustling brake,
Where the beech overshadowed the misty lake,
And a mourning voice and a plunge from shore;
And the hunter was seen on the hills no more.
When years had passed on, by that still lake-side
The fisher looked down through the silver tide,
And there, on the smooth yellow sand displayed,
A skeleton wasted and white was laid,
And 'twas seen, as the waters moved deep and slow,
That the hand was still grasping a hunter's bow,
81
THE SONG AT TWILIGHT
*
*
I..
BY L. M. DAVIDSON.
*
WHEN evening spreads her shades around,
And darkness fills the arch of heaven;
When not a murmur, not a sound,
To Fancy's sportive ear is given ;
When the broad orb of heaven is bright,
And looks around with golden eye;
When Nature, softened by her light,
Seems calmly, solemnly to lie ;-
Then, when our thoughts are raised above
This world, and all this world can give,
O, sister, sing the song I love,
And tears of gratitude receive.
The song which thrills my bosom's core,
And, hovering, trembles half afraid,
O, sister, sing the song once more,
Which ne'er for mortal ear was made.
THE SONG AT TWILIGHT.
"Twere almost sacrilege to sing
Those notes amid the glare of day;
Notes borne by angels' purest wing,
And wafted by their breath away.
When, sleeping in my grass-grown bed,
Shouldst thou still linger here above,
Wilt thou not kneel beside my head,
And, sister, sing the song I love?
83
THE NOTES OF THE BIRDS.
BY I. M'LELLAN, JR.
WELL do I love those various harmonies
That ring so gayly in Spring's budding woods,
And in the thickets, and green, quiet haunts,
And lonely copses of the Summer-time,
And in red Autumn's ancient solitudes.
If thou art pained with the world's noisy stir,
Or crazed with its mad tumults, and weighed down
With any of the ills of human life;
If thou art sick and weak, or mournest at the loss
Of brethren gone to that far-distant land
To which we all do pass, gentle and poor,
The gayest and the gravest, all alike—
Then turn into the peaceful woods, and hear
The thrilling music of the forest birds.
How rich the varied choir. The unquiet finch
Calls from the distant hollows, and the wren
Uttereth her sweet and mellow plaint at times,
And the thrush mourneth where the kalmia hangs
THE NOTES OF THE BIRDS.
Its crimson-spotted cups, or chirps half hid
Amid the lowly dogwood's snowy flowers,
And the bluejay flits by, from tree to tree,
And, spreading its rich pinions, fills the ear
With its shrill-sounding and unsteady cry.
With the sweet airs of Spring, the Robin comes,
And in her simple song there seems to gush
A strain of sorrow when she visiteth
Her last year's withered nest. But when the gloom
Of the deep twilight falls, she takes her perch
Upon the red-stemmed hazel's slender twig
That overhangs the brook, and suits her song
To the slow rivulet's inconstant chime.
In the last days of Autumn, when the corn
Lies sweet and yellow in the harvest-field,
And the gay company of reapers bind
The bearded wheat in sheaves—then peals abroad
The blackbird's merry chant. I love to hear,
Bold plunderer, thy mellow burst of song
Float from thy watch-place on the mossy tree
Close at the cornfield edge.
Lone whippoorwill,
There is much sweetness in thy fitful hymn,
Heard in the drowsy watches of the night.
Oft-times, when all the village-lights are out,
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THE NOTES OF THE BIRDS.
And the wide air is still, I hear thee chant
Thy hollow dirge, like some recluse who takes
His lodging in the wilderness of woods,
And lifts his anthem when the world is still :
And the dim, solemn night, that brings to man
And to the herds deep slumbers, and sweet dews
To the red roses and the herbs, doth find
No eye, save thine, a watcher in her halls.
I hear thee oft at midnight, when the thrush
And the green, roving linnet are at rest,
And the blithe, twittering swallows have long ceased
Their noisy note, and folded up their wings.
Far up some brook's still course, whose current mines
The forest's blackened roots, and whose green marge
Is seldom visited by human foot,
The lonely heron sits, and harshly breaks
The Sabbath silence of the wilderness:
And you may find her by some reedy pool,
Or brooding gloomily on the time stained-rock,
Beside some misty and far-reaching lake.
Most awful is thy deep and heavy boom,
Gray watcher of the waters! Thou art king
Of the blue lake; and all the winged kind
Do fear the echo of thine angry cry.
How bright thy savage eye! Thou lookest down,
And seest the shining fishes as they glide;
THE NOTES OF THE BIRDS.
And, poising thy gray wing, thy glossy beak
Swift as an arrow strikes its roving prey.
Oft-times I see thee, through the curling mist,
Dart, like a spectre of the night, and hear
Thy strange, bewildering call, like the wild scream
Of one whose life is perishing in the sea.
And now, wouldst thou, O man, delight the ear
With earth's delicious sounds, or charm the eye
With beautiful creations? Then pass forth.
And find them midst those many-coloured birds
That fill the glowing woods. The richest hues
Lie in their splendid plumage, and their tones
Are sweeter than the music of the lute,
Or the harp's melody, or the notes that gush
So thrillingly from Beauty's ruby lip.
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SEPTEMBER.
BY 'C. WILCOX.
THE sultry summer past, September comes,
Soft twilight of the slow-declining year;
All mildness, soothing loneliness and peace;
The fading season ere the falling come,
More sober than the buxom blooming May,
And therefore less the favourite of the world,
But dearest month of all to pensive minds.
'Tis now far spent; and the meridian sun,
Most sweetly smiling with attempered beams,
Sheds gently down a mild and grateful warmth
Beneath its yellow lustre, groves and woods,
Checkered by one night's frost with various hues,
While yet no wind has swept a leaf away,
Shine doubly rich. It were a sad delight
Down the smooth stream to glide, and see it tinged
Upon each brink, with all the gorgeous hues,
The yellow, red, or purple of the trees,
That, singly, or in tufts, or forests thick,
Adorn the shores; to see, perhaps, the side
Of some high mount reflected far below
SEPTEMBER.
With its bright colours, intermixed with spots
Of darker green. Yes, it were sweetly sad
To wander in the open fields, and hear,
E'en at this hour, the noonday hardly past,
'The lulling insects of the summer's night;
To hear, where lately buzzing swarms were heard,
A lonely bee long roving here and there
To find a single flower, but all in vain;
Then, rising quick, and with a louder hum,
In widening circles round and round his head,
Straight by the listener flying clear away,
As if to bid the fields a last adieu;
To hear, within the woodland's sunny side,
Late full of music, nothing, save, perhaps,
The sound of nutshells, by the squirrel dropped
From some tall beech, fast falling through the leaves.
89

Oper
THE
ANNOYER.
BY N. P. WILLIS.
LOVE knoweth every form of air,
And every shape of earth,
And comes, unbidden, everywhere,
Like thought's mysterious birth.
The moonlit sea and the sunset sky
Are written with Love's words,
And you hear his voice unceasingly,
Like song in the time of birds.
1
He peeps into the warrior's heart,
From the tip of a stooping plume,
And the serried spears and the many men
May not deny him room.
He'll come to his tent in the weary night,
And be busy in his dream;
And he'll float to his eye in the morning light,
Like a fay on a silver beam.

DAFRAMER.
He hears the sound of the hunter's gun,
And rides on the echo back,
And sighs in his ear, like a stirring leaf,
And flits in his woodland track.
The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river,
The cloud, and the open sky
He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver,
Like the light of your very eye.
The fisher hangs over the leaning boat,
And ponders the silver sea,
For Love is under the surface hid,
And a spell of thoughts has he.
He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet,
And speaks in the ripple low,
Till the bait is gone from the crafty line,
And the hook hangs bare below.


He blurs the print of the scholar's book,
And intrudes in the maiden's prayer:
And profanes the cell of the holy man,
In the shape of a lady fair.
In the darkest night, and the bright daylight,
In earth, and sea, and sky,
In every home of the human thought,
Will Love be lurking nigh.
STANZAS.
BY R. H. WILDE.
"My life is like the summer rose
That opens to the morning sky,
But ere the shades of evening close,
Is scattered on the ground-to die!
Yet on the rose's humble bed
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see-
But none shall weep a tear for me!
My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles in the moon's pale ray,
Its hold is frail-its date is brief,
Restless-and soon to pass away!
Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent-tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree,
But none shall breathe a sigh for me!
STANZA 8.
My life is like the prints, which feet
Have left on Tampa's desert strand;
Soon as the rising tide shall beat,
All trace will vanish from the sand,
Yet, as if grieving to efface
All vestige of the human race,
On that lone shore loud moans the sea,
But none, alas! shall mourn for me!
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THE DYING RAVEN
BY R. H. DAN A.
COME to these lonely woods to die alone?
It seems not many days since thou wast heard,
From out the mists of spring, with thy shrill note,
Calling upon thy mates—and their clear answers.
The earth was brown, then; and the infant leaves
Had not put forth to warm them in the sun,
Or play in the fresh air of heaven. Thy voice,
Shouting in triumph, told of winter gone,
And prophesying life to the sealed ground,
Did make me glad with thoughts of coming beauties.
And now they're all around us;-offspring bright
Of earth-a mother, who, with constant care,
Doth feed and clothe them all.-Now o'er her fields,
In blessed bands, or single, they are gone,
Or by her brooks they stand, and sip the stream;
Or peering o'er it-vanity well feigned-
In quaint approval seem to glow and nod
At their reflected graces. Morn to meet,
They in fantastic labours pass the night,
Catching its dews, and rounding silvery drops
THE DYING RAVEN.
To deck their bosoms. There, on high, bald trees,
From varnished cells some peep, and the old boughs
Make to rejoice and dance in warmer winds.
Over my head the winds and they make music;
And, grateful, in return for what they take,
Bright hues and odours to the air they give.
Thus mutual love brings mutual delight—
Brings beauty, life;—for love is life;-hate, death.
Thou Prophet of so fair a revelation-
Thou who abodest with us the winter long,
Enduring cold or rain, and shaking oft,
From thy dark mantle, falling sleet or snow—
Thou, who with purpose kind, when warmer days
Shone on the earth, 'mid thaw and steam, camest forth
From rocky nook, or wood, thy priestly cell,
To speak of comfort unto lonely man-
Didst say to him-though seemingly alone
'Mid wastes and snows, and silent, lifeless trees,
Or the more silent ground—it was not death,
But nature's sleep and rest, her kind repair;-
That Thou, albeit unseen, didst bear with him
The winter's night, and, patient of the day,
And cheered by hope, (instinct divine in Thee,)
Waitedst return of summer.
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THE DYING RAVEN.
More thou saidst,
Thou Priest of Nature, Priest of God, to man!
Thou spokest of faith, (than instinct no less sure,)
Of spirits near him though he saw them not:
Thou hadest him ope his intellectual eye,
And see his solitude all populous :
Thou showedst him Paradise, and deathless flowers;
And didst him pray to listen to the flow
Of living waters.
Preacher to man's spirit!
Emblem of Hope! Companion! Comforter!
Thou faithful one! is this thine end? 'Twas thou,
When summer birds were gone, and no form seen
In the void air, who camest, living and strong,
On thy broad, balanced pennons, through the winds.
And of thy long enduring, this the close!
Thy kingly strength, thou conqueror of storms,
Thus low brought down.
The year's mild, cheering dawn
Upon thee shone a momentary light.
The gales of spring upbore thee for a day,
And then forsook thee. Thou art fallen now;
And liest among thy hopes and promises —
Beautiful flowers, and freshly-springing blades,
Gasping thy life out. Here for thee the grass
Tenderly makes a bed; and the young buds
THE DYING RAVEN.
In silence open their fair, painted folds
To ease thy pain, the one-to cheer thee, these.
But thou art restless: and thy once keen eye
Is dull and sightless now. New blooming boughs,
Needlessly kind, have spread a tent for thee.
Thy mate is calling to the white, piled clouds,
And asks for thee. They answer give no back.
As I look up to their bright, angel faces,
Intelligent and capable of voice
They seem to me.
Their silence to my soul
Comes ominous. The same to thee, doomed bird,
Silence or sound. For thee there is no sound,
No silence.-Near thee stands the shadow, Death;
And now he slowly draws his sable veil
Over thine eyes; thy senses softly lulls
Into unconscious slumbers. The airy call
Thou 'lt hear no longer; 'neath sun-lighted clouds,
With beating wing, or steady poise aslant,
Wilt sail no more. Around thy trembling claws
Droop thy wings' parting feathers. Spasms of death
Are on thee.
Laid thus low by age? Or is 't
All-grudging man has brought thee to this end?
Perhaps the slender hair, so subtly wound
Around the grain God gives thee for thy food,
Has proved thy snare, and makes thine inward pain.
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THE DYING RAVEN.
I needs must mourn for thee. For I-who have
No fields, nor gather into garners—I
Bear thee both thanks and love, not fear nor hate.
And now, farewell! The falling leaves, ere long,
Will give thee decent covering. Till then,
Thine own black plumage, that will now no more
Glance to the sun, nor flash upon my eyes,
Like armour of steeled knight of Palestine,
Must be thy pall. Nor will it moult so soon
As sorrowing thoughts on those borne from him, fade
In living man.
Who scoffs these sympathies,
Makes mock of the divinity within;
Nor feels he gently breathing through his soul,
The universal spirit.-Hear it cry,
"How does thy pride abase thee, man, vain man!
How deaden thee to universal love,
And joy of kindred with all humble things—
God's creatures all!"
And surely it is so.
He who the lily clothes in simple glory,
He who doth hear the ravens cry for food,
Hath on our hearts, with hand invisible,
In signs mysterious, written what alone
Our hearts may read.-Death bring thee rest, poor bird.
HYMN OF NATURE.
BY W. 0. B. PEABODY.
GOD of the earth's extended plains!
The dark green fields contented lie:
The mountains rise like holy towers,
Where man might commune with the sky:
The tall cliff challenges the storm
That lowers upon the vale below,
Where shaded fountains send their streams,
With joyous music in their flow.
God of the dark and heavy deep!
The waves lie sleeping on the sands,
Till the fierce trumpet of the storm
Hath summoned up their thundering bands;
Then the white sails are dashed like foam,
Or hurry, trembling, o'er the seas,
Till, calmed by thee, the sinking gale
Serenely breathes, "Depart in peace."
GOD of the forest's solemn shade!
The grandeur of the lonely tree,
Uor M
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HYMN OF NATURE.
That wrestles singly with the gale,
Lifts up admiring eyes to thee;
But more majestic far they stand,
When, side by side, their ranks they form,
To wave on high their plumes of green,
And fight their battles with the storm.
GOD of the light and viewless air!
Where summer breezes sweetly flow,
Or, gathering in their angry might,
The fierce and wintry tempests blow;
All-from the evening's plaintive sigh,
That hardly lifts the drooping flower,
To the wild whirlwind's midnight cry—
Breathe forth the language of thy power.
GOD of the fair and open sky!
How gloriously above us springs
The tented dome, of heavenly blue,
Suspended on the rainbow's rings!
Each brilliant star, that sparkles through,
Each gilded cloud, that wanders free
In evening's purple radiance, gives
The beauty of its praise to thee.
God of the rolling orbs above!
Thy name is written clearly bright
HYMN OF NATURE.
In the warm day's unvarying blaze,
Or evening's golden shower of light.
For every fire that fronts the sun,
And every spark that walks alone
Around the utmost verge of heaven,
Were kindled at thy burning throne.
GOD of the world! the hour must come
And Nature's self to dust return;
Her crumbling altars must decay
Her incense fires shall cease to burn;
But still her grand and lovely scenes
Have made man's warmest praises flow;
For hearts grow holier as they trace
The beauty of the world below.
#
101

C
いい
​A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS.
BY C. C. MOORE.
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse:
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS.
103
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugarplums danced through their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap-
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter:
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny raindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name :
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen!
On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Donder and Blixen-
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!”
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So, up to the housetop the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys-and St. Nicholas too.
And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound,
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A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedlar just opening his pack.
His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow;
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump; a right jolly old elf;
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
THE FROST.
BY H. F. GOULD.
THE Frost looked forth one still, clear night,
And whispered, "Now I shall be out of sight;
So through the valley and over the height,
In silence I'll take my way.
I will not go on like that blustering train,—
The wind and the snow, the hail and the rain,
Who make so much bustle and noise in vain,
But I'll be as busy as they!"
Then he flew to the mountain, and powdered its crest;
He lit on the trees, and their boughs he drest
In diamond beads; and over the breast
Of the quivering lake, he spread
A coat of mail, that it need not fear
The downward point of many a spear,
That he hung on its margin, far and near,
Where a rock could rear its head.
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THE FROST.
He went to the windows of those, who slept,
And over each pane, like a fairy, crept;
Wherever be breathed, wherever he stepped,
By the light of the morn, were seen
Most beautiful things; there were flowers and trees;
There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees;
There were cities with temples and towers; and these
All pictured in silver sheen!
But he did one thing that was hardly fair-
He peeped in the cupboard, and finding there,
That all had forgotten for him to prepare,
Now, just to set them a-thinking,
I'll bite this basket of fruit,” said he,
"This costly pitcher, I'll burst in three;
And the glass of water they've left for me
Shall 'tchick!' to tell them I'm drinking!"
GREECE.
BY J. G. BROOKS.
LAND of the brave! where lie inurned
The shrouded forms of mortal clay,
In whom the fire of valour burned,
And blazed upon the battle's fray;
Land where the gallant Spartan few
Bled at Thermopylæ of yore,
When death his purple garment threw
On Hellas' consecrated shore!
Land of the Muse! within thy bowers
Her soul-entrancing echoes rung,
While on their course the rapid hours
Paused at the melody she sung ;
Till every grove and every hill,
And every stream that flowed along,
From morn to night repeated still
The winning harmony of song.
Land of dead heroes! living slaves!
Shall glory gild thy clime no more?
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GREECE.
Her banner float above thy waves
Where proudly it hath swept before?
Hath not remembrance then a charm
To break the fetter and the chain;
To bid thy children nerve the arm,
And strike for freedom once again?
No! coward souls! the light which shone
On Leuctra's war-empurpled day,
The light which beamed on Marathon,
Hath lost its splendour, ceased to play :
And thou art but a shadow now,
With helmet shattered, spear in rust;
Thine honour but a dream, and thou
Despised, degraded, in the dust!
Where sleeps the spirit, that of old
Dashed down to earth the Persian plume;
When the loud chant of triumph told,
How fatal was the despot's doom?
The bold three hundred-where are they,
Who died on battle's gory breast?
Tyrants have trampled on the clay,
Where death has hushed them into rest.
Yet, Ida, yet upon thy hill,
A glory shines of ages fled;
GREECE.
And fame her light is pouring still,
Not on the living, but the dead!
But 'tis the dim sepulchral light
Which sheds a faint and feeble ray,
As moon-beams on the brow of night,
When tempests sweep upon their way.
Greece! yet awake thee from thy trance;
Behold thy banner waves afar;
Behold the glittering weapons glance
Along the gleaming front of war!
A gallant chief of high emprize*
Is urging foremost in the field,
Who calls upon thee to arise
In might, in majesty revealed.
In vain, in vain the hero calls;
In vain he sounds the trumpet loud;
His banner totters; see, it falls
In ruin, freedom's battle shroud:
Thy children have no soul to dare
Such deeds as glorified their sires;
Their valour's but a meteor's glare,
Which gleams a moment and expires.
Lost land! where Genius made his reign,
And reared his golden arch on high;
* Ypsilanti.
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GREECE.
Where science raised her sacred fane,
Its summit peering to the sky;
Upon thy clime the midnight deep
Of ignorance hath brooded long;
And in the tomb, forgotten, sleep
The sons of science and of song.
Thy sun hath set, the evening storm
Hath passed in giant fury by,
To blast the beauty of thy form,
And spread its pall upon thy sky :
Gone is thy glory's diadem,
And freedom never more shall cease
To pour her mournful requiem
O'er blighted, lost, degraded Greece!
THE CORAL GROVE.
BY J. G. PERCIVAL.
DEEP in the wave is a coral grove,
Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove,
Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue,
That never are wet with falling dew,
But in bright and changeful beauty shine,
Far down in the green and glassy brine,
The floor is of sand like the mountain drift,
And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow;
From coral rocks the sea-plants lift
Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow;
The water is calm and still below,
For the winds and the waves are absent there,
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air:
There, with its waving blade of green,
The sea-flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen
To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter:
There, with a light and easy motion,
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THE CORAL GROVE.
The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean
Are bending like corn on the upland lea:
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe, when the wrathful Spirit of storms,
Has made the top of the waves his own:
And when the ship from his fury flies,
Where the myriad voices of Ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore;
Then, far below, in the peaceful sea,
The purple mullet and goldfish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly,
Through the bending twigs of the coral grove.
SCENE AFTER A SUMMER SHOWER.
BY A. NORTON.
THE rain is o'er. How dense and bright
Yon pearly clouds reposing lie!
Cloud above cloud, a glorious sight,
Contrasting with the dark blue sky!
In grateful silence, earth receives
The general blessing; fresh and fair,
Each flower expands its little leaves,
As glad the common joy to share.
The softened sunbeams pour around
A fairy light, uncertain, pale;
The wind flows cool; the scented ground
Is breathing odours on the gale.
Mid yon rich clouds' voluptuous pile,
Methinks some spirit of the air
Might rest to gaze below awhile,
Then turn to bathe and revel there.
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SCENE AFTER A SUMMER SHOWER.
The sun breaks forth; from off the scene
Its floating veil of mist is flung;
And all the wilderness of green
With trembling drops of light is hung.
Now gaze on Nature-yet the same-
Glowing with life, by breezes fanned,
Luxuriant, lovely, as she came,
Fresh in her youth, from God's own hand.
Hear the rich music of that voice,
Which sounds from all below, above;
She calls her children to rejoice,
And round them throws her arms of love.
Drink in her influence; low-born care,
And all the train of mean desire,
Refuse to breathe this holy air,
And 'mid this living light expire.

THE PLEASURE BOAT.
BY R. H. DANA.
COME, hoist the sail, the fast let go!
They're seated side by side;
Wave chases wave in pleasant flow:
The bay is fair and wide.
The ripples lightly tap the boat.
Loose!
Give her to the wind!
She shoots ahead:-They're all afloat:
The strand is far behind.
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THE PLEASURE BOAT.
No danger reach so fair a crew!
Thou goddess of the foam,
I'll ever pay thee worship due,
If thou wilt bring them home.
Fair ladies, fairer than the spray
The prow is dashing wide,
Soft breezes take you on your way,
Soft flow the blessed tide!
O, might I like those breezes be,
And touch that arching brow,
I'd toil for ever on the sea
Where ye are floating now.
The boat goes tilting on the waves;
The waves go tilting by;
There dips the duck;-her back she laves;
O'er head the sea-gulls fly.
Now, like the gulls that dart for prey,
The little vessel stoops;
Now rising, shoots along her way,
Like them, in easy swoops.
The sun-light falling on her sheet,
It glitters like the drift
THE PLEASURE BOAT.
Sparkling in scorn of summer's heat,
High up some mountain rift.
The winds are fresh; she's driving fast
Upon the bending tide,
The crinkling sail, and crinkling mast,
Go with her side by side.
Why dies the breeze away so soon?
Why hangs the pennant down?
The sea is glass; the sun at noon. —
-Nay, lady, do not frown;
For, see, the winged fisher's plume
Is painted on the sea:
Below, a cheek of lovely bloom.
-Whose eyes look up at thee?
She smiles; thou needst must smile on her.
And, see, beside her face
A rich, white cloud that doth not stir.—
What beauty, and what grace!
And pictured beach of yellow sand,
And peaked rock, and hill,
Change the smooth sea to fairy land.-
How lovely and how still!
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THE PLEASURE BOAT.
From that far isle the thresher's flail
Strikes close upon the ear;
The leaping fish, the swinging sail
Of yonder sloop sound near.
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.
BY W. LEGGET T.
THE birds, when winter shades the sky,
Fly o'er the seas away,
Where laughing isles in sunshine lie,
And summer breezes play :
And thus the friends that flutter near
While fortune's sun is warm,
Are startled if a cloud appear,
And fly before the storm.
But when from winter's howling plains
Each other warbler's past,
The little snow bird still remains,
And cherups midst the blast.
Love, like that bird, when friendship's throng
With fortune's sun depart,
Still lingers with its cheerful song,
And nestles on the heart.
LINES FOR MUSIC.
BY T. S. FAY.
OVER forest and meadow the night breeze is stealing,
The blush of the sunset is glowing no more—
And the stream which we love, harmless fires revealing,
With ripples of silver, is kissing the shore.
I have watched from the beach which your presence en-
chanted,
In the star-lighted heaven each beautiful gem,
And I sighed as I thought, ere the break of the morning,
From the gaze of my eyes you must vanish like them.
Then stay where the night-breeze o'er flowers is stealing,
And raise your young voices in music once more;
Let them blend with the stream, its soft murmurs reveal-
ing,
In the ripples of silver which roll to the shore.
But when summer has fled, and yon flowers have faded,
And the fields and the forests are withered and sere-
LINES FOR MUSIC.
121
When the friends now together, by distance are parted,
Leaving nothing but winter and loneliness here;
Will you think of the hour, when in friendship united,
I lingered at evening to bid you adieu;
When I paused by the stream, with the stars so delighted,
And wished I might linger for ever with you?
Oh, forget not the time when that night-breeze was steal-
ing,
Though desolate oceans between us may roar,
The beach-and the stars-and the waters revealing
Thoughts bright as the ripples which break on the shore.
LOOK ALOFT.
BY J. LAWRENCE, JUN.
[The following lines were suggested by an anecdote, said to have been
related by the late Dr. Godman, of the ship-boy who was about to fall
from the rigging, and was only saved by the mate's characteristic excla-
mation, "Look aloft, you lubber."]
In the tempest of life, when the wave and the gale
Are around and above, if thy footing should fail-
If thine eye should grow dim, and thy caution depart―
"Look aloft" and be firm, and be fearless of heart.
If the friend, who embraced in prosperity's glow
With a smile for each joy and a tear for each wo,
Should betray thee when sorrow like clouds are arrayed,
“Look aloft” to the friendship which never shall fade.
Should the visions which hope spreads in light to thine
eye,
Like the tints of the rainbow, but brighten to fly,
Then turn, and through tears of repentant regret,
"Look aloft" to the sun that is never to set.
LOOK ALOFT.
Should they who are dearest, the son of thy heart-
The wife of thy bosom-in sorrow depart,
"Look aloft," from the darkness and dust of the tomb,
To that soil where "affection is ever in bloom."
And oh! when death comes in terrors, to cast
His fears on the future, his pall on the past,
In that moment of darkness, with hope in thy heart,
And a smile in thine eye, "look aloft" and depart!
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TO A HUMMING-BIRD
BY J. R. SUTERMEISTER.
BIRD of the Summer bower!
Whose burnished plumage to the air is given,
How thy bill dips in each luxuriant flower,
How thy wing fleets through heaven!
Thou seemst to Fancy's eye
An animated blossom born in air;
Which breathes and bourgeons in the golden sky,
And sheds its odours there.
Thou seemst a rainbow hue
Touched by the sunbeam into life and light;
As cuts thy rosy wing the welkin through
In its eternal flight.
Thou art not born of Earth!
Thy home is in the free and pathless air!
The wild flower eglantine bloomed on thy birth,
And threw its fragrance there.
T
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t
TO A HUMMING-BIRD.
The green and spangled dell,
For thee diffuses its sweet scent and hue:
Thou drinkest, from the tulip's ample bell,
The late and early dew.
I love, sweet bird! to see
Thy crimson plumage in the morning clear.-
Thy gambols-thy capricious revelry
In the thin atmosphere.
How thou art full of life
How art thou joyous through thy transient hour
For thee, the morning air with sweets is rife-
For thee, blooms the May bower.
Go forth, on thy glad way!
The Eagle of a hundred years, is not
So happy in his towering pride of sway,
As thou, in thy brief lot!

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
BY J. N.
J. N. BARKER.
SHE was, indeed, a pretty little creature,
So meek, so modest: what a pity, madam,
That one so young and innocent, should fall
A prey to the ravenous wolf.
The wolf, indeed!
You've left the nursery to but little purpose,
If you believe a wolf could ever speak,
Though, in the time of Æsop, or before.
-Was 't not a wolf, then? I have read the story
A hundred times; and heard it told: nay, told it
Myself, to my younger sisters, when we've shrank
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
Together in the sheets, from very terror,
And, with protecting arms, each round the other,
E'en sobbed ourselves to sleep. But I remember,
I saw the story acted on the stage,
Last winter in the city, I and my school-mates,
With our most kind preceptress, Mrs. Bazely,
And so it was a robber, not a wolf
That met poor little Riding Hood i' the wood?
Nor wolf nor robber, child: this nursery tale
Contains a hidden moral.
Hidden: nay,
I'm not so young, but I can spell it out,
And thus it is: children, when sent on errands,
Must never stop by the way to talk with wolves.
-Tut! wolves again: wilt listen to me, child?
—Say on, dear grandma.
-Thus then, dear my daughter:
In this young person, culling idle flowers,
You see the peril that attends the maiden
Who in her walk through life, yields to temptation,
And quits the onward path to stray aside,
Allured by gaudy weeds.
Nay, none but children
Could gather butter-cups, and May-weed, mother.
But violets, dear violets-methinks
I could live ever on a bank of violets,
Or die most happy there.
You die, indeed,
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128
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
At your years die!
Then sleep, ma'am, if you please,
As you did yesterday in that sweet spot
Down by the fountain; where you seated you
To read the last new novel-what d'ye call 't—
The Prairie, was it not?
It was, my love,
And there, as I remember, your kind arm
Pillowed my aged head: 'twas irksome, sure,
To your young limbs and spirit.
No, believe me,
To keep the insects from disturbing you
Was sweet employment, or to fan your cheek
When the breeze lull'd.
You're a dear child!
And then,
To gaze on such a scene! the grassy bank,
So gently sloping to the rivulet,
All purple with my own dear violet,
And sprinkled o'er with spring flowers of each tint.
There was that pale and humble little blossom,
Looking so like its namesake Innocence;
The fairy-formed, flesh-hued anemone,
With its fair sisters, called by country people
Fair maids o' the spring. The lowly cinquefoil, too,
And statelier marigold. The violet sorrel,
Blushing so rosy red in bashfulness,
And her companion of the season, dressed
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
In varied pink. The partridge evergreen,
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Hanging its fragrant wax-work on each stem,
And studding the green sod with scarlet berries
—Did you see all those flowers? I marked them not.
O many more, whose names I have not learned.
And then to see the light blue butterfly
Roaming about, like an enchanted thing,
From flower to flower, and the bright honey-bee-
And there, too, was the fountain, overhung
With bush and tree, draped by the graceful vine,
Where the white blossoms of the dogwood, met
The crimson red-bud, and the sweet birds sang
Their madrigals; while the fresh springing waters,
Just stirring the green fern that bathed within them,
Leaped joyful o'er their fairy mound of rock,
And fell in music-then passed prattling on,
Between the flowery banks that bent to kiss them.
I dreamed not of these sights or sounds.
Then just
Beyond the brook there lay a narrow strip,
Like a rich riband, of enamelled meadow,
Girt by a pretty precipice, whose top
Was crowned with rose-bay. Half-way down there stood
Sylphlike, the light fantastic columbine,
As ready to leap down unto her lover
Harlequin Bartsia, in his painted vest
Of green and crimson.
Tut! enough, enough,
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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
Your madcap fancy runs too riot, girl.
We must shut up your books of Botany,
And give you graver studies.
-Will you shut
The book of nature, too? for it is that
I love and study. Do not take me back
To the cold, heartless city, with its forms
And dull routine; its artificial manners
And arbitrary rules; its cheerless pleasures
And mirthless masquing. Yet a little longer
O let me hold communion here with Nature.
-Well, well, we'll see. But we neglect our lecture
Upon this picture—
Poor Red Riding Hood!
We had forgotten her; yet mark, dear madam,
How patiently the poor thing waits our leisure.
And now the hidden moral.
Thus it is:
Mere children read such stories literally,
But the more elderly and wise, deduce
A moral from the fiction. In a word,
The wolf that you must guard against is—Love.
—I thought love was an infant; "toujours enfant.”
-The world and love were young together, child,
And innocent—alas! time changes all things.
-True, I remember, love is now a man.
And, the song says,
But how a wolf?
(6 a very saucy one"-
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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
In ravenous appetite,
Unpitying and unsparing, passion is oft
A beast of prey. As the wolf to the lamb,
Is he to innocence.
I shall remember,
For now I see the moral. Trust me, madam,
Should I e'er meet this wolf-love in my way,
Be he a boy or man, I'll take good heed,
And hold no converse with him.
-You'll do wisely.
-Nor e'er in field or forest, plain or pathway,
Shall he from me know whither I am going,
Or whisper that he'll meet me.

1
T
132
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
Nor, in my grandam's cottage, nor elsewhere,
Will I e'er lift the latch for him myself,
Or bid him pull the bobbin.
Well, my dear,
You've learned your lesson.
Yet one thing, my mother,
Somewhat perplexes me.
I will explain.
Say what, my love,
This wolf, the story goes,
Deceived poor grandam first, and ate her up:
What is the moral here? Have all our grandmas
Been first devoured by love?
-Let us go in;
The air grows cool-you are a forward chit.
THE WITHERED ROSEBUD.
BY J K. MITCHELL.
Ан, why does this rose-bud more beautiful seem,
Than when gracing the stem where it grew;
All withered and pale, of a flower but the dream?
'Tis because it was given by you-
'Tis because the sweet floweret had lingered awhile
On the bosom of beauty and youth,
Had borrowed her lustre, had stolen her smile,
And came to me breathing her truth.
And now, though its leaflets are gone to decay,
And mournfully drooping its stem,
And tints from the rainbow are fading away,
"T will still be of roses the gem.
Like its fragrance, still lingering, fond memory the while,
Will couple this blossom with thee,
And soothe by recalling the look and the smile
That came with the rose-bud to me.

THE LAST LEAF.
BY O. W. HOLMES.
I SAW him once before
As he passed by the door,
And again,
The pavement-stones resound
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.
THE LAST LEAF.
They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
So forlorn;
And he shakes his feeble head
That it seems as if he said
'They are gone,"
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has pressed
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmama has said-
Poor old lady; she is dead
Long ago-
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
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136
THE LAST LEAF.
But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here,
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches-and all that
Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring-
Let them smile as I do now
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
THE BIRTH OF A POET.
BY J. NEAL.
On a blue summer night,
While the stars were asleep,
Like gems of the deep,
In their own drowsy light;
While the newly mown hay
On the green earth lay,
And all that came near it went scented away;
From a lone woody place,
There looked out a face,
With large blue eyes,
Like the wet warm skies,
Brim full of water and light;
A profusion of hair
Flashing out on the air,
And a forehead alarmingly bright:
"Twas the head of a poet! He grew
As the sweet strange flowers of the wilderness grow,
In the dropping of natural dew,
Unheeded-alone
Till his heart had blown-
As the sweet strange flowers of the wilderness blow;
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THE BIRTH OF A POET.
Till every thought wore a changeable strain
Like flower-leaves wet with the sunset rain :
A proud and passionate boy was he,
Like all the children of Poesy;
With a haughty look and a haughty tread,
And something awful about his head;
With wonderful eyes
Full of wo and surprise,
Like the eyes of them that can see the dead.
Looking about,
For a moment or two he stood
On the shore of the mighty wood;
Then ventured out,
With a bounding step and a joyful shout,
The brave sky bending o'er him!
The broad sea all before him!
MARCO BOZZARIS.
BY F. G. HALLECK.
[He fell in an attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient
Platæa, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory. His last words
were: "To die for liberty, is a pleasure, not a pain."]
At midnight, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power:
In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;
In dreams his song of triumph heard;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring:
Then pressed that monarch's throne—a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.
At midnight, in the forest shades,
Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.
There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood
140
MARCO BOZZARIS.
On old Platea's day;
And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far as they.
An hour passed on-the Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,
"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
He woke to die midst flame, and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:
"Strike-till the last armed foe expires;
Strike-for your altars and your fires;
Strike-for the green graves of your sires;
God-and your native land!"
They fought-like brave men, long and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered-but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
MARCO BOZZARIS.
And the red field was won:
Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,
Like flowers at set of sun.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels,
For the first time, her firstborn's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean-storm,
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;
And thou art terrible-the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear,
Of agony, are thine.
But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard
The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come, when his task of fame is wrought-
Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought-
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142
MARCO BOZZARIS.
Come in her crowning hour-and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight
Of sky and stars to prisoned men:
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind, from woods of palm,
And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
BOZZARIS! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
Rest thee—there is no prouder grave,
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral weeds for thee,
Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume,
Like torn branch from death's leafless tree,
In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,
The heartless luxury of the tomb:
But she remembers thee as one
Long loved, and for a season gone;
For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday bells;
Of thee her babes' first lisping tells :
MARCO BOZZARIS.
For thine her evening prayer is said
At palace couch, and cottage bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears:
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys,
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,
Talk of thy doom without a sigh:
For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's,
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die.
143
THOUGHTS OF A STUDENT.
BY J. LAWRENCE, JUN.
MANY a sad, sweet thought have I,
Many a passing, sunny gleam,
Many a bright tear in mine eye,
Many a wild and wandering dream,
Stolen from hours I should have tied
To musty volumes by my side,
Given to hours that sweetly wooed
My heart from its study's solitude.
Oft when the south wind's dancing free
Over the earth and in the sky,
And the flowers peep softly out to see
The frolic Spring as she wantons by,
When the breeze and beam like thieves come in,
To steal me away, I deem it sin
To slight their voice, and away I'm straying
Over the hills and vales a Maying.
THOUGHTS OF A STUDENT.
Then can I hear the earth rejoice,
Happier than man may ever be,
Every fountain hath then a voice
That sings of its glad festivity;
For it hath burst the chains, that bound
Its currents dead in the frozen ground,
And flashing away in the sun has gone,
Singing, and singing, and singing on.
Autumn hath sunset hours, and then
Many a musing mood I cherish,
Many a hue of fancy, when
The hues of earth are about to perish;
Clouds are there, and brighter, I ween,
Hath real sunset never seen,
Sad as the faces of friends that die,
And beautiful as their memory.
Love hath its thoughts, we cannot keep,
Visions the mind may not control,
Waking as fancy does in sleep
The secret transports of the soul,
Faces and forms are strangely mingled,
Till one by one they 're slowly singled,
To the voice and lip, and eye of her
I worship like an idolater.
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146
THOUGHTS OF A STUDENT.
Many a big, proud tear have I,
When from my sweet and roaming track,
From the green earth and misty sky,
And spring and love I hurry back;
Then what a dismal, dreary gloom
Settles upon my loathed room,
Darker to every thought and sense
Than if they had never travelled thence.
Yet I have other thoughts that cheer
The toilsome day, and lonely night,
And many a scene and hope appear,
And almost make me gay and bright.
Honour and fame that I would win,
Though every toil that yet hath been
Were doubly borne, and not an hour
Were brightly hued by Fancy's power.
And though I may sometimes sigh to think
Of earth and heaven, and wind and sea,
And know that the cup which others drink
Shall never be brimmed by me;
That many a joy must be untasted,
And many a glorious breeze be wasted,
Yet would not, if I dared, repine,
That toil and study and care are mine.
LOVE AND FAME.
BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.
GIVE me the boon of Love!
I ask no more for Fame;
Far better one unpurchased heart
Than Glory's proudest name.
Why wake a fever in the blood,
Or damp the spirit now,
To gain a wreath whose leaves shall wave
Above a withered brow?
Give me the boon of Love!
Ambition's meed is vain;
Dearer Affection's earnest smile
Than Honour's richest train.
1
I'd rather lean upon a breast
Responsive to my own,
Than sit pavilioned gorgeously
Upon a kingly throne.
148
LOVE AND FAM E.
Like the Chaldean sage,
Fame's worshippers adore,
The brilliant orbs that scatter light
O'er heaven's azure floor;
But in their very hearts enshrined
The votaries of Love
Keep e'er the holy flame, which once
Illumed the courts above.
Give me the boon of Love!
Renown is but a breath,
Whose loudest echo ever floats
From out the halls of death.
A loving eye beguiles me more
Than Fame's emblazoned seal,
And one sweet tone of tenderness
Than Triumph's wildest peal.
Give me the boon of Love!
The path of Fame is drear,
And Glory's arch doth ever span
A hill-side cold and sere.
One wild flower from the path of Love,
All lowly though it lie,
Is dearer than the wreath that waves
To stern Ambition's eye.
LOVE AND FAME.
149
Give me the boon of Love!
The lamp of Fame shines far,
But Love's soft light glows near and warm-
A pure and household star.
One tender glance can fill the soul
With a perennial fire;
But Glory's flame burns fitfully-
A lone, funereal pyre.
Give me the boon of Love!
Fame's trumpet-strains depart,
But Love's sweet lute breathes melody
That lingers in the heart;
And the scroll of Fame will burn
When sea and earth consume,
But the rose of Love in a happier sphere,
Will live in deathless bloom!
NAPOLEON AT REST.
BY J. PIERPONT.
His falchion flashed along the Nile,
His host he led through Alpine snows,
O'er Moscow's towers, that blazed the while,
His eagle-flag unrolled--and froze!
Here sleeps he now, alone!-not one,
Of all the kings whose crowns he gave,
Bends o'er his dust; nor wife nor son
Has ever seen or sought his grave.
Behind the sea-girt rock, the star
That led him on from crown to crown
Has sunk, and nations from afar
Gazed as it faded and went down.
High is his tomb: the ocean flood,
Far, far below, by storms is curled-
As round him heaved, while high he stood,
A stormy and unstable world.
NAPOLEON AT REST.
Alone he sleeps: the mountain cloud,
That night hangs round him, and the breath
Of morning scatters, is the shroud
That wraps the conqueror's clay in death.
Pause here! The far-off world at last
Breathes free; the hand that shook its thrones
And to the earth its mitres cast,
Lies powerless now beneath these stones.
Hark! Comes there from the pyramids,
And from Siberian wastes of snow,
And Europe's hills, a voice that bids
The world be awed to mourn him?—No!
The only, the perpetual dirge
That's heard here, is the sea-bird's cry-
The mournful murmur of the surge,
The cloud's deep voice, the wind's low sigh.
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SHAKSPEARE ODE.
BY CHARLES SPRAGUE.
GoD of the glorious Lyre!
Whose notes of old on lofty Pindus rang,
While Jove's exulting choir
Caught the glad echoes and responsive sang-
Come! bless the service and the shrine,
We consecrate to thee and thine.
>
::..
Fierce from the frozen north,
When havoc led his legions forth,
O'er Learning's sunny groves the dark destroyer spread:
In dust the sacred statue slept,
Fair Science round her altars wept,
And Wisdom cowled his head.
At length, Olympian Lord of morn,
The raven veil of night was torn,
When, through golden clouds descending,
Thou didst hold thy radiant flight,
O'er nature's lovely pageant bending,
Till Avon rolled, all-sparkling, to thy sight!
:
154
SHAKSPEARE ODE.
There, on its bank, beneath the mulberry's shade,
Wrapp'd in young dreams, a wild-eyed minstrel strayed.
Lighting there and lingering long,
Thou didst teach the bard his song;
Thy fingers strung his sleeping shell,
And round his brows a garland curled;
On his lips thy spirit fell,
And bade him wake and warm the world!
Then Shakspeare rose!
Across the trembling strings
His daring hand he flings,
And lo! a new creation glows!
There, clustering round, submissive to his will,
Fate's vassal train his high commands fulfil.
Madness, with his frightful scream,
Vengeance, leaning on his lance,
Avarice, with his blade and beam,
Hatred, blasting with a glance;
Remorse, that weeps, and Rage, that roars,
And Jealousy, that dotes, but dooms, and murders, yet
adores.
Mirth, his face with sun-beams lit,
Waking laughter's merry swell,
Arm in arm with fresh-eyed Wit,
That waves his tingling lash, while Folly shakes his bell.
SHAKSPEARE ODE.
Despair, that haunts the gurgling stream,
Kissed by the virgin moon's cold beam,
Where some lost maid wild chaplets wreathes,
And swan-like, there her own dirge breathes,
Then, broken-hearted, sinks to rest,
155
Beneath the bubbling wave, that shrouds her maniac breast.
Young Love, with eye of tender gloom,
Now drooping o'er the hallowed tomb,
Where his plighted victims lie,
Where they met, but met to die:
And now, when crimson buds are sleeping,
Through the dewy arbor peeping,
Where beauty's child, the frowning world forgot,
To youth's devoted tale is listening,
Rapture on her dark lash glistening,
While fairies leave their cowslip cells and guard the hap-
py spot.
Thus rise the phantom throng,
Obedient to their Master's song,
And lead in willing chain the wondering soul along.
For other worlds war's Great One sighed in vain,
O'er other worlds see Shakspeare rove and reign!
The rapt magician of his own wild lay,
Earth and her tribes his mystic wand obey.
Old ocean trembles, thunder cracks the skies,
Air teems with shapes, and tell-tale spectres rise:
156
SHAKSPEARE ODE.
Night's paltering hags their fearful orgies keep,
And faithless guilt unseals the lip of sleep:
Time yields his trophies up, and death restores
The mouldered victims of his voiceless shores.
The fire-side legend and the faded page,
The crime that cursed, the deed that blessed an age,
All, all come forth-the good to charm and cheer,
To scourge bold Vice, and start the generous tear;
With pictured Folly gazing fools to shame,
And guide young Glory's foot along the path of fame.
Lo! hand in hand,
Hell's juggling sisters stand,
To greet their victim from the fight;
Grouped on the blasted heath,
They tempt him to the work of death,
Then melt in air and mock his wondering sight.
In midnight's hallowed hour,
He seeks the fatal tower,
Where the lone raven, perched on high,
Pours to the sullen gale
Her hoarse prophetic wail,
And croaks the dreadful moment nigh.
See, by the phantom dagger led,
Pale, guilty thing,
Slowly he steals with silent tread,
And grasps his coward steel to smite his sleeping king.
Hark! 'tis the signal bell,
SHAKSPEARE ODE.
Struck by that bold and unsexed one,
Whose milk is gall, whose heart is stone;
His ear hath caught the knell—
'Tis done! 'tis done!
Behold him from the chamber rushing,
Where his dead monarch's blood is gushing,
Look where he trembling stands,
Sad gazing there,
Life's smoking crimson on his hands,
And in his felon heart the worm of wild despair.
Mark the sceptred traitor slumbering!
There flit the slaves of conscience round,
With boding tongue foul murders numbering;
Sleep's leaden portals catch the sound.
In his dream of blood for mercy quaking,
At his own dull scream behold him waking!
Soon that dream to fate shall turn,
For him the living furies burn;
For him the vulture sits on yonder misty peak,
157
And chides the lagging night, and whets her hungry beak.
Hark! the trumpet's warning breath
Echoes round the vale of death.
Unhorsed, unhelmed, disdaining shield,
The panting tyrant scours the field.
Vengeance! he meets thy dooming blade!
The scourge of earth, the scorn of heaven,
He falls! unwept and unforgiven,
158
SHAKSPEARE ODE.
And all his guilty glories fade.
Like a crushed reptile in the dust he lies,
And Hate's last lightning quivers from his eyes!
Behold yon crownless king—
Yon white-locked, weeping sire:
Where heaven's unpillared chambers ring,
And burst their streams of flood and fire!
He gave them all-the daughters of his love ;-
That recreant pair!—they drive him forth to rove;
In such a night of wo,
The cubless regent of the wood
Forgets to bathe her fangs in blood,
And caverns with her foe!
Yet one was ever kind,-
Why lingers she behind?
O pity! —view him by her dead form kneeling,
Even in wild phrensy holy nature feeling.
His aching eyeballs strain
To see those curtained orbs unfold,
That beauteous bosom heave again, -
But all is dark and cold.
In agony the father shakes;
Grief's choking note
Swells in his throat,
Each withered heart-string tugs and breaks!
Round her pale neck his dying arms he wreathes,
And on her marble lips his last, his death-kiss breathes.
J
SHAKSPEARE ODE.
Down! trembling wing-shall insect weakness keep
The sun-defying eagle's sweep?
A mortal strike celestial strings,
And feebly echo what a seraph sings?
Who now shall grace the glowing throne,
Where, all unrivalled, all alone,
Bold Shakspeare sat, and looked creation through,
The minstrel monarch of the worlds he drew?
That throne is cold-that lyre in death unstrung,
On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung.
Yet Old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps,
159
One spot shall spare-the grave where Shakspeare sleeps.
Rulers and ruled in common gloom may lie,
But Nature's laureate bards shall never die.
Art's chiselled boast, and Glory's trophied shore,
Must live in numbers, or can live no more.
While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim,
Still rolls the Olympic car in Pindar's fame :
Troy's doubtful walls, in ashes passed away,
Yet frown on Greece in Homer's deathless lay:
Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes,
Stands all immortal in her Maro's strains :
So, too, yon giant empress of the isles,
On whose broad sway the sun for ever smiles,
To Time's unsparing rage one day must bend,
And all her triumphs in her Shakspeare end!
160
SHAKSPEARE ODE.
O thou! to whose creative power
We dedicate the festal hour,
While Grace and Goodness round the altar stand;
Learning's anointed train, and Beauty's rose-lipped
band
Realms yet unborn, in accents now unknown,
Thy song shall learn, and bless it for their own.
Deep in the West, ás Independence roves,
His banners planting round the land he loves,
Where nature sleeps in Eden's infant grace,
In time's full hour shall spring a glorious race: —
Thy name, thy verse, thy language shall they bear,
And deck for thee the vaulted temple there.
Our Roman-hearted fathers broke
Thy parent empire's galling yoke,
But thou, harmonious monarch of the mind,
Around their sons a gentler chain shall bind;
Still o'er our land shall Albion's sceptre wave,
And what her mighty Lion lost her mightier Swan shall
save.
:

~~
0
616
ALNWICK CASTLE.
BY F. G. HALLECK.
HOME of the Percy's highborn race,
Home of their beautiful and brave,
Alike their birth and burial place,
Their cradle, and their grave!
Still sternly o'er the castle gate
Their house's Lion stands in state,
As in his proud departed hours;
And warriors frown in stone on high,
And feudal banners "flout the sky"
Above his princely towers.
A gentle hill its side inclines,
Lovely in England's fadeless green,
To meet the quiet stream which winds
Through this romantic scene
As silently and sweetly still,
As when, at evening, on that hill,
While summer's wind blew soft and low,
Seated by gallant Hotspur's side,
His Katherine was a happy bride,
A thousand years ago.
Gaze on the Abbey's ruined pile :
Does not the succouring Ivy, keeping
Her watch around it seem to smile,
As o'er a loved one sleeping?
ALNWICK CASTLE.
163
One solitary turret gray
Still tells, in melancholy glory,
The legend of the Cheviot day,
The Percy's proudest border story.
That day its roof was triumph's arch;
Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome,
The light step of the soldier's march,
The music of the trump and drum;
And babe, and sire, the old, the young,
And the monk's hymn, and minstrel's song,
And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home.
Wild roses by the Abbey towers
Are gay in their young bud and bloom:
They were born of a race of funeral flowers
That garlanded, in long-gone hours,
A Templar's knightly tomb.
He died, the sword in his mailed hand,
On the holiest spot of the Blessed Land,
Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath;
When blood ran free as festal wine,
And the sainted air of Palestine
Was thick with the darts of death.
Wise with the lore of centuries,
What tales, if there be "tongues in trees,"
Those giant oaks could tell,
164
ALNWICK CASTLE.
Of beings born and buried here;
Tales of the peasant and the peer,
Tales of the bridal and the bier,
The welcome and farewell,
Since on their boughs the startled bird
First, in her twilight slumbers, heard
The Norman's curfew-bell.
I wandered through the lofty halls
Trod by the Percys of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel walls
Each high, heroic name,
From him who once his standard set
Where now, o'er mosque and minaret,
Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons;
To him who, when a younger son,
Fought for King George at Lexington,
A Major of Dragoons.
*
*
:
That last half stanza—it has dashed
From my warm lip the sparkling cup;
The light that o'er my eye-beam flashed,
The power that bore my spirit up
Above this bank-note world—is gone;
And Alnwick's but a market-town,
And this, alas! its market-day,
And beasts and borderers throng the way;
ALNWICK CASTLE.
Oxen, and bleating lambs in lots,
Northumbrian boors, and plaided Scots,
Men in the coal and cattle line;
From Teviot's bard and hero land,
From Royal Berwick's beach of sand,
From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,
So dazzling to the dreaming boy:
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of Knights, but not of the Round Table,
Of Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy :
"Tis what " our President," Monroe,
Has called "the era of good feeling :
The Highlander, the bitterest foe
To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,
And put on pantaloons and coat,
And leave off cattle-stealing:
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land
Palace, and park, and vassal band
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings.
165
166
ALNWICK CASTLE.
The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come to-day the turbaned Turk,
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cearments start,)
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre blow is given
For Greece and fame, for faith and Heaven,
By Europe's craven chivalry.
You'll ask if yet the Percy lives
In the armed pomp of feudal state?
The present representative
Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate,”
Are some half-dozen serving men,
In the drab coat of William Penn;
A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,
And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,
Spoke nature's aristocracy;
And one, half groom, half seneschal,
Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,
From donjon-keep to turret wall,
For ten-and-sixpence sterling.
DIRGE OF ALARIC THE VISIGOTH.
BY E. EVERETT.
[Alaric stormed and spoiled the city of Rome, and was afterward buried in the
channel of the river Busentius, the water of which had been diverted from
its course that the body might be interred.]
WHEN I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear;
For I will die as I did live,
Nor take the boon I cannot give.
Ye shall not raise a marble bust
Upon the spot where I repose;
Ye shall not fawn before my dust,
In hollow circumstance of woes;
Nor sculptured clay, with lying breath,
Insult the clay that moulds beneath.
Ye shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
Lay down the wreck of power to rest;
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him that was "the scourge of God,"
168
DIRGE OF ALARIC THE VISIGOTH.
But ye the mountain stream shall turn,
And lay its secret channel bare,
And hollow, for your sovereign's urn,
A resting-place for ever there :
Then bid its everlasting springs
Flow back upon the king of kings;
And never be the secret said,
Until the deep give up his dead.
My gold and silver ye shall fling
Back to the clods that gave them birth ;-
The captured crowns of many a king,
The ransom of a conquered earth:
For, e'en though dead, will I control
The trophies of the capitol.
But when, beneath the mountain tide,
Ye've laid your monarch down to rot,
Ye shall not rear upon its side
Pillar or mound to mark the spot;
For long enough the world has shook
Beneath the terrors of my look;
And now that I have run my race,
The astonished realms shall rest a space.
My course was like a river deep,
And from the northern hills I burst,
Across the world, in wrath to sweep,
DIRGE OF ALARIC THE VISIGOTH.
And where I went the spot was cursed,
Nor blade of grass again was seen
Where Alaric and his hosts had been.
See how their haughty barriers fail
Beneath the terror of the Goth,
Their iron-breasted legions quail
Before my ruthless sabaoth,
And low the queen of empires kneels,
And grovels at my chariot-wheels.
Not for myself did I ascend
In judgment my triumphal car;
'Twas God alone on high did send
The avenging Scythian to the war,
To shake abroad, with iron-hand,
The appointed scourge of his command.
With iron hand that scourge I reared
O'er guilty king and guilty realm;
Destruction was the ship I steered,
And vengeance sat upon the helm,
When, launched in fury on the flood,
I ploughed my way through seas of blood,
And, in the stream their hearts had spilt,
Washed out the long arrears of guilt.
169
170
DIRGE OF ALARIC THE VISIGOTH.
Across the everlasting Alp
I poured the torrent of my powers,
And feeble Cæsars shrieked for help,
In vain, within their seven-hilled towers;
I quenched in blood the brightest gem
That glittered in their diadem,
And struck a darker, deeper die,
In the purple of their majesty,
And bade my northern banners shine
Upon the conquered Palatine.
My course is run, my errand done;
I go to Him from whom I came ;
But never yet shall set the sun
Of glory that adorns my name;
And Roman hearts shall long be sick,
When men shall think of Alaric.
My course is run, my errand done;
But darker ministers of fate,
Impatient, round the eternal throne,
And in the caves of vengeance, wait;
And soon mankind shall blench away
Before the name of Attila.
THE LAST EVENING BEFORE ETERNITY.
BY J. A. HILLHOUSE.
By this, the sun his westering car drove low:
Round his broad wheel full many a lucid cloud
Floated, like happy isles, in seas of gold:
Along the horizon castled shapes were piled,
Turrets and towers, whose fronts, embattled, gleamed
With yellow light: smit by the slanting ray,
A ruddy beam the canopy reflected;
With deeper light the ruby blushed; and thick
Upon the seraphs' wings the glowing spots
Seemed drops of fire. Uncoiling from its staff,
With fainter wave, the gorgeous ensign hung,
Or, swelling with the swelling breeze, by fits
Cast off, upon the dewy air, huge flakes
Of golden lustre. Over all the hill,
The heavenly legions, the assembled world,
Evening her crimson tint for ever drew.
172
LAST EVENING BEFORE ETERNITY,
Round I gazed,
Where, in the purple west, no more to dawn,
Faded the glories of the dying day.
Mild twinkling through a crimson-skirted cloud
The solitary star of evening shone.
While gazing wistful on that peerless light,
Thereafter to be seen no more, (as, oft
In dreams, strange images will mix,) sad thoughts
Passed o'er my soul. Sorrowing, I cried, Farewell,
Pale, beauteous planet, that displayst so soft,
Amid yon glowing streak, thy transient beam,
A long, a last farewell! Seasons have changed,
Ages and empires rolled, like smoke, away;
But thou, unaltered, beamst as silver fair
As on thy birthnight. Bright and watchful eyes,
From palaces and bowers, have hailed thy gem
With secret transport. Natal star of love,
And souls that love the shadowy hour of fancy,
How much I owe thee, how I bless thy ray!
How oft thy rising o'er the hamlet green,
Signal of rest, and social converse sweet,
Beneath some patriarchal tree, has cheered
The peasant's heart, and drawn his benison!
DEATH OF AN INFANT.
BY L. H. SIGOURNEY.
DEATH found strange beauty on that polished brow,
And dashed it out. There was a tint of rose
On cheek and lip; -he touched the veins with ice,
And the rose faded. Forth from those blue eyes
There spake a wishful tenderness—a doubt
Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence
Alone may wear. With ruthless haste, he bound
The silken fringes of those curtaining lids
For ever.
There had been a murmuring sound,
With which the babe would claim its mother's ear,
Charming her even to tears. The spoiler set
The seal of silence. But there beamed a smile
So fixed and holy from that cherub brow―
Death gazed, and left it there;-He dared not steal
The signet-ring of Heaven.
THE SMILE OF INNOCENCE.
BY L. M. DAVIDSON.
THERE is a smile of bitter scorn,
Which curls the lip, which lights the eye;
There is a smile in beauty's morn
Just rising o'er the midnight sky.
There is a smile of youthful joy,
When hope's bright star's the transient guest;
There is a smile of placid age,
Like sunset on the billow's breast.
There is a smile, the maniac's smile,
Which lights the void which reason leaves,
And, like the sunshine through a cloud,
Throws shadows o'er the song she weaves.
There is a smile of love, of hope,
Which shines a meteor through life's glooni;
And there's a smile, Religion's smile,
Which lights the weary to the tomb.
There is a smile, an angel smile,
That sainted souls behind them leave;
There is a smile which shines through toil,
And warms the bosom, though in grief.
THE SMILE OF INNOCENCE.
And there's a smile on nature's face
When evening spreads her shades around;
It is a smile which angels might
Upon their brightest lists enrol.
It is the smile of innocence,
Of sleeping infancy's light dream;
Like lightning on a summer's eve,
It sheds a soft, a pensive gleam.
It dances round the dimpled cheek,
And tells of happiness within;
It smiles what it can never speak,
A human heart devoid of sin.
175

MEMORY.
BY W. G. CLARK.
'Tis sweet, to remember! I would not forego
The charm which the Past o'er the Present can throw,
For all the gay visions that Fancy may weave
In her web of illusion, that shines to deceive.
We know not the future, the past we have felt,-
Its cherished enjoyments the bosom can melt;
Its raptures anew o'er our pulses may roll,
When thoughts of the morrow fall cold on the soul.
'Tis sweet, to remember! When storms are abroad,
We see in the rainbow, the promise of God:
The day may be darkened,—but far in the west,
In vermilion and gold, sinks the sun to his rest;
With smiles like the morning he passeth away:
Thus the beams of delight on the spirit can play,
When in calm reminiscence we gather the flowers,
Which Love scattered round us in happier hours.
"Tis sweet to remember! When friends are unkind,
When their coldness and carelessness shadow the mind:
MEMORY.
177
Then, to draw back the veil which envelopes a land,
Where delectable prospects in beauty expand;
To smell the green fields,—the fresh waters to hear,
Whose once fairy music enchanted the ear;
To drink in the smiles that delighted us then,-
To list the fond voices of childhood again,—
Oh, this the sad heart, like a reed that is bruised,
Binds up, when the banquet of Hope is refused.
'Tis sweet, to remember! And naught can destroy
The balm-breathing comfort, the glory, the joy,
Which spring from that fountain, to gladden our way,
When the changeful and faithless desert or betray.
I would not forget!-though my thoughts should be dark :
O'er the ocean of life, I look back from my bark,
And I see the lost Eden, where once I was blest,
A type and a promise of heavenly rest.
NEW ENGLAND.
BY J. G. WHITTIER.
LAND of the forest and the rock-
Of dark blue lake and mighty river-
Of mountains reared aloft to mock
The storm's career, the lightning's shock-
My own green land for ever!
Land of the beautiful and brave-
The freeman's home-the martyr's grave—
The nursery of giant men,
Whose deeds have linked with every glen,
And every hill, and every stream,
The romance of some warrior-dream!
Oh! never may a son of thine,
Where'er his wandering steps incline,
Forget the sky which bent above
His childhood like a dream of love—
The stream beneath the green hill flowing-
The broad-armed trees above it growing-
The clear breeze through the foliage blowing ;
Or hear, unmoved, the taunt of scorn
Breathed o'er the brave New England born;
NEW ENGLAND.
Or mark the stranger's jaguar hand
Disturb the ashes of thy dead-
The buried glory of a land
Whose soil with noble blood is red,
And sanctified in every part,-
Nor feel resentment, like a brand,
Unsheathing from his fiery heart!
Oh! greener hills may catch the sun
Beneath the glorious heaven of France
And streams, rejoicing as they run
Like life beneath the day-beam's glance,
May wander where the orange bough
With golden fruit is bending low;
And there may bend a brighter sky
O'er green and classic Italy—
And pillared fane and ancient grave
Bear record of another time,
And over shaft and architrave
The green luxuriant ivy climb;
And far toward the rising sun
The palm may shake its leaves on high,
Where flowers are opening, one by one,
Like stars upon the twilight sky,
And breezes soft as sighs of love
Above the broad banana stray,
And through the Brahmin's sacred grove
A thousand bright-hued pinions play!
179
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180
NEW ENGLAND.
Yet unto thee, New England, still
Thy wandering sons shall stretch their arms,
And thy rude chart of rock and hill
Seem dearer than the land of palms;
Thy massy oak and mountain pine
More welcome than the banyan's shade;
And every free, blue stream of thine
Seem richer than the golden bed
Of oriental waves, which glow
And sparkle with the wealth below!
A HEALTH.
BY E. C. PINKNEY.
I FILL this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than
heaven.
Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning
birds,
And something more than melody dwells ever in her
words;
The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each
flows
As one may see the burdened bee forth issue from the
rose.
Affections are as thoughts to her, the measure of her
hours;
Her feelings have the fragrance and the freshness of
young flowers;
182
A HEALTH.
And lonely passions changing oft, so fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns-the idol of past
years.
Of her bright face one glance will trace a picture on the
brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts a sound must long re-
main ;
But memory such as mine of her so very much endears,
When death is nigh, my latest sigh will not be life's, but
hers.
I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon-
Her health! and would on earth there stood some more
of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry, and weariness a name.
TO A LADY.
BY G. D.
D. PRENTICE.
I THINK of thee, when morning springs
From sleep with plumage bathed in dew,
And, like a young bird, lifts her wings
Of gladness on the welkin blue.
And when, at noon, the breath of love,
O'er flower and stream is wandering free,
And sent in music from the grove,
I think of thee-I think of thee.
I think of thee, when soft and wide
The evening spreads her robes of light,
And, like a young and timid bride,
Sits blushing in the arms of Night.
And when the moon's sweet crescent springs
In light o'er heaven's deep, waveless sea,
And stars are forth like blessed things,
I think of thee-I think of thee.
184
I think of thee;
TO A LADY.
that eye of flame,
Those tresses falling bright and free,
That brow where "Beauty writes her name,"
On fancy rush;—I think of thee.
GREEN RIVER.
BY W. C. BRYANT.
WHEN breezes are soft and skies are fair,
I steal an hour from study and care,
And hie me away to the woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green;
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink,
Had given their stain to the wave they drink;
And they, whose meadows it murmurs through,
Have named the stream from its own fair hue.
Yet pure its waters-its shallows are bright
With coloured pebbles and sparkles of light,
And clear the depths where its eddies play,
And dimples deepen and whirl away,
And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'ershoot
The swifter current that mines its root,
Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill,
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill,
With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown,
Like the ray that streams from the diamond stone.
Oh, loveliest there the spring days come,
With blossoms, and birds, and wild bees' hum;
The flowers of summer are fairest there,
And freshest the breath of the summer air;
186
GREEN RIVER.
And sweetest the golden autumn day
In silence and sunshine glides away.
Yet fair as thou art, thou shunn'st to glide,
Beautiful stream! by the village side;
But windest away from haunts of men,
To quiet valley and shaded glen;
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill,
Around thee are lonely, lovely, and still.
Lonely-save when by thy rippling tides,
From thicket to thicket the angler glides;
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GREEN RIVER.
Or the simpler comes with basket and book,
For herbs of power on thy banks to look;
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me,
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee.
Still-save the chirp of birds that feed
On the river cherry and seedy reed,
And thy own wild music gushing out
With mellow murmur and fairy shout,
From dawn, to the blush of another day
Like traveller singing along his way.
187


188
GREEN RIVER.
That fairy music I never hear,
Nor gaze on those waters so green and clear,
And mark them winding away from sight,
Darkened with shade or flashing with light,
While o'er them the vine to its thicket clings,
And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings,
But I wish that fate had left me free
To wander these quiet haunts with thee,
Till the eating cares of earth should depart,
And the peace of the scene pass into my heart;
And I envy thy stream, as it glides along,
Through its beautiful banks in a trance of song.
Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud-
I often come to this quiet place,
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,
And gaze upon thee in silent dream,
For in thy lonely and lovely stream,
An image of that calm life appears,
That won my heart in my greener years.
EXTRACT FROM "GERALDINE."
BY.
B.
DAWES.
I KNOW a spot where poets fain would dwell,
To gather flowers and food for afterthought,
As bees draw honey from the rose's cell,
To hive among the treasures they have wrought;
And there a cottage from a sylvan screen,
Sent up its curling smoke amidst the green.
Around that hermit-home of quietude,
The elm-trees whispered with the summer air,
And nothing ever ventured to intrude,
But happy birds that caroled wildly there,
Or honey-laden harvesters that flew
Humming away to drink the morning dew.
Around the door the honey-suckle climbed,
And Multa-flora spread her countless roses,
And never minstrel sang nor poet rhymed
Romantic scene where happiness reposes,
Sweeter to sense than that enchanting dell,
Where home-sick memory fondly loves to dwell.
190
EXTRACT FROM GERALDINE.
Beneath a mountain's brow the cottage stood,
Hard by a shelving lake, whose pebbled bed
Was skirted by the drapery of a wood,
That hung its festoon foliage over head,
Where wild deer came at eve, unharmed, to drink,
While moonlight threw their shadows from the brink.
The green earth heaved her giant waves around,
Where through the mountain vista, one vast height
Towered heavenward without peer, his forehead bound
With gorgeous clouds, at times of changeful light,
While far below, the lake in bridal rest,
Slept with his glorious picture on her breast.
TO THE FRINGILLA MELODIA.*
BY H. PICKERING.
Joy fills the vale,
With joy ecstatic quivers every wing,
As floats thy note upon the genial gale,
Sweet bird of spring!
The violet
Awakens at thy song, and peers from out
Its fragrant nook, as if the season yet
Remained in doubt-
While from the rock
The columbine its crimson bell suspends,
That careless vibrates, as its slender stalk
The zephyr bends.
Say! when the blast
Of winter swept our whitened plains,—what clime.
What sunnier realm thou charmedst, and how was past
Thy joyous time?
* The song sparrow.
192
TO THE FRINGILLA MELODIA.
Did the green isles
Detain thee long? or, 'mid the palmy groves
Of the bright south, where liberty now smiles,
Didst sing thy loves?
O, well I know
Why thou art here thus soon, and why the bowers
So near the sun have lesser charms than now
Our land of flowers:
Thou art returned
On a glad errand,—to rebuild thy nest,
And fan anew the gentle fire that burned
Within thy breast
And thy wild strain,
Poured on the gale, is love's transporting voice -
That, calling on the plumy choir again,
Bids them rejoice :
Nor calls alone
T'enjoy, but bids improve the fleeting hour—
Bids all that ever heard love's witching tone,
Or felt his power.
The poet too
It soft invokes to touch the trembling wire;
TO THE FRINGILLA MELODIA.
Yet ah, how few its sounds shall list, how few
His song admire!
But thy sweet lay,
Thou darling of the spring! no ear disdains;
Thy sage instructress, nature, says “Be gay!”
And prompts thy strains.
O, if I knew
Like thee to sing, like thee the heart to fire,
Youth should enchanted throng, and beauty sue
To hear my lyre.
Oft as the year
In gloom is wrapped, thy exile I shall mourn
Oft as the spring returns, shall hail sincere
Thy glad return.
193
THE FALLS OF THE PASSAIC.
BY W. IRVING.
In a wild tranquil vale, fringed with forests of green,
Where nature had fashioned a soft, sylvan scene,
The retreat of the ring-dove, the haunt of the deer,
Passaic in silence rolled gentle and clear.
No grandeur of prospect astonished the sight,
No abruptness sublime mingled awe with delight;
Here the wild flow'ret blossomed, the elm proudly waved,
And pure was the current the green bank that laved.
But the spirit that ruled o'er the thick tangled wood,
And deep in its gloom fixed his murky abode,
Who loved the wild scene that the whirlwinds deform,
And gloried in thunder, and lightning, and storm;
All flushed from the tumult of battle he came,
Where the red men encountered the children of flame,
While the noise of the war-whoop still rang in his ears,
And the fresh bleeding scalp as a trophy he bears;
THE FALLS OF THE PASSAIC.
With a glance of disgust, he the landscape surveyed,
With its fragrant wild flowers, its wide-waving shade;
Where Passaic meanders through margins of green,
So transparent its waters, its surface serene.
He rived the green hills, the wild woods he laid low;
He taught the pure stream in rough channels to flow;
He rent the rude rock, the steep precipice gave,
And hurled down the chasm the thundering wave.
195
Countless moons have since rolled in the long lapse of
time-
Cultivation has softened those features sublime;
The axe of the white man has lightened the shade,
And dispelled the deep gloom of the thicketed glade.
But the stranger still gazes with wondering eye,
On the rocks rudely torn, and groves mounted on high;
Still loves on the cliff's dizzy borders to roam,
Where the torrent leaps headlong embosomed in foam.
NIAGARA.
BY L. H. SIGOURNEY.
FLOW on for ever, in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on
Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead: and the cloud
Mantled around thy feet. And he doth give
Thy voice of thunder, power to speak of Him
Eternally-bidding the lip of man
Keep silence—and upon thy rocky altar pour
Incense of awe-struck praise.
Ah! who can dare
To lift the insect-trump of earthly hope,
Or love, or sorrow—'mid the peal sublime
Of thy tremendous hymn? Even Ocean shrinks
Back from thy brotherhood: and all his waves
Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem
To sleep like a spent labourer—and recall
His wearied billows from their vexing play,
And lull them to a cradle calm: but thou,
With everlasting, undecaying tide,
Dost rest not, night or day. The morning stars,
When first they sang o'er young creation's birth,
Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires,
NIAGARA.
That wait the archangel's signal to dissolve
This solid earth, shall find Jehovah's name
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
On thine unending volume.
Every leaf,
That lifts itself within thy wide domain,
Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo!-yon birds
Do boldly venture near, and bathe their wing
Amid thy mist and foam. 'Tis meet for them,
To touch thy garment's hem, and lightly stir
The snowy leaflets of thy vapor-wreath,
For they may sport unharmed amid the cloud,
Or listen at the echoing gate of heaven,
Without reproof. But as for us, it seems
Scarce lawful, with our broken tones, to speak
Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint
Thy glorious features with our pencil's point,
Or woo thee to the tablet of a song,
Were profanation.
Thou dost make the soul
A wondering witness of thy majesty,
But as it presses with delirious joy
To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step,
And tame its rapture with the humbling view
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand
In the dread presence of the Invisible,
As if to answer to its God through thee.
197

ODE.
BY G. MELLE N.
[Sung at Plymouth, on the anniversary of the landing of our Fathers, 224 De-
cember, 1820.]
I.
WAKE your harp's music!—louder—higher,
And pour your strains along,
And smite again each quivering wire,
In all the pride of song!
Shout like those godlike men of old,
Who daring storm and foe,
On this blest soil their anthem rolled,
Two hundred years ago!
ODE.
II.
From native shores by tempests driven,
They sought a purer sky,
And found beneath a milder heaven,
The home of liberty!
An altar rose—and prayers—a ray
Broke on their night of wo-
The harbinger of Freedom's day,
Two hundred years ago!
III.
They clung around that symbol too,
Their refuge and their all;
And swore while skies and waves were blue,
That altar should not fall.
They stood upon the red man's sod,
'Neath heaven's unpillared bow,
With home-a country—and a God,
Two hundred years ago!
IV.
Oh! 'twas a hard unyielding fate
That drove them to the seas,
And Persecution strove with Hate,
To darken her decrees:
But safe above each coral grave,
Each booming ship did go—
A God was on the western wave,
Two hundred years ago!
199
200
ODE.
V.
They knelt them on the desert sand,
By waters cold and rude,
Alone upon the dreary strand
Of Oceaned solitude!
They looked upon the high blue air,
And felt their spirits glow,
Resolved to live or perish there,
Two hundred years ago!
VI.
The Warrior's red right arm was bared,
His eyes flashed deep and wild;
Was there a foreign footstep dared
To seek his home and child?
The dark chiefs yelled alarm-and swore
The white man's blood should flow,
And his hewn bones should bleach their shore,
Two hundred years ago!
VII.
But lo! the warrior's eye grew dim,
His arm was left alone-
The still, black wilds which sheltered him,
No longer were his own!
Time fled—and on this hallowed ground
His highest pine lies low-
And cities swell where forests frowned
Two hundred years ago!
ODE.
VIII.
O! stay not to recount the tale
Twas bloody-and 'tis past;
The firmest cheek might well grow pale,
To hear it to the last.
The God of heaven, who prospers us,
Could bid a nation grow,
And shield us from the red man's curse
Two hundred years ago!
IX.
Come, then-great shades of glorious men,
From your still glorious grave;
Look on your own proud land again,
Oh, bravest of the brave!
We call ye from each mouldering tomb,
And each blue wave below,
To bless the world ye snatched from doom
Two hundred years ago!
X.
Then to your harps-yet louder-higher,
And pour your strains along—
And smite again each quivering wire,
In all the pride of song!
Shout for those godlike men of old,
Who daring storm and foe,
On this blest soil their anthem rolled,
TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO!
201
AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.
BY W. ALLSTON.
ALL hail! thou noble land,
Our fathers' native soil!
O stretch thy mighty hand,
Gigantic grown by toil,
O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore :
For thou, with magic might,
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phoebus travels bright
The world o'er!
The Genius of our clime,
From pine-embattled steep,
Shall hail the great sublime ;
While the Tritons of the deep
With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim,
Then let the world combine-
O'er the main our naval line,
Like the milky way, shall shine
Bright in fame!
AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.
203
Though ages long have passed
Since our fathers left their home,
Their pilot in the blast,
O'er untravelled seas to roam,
Yet lives the blood of England in our veins!
And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?
While the language, free and bold,
Which the bard of Avon sung,
In which our Milton told
How the vault of heaven rung,
When Satan, blasted, fell with all his host;
While this, with reverence meet,
Ten thousand echoes greet,
From rock to rock repeat
Round our coast;
While the manners, while the arts,
That mould a nation's soul,
Still cling around our hearts,
Between let Ocean roll,
Our joint communion breaking with the sun:
Yet, still, from either beach,
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech,
'We are One!"
THAT SILENT MOON.
BY G. W. DOAN E.
THAT silent moon, that silent moon,
Careering now through cloudless sky,
Oh! who shall tell what varied scenes
Have passed beneath her placid eye,
Since first, to light this wayward earth,
She walked in tranquil beauty forth.
How oft has guilt's unhallowed hand,
And superstition's senseless rite,
And loud licentious revelry,
Profaned her pure and holy light:
Small sympathy is hers, I ween,
With sights like these, that virgin queen.
But dear to her, in summer eve,
By rippling wave or tufted grove,
When hand in hand is purely clasped,
And heart meets heart in holy love,
To smile, in quiet loneliness,
And hear each whispered vow and bless.
THAT SILENT MOON.
Dispersed along the world's wide way,
When friends are far, and fond ones rove,
How powerful she to wake the thought,
And start the tear for those we love!
Who watch, with us, at night's pale noon,
And gaze upon that silent moon.
How powerful, too, to hearts that mourn,
The magic of that moonlight sky,
To bring again the vanished scenes,
The happy eves of days gone by;
Again to bring, 'mid bursting tears,
The loved, the lost of other years.
And oft she looks, that silent moon,
On lonely eyes that wake to weep,
In dungeon dark, or sacred cell,
Or couch, whence pain has banished sleep:
O, softly beams that gentle eye,
On those who mourn, and those who die.
But beam on whomsoe'er she will,
And fall where'er her splendour may,
There's pureness in her chastened light,
There's comfort in her tranquil ray :
What power is hers to soothe the heart-
What power the trembing tear to start!
205
JorM
206
"
THAT SILENT MOON.
The dewy morn let others love,
Or bask them in the noontide ray;
There's not an hour but has its charm,
From dawning light to dying day :-
But oh! be mine a fairer boon-
That silent moon, that silent moon!
notW
THE BUGLE.
BY G. MELLEN.
But still the dingle's hollow throat,
Prolonged the swelling Bugle's note ;
The owlets started from their dream,
The eagles answered with their scream;
Round and around the sounds were cast,
Till Echo seemed an answering blast.—Lady of the Lake.
I.
O, WILD, enchanting horn!
Whose music, up the deep and dewy air,
Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there,
'Till a new melody is born!
II.
Wake, wake again; the night
Is bending from her throne of Beauty down,
With still stars beaming on her azure crown,
Intense, and eloquently bright!
III.
Night, at its pulseless noon!
When the far voice of waters mourns in song,
And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long,
Barks at the melancholy moon!
Uorm
208
THE BUGLE.
IV.
Hark! how it sweeps away,
Soaring and dying on the silent sky,
As if some sprite of sound went wandering by,
With lone halloo and roundelay.
V.
Swell, swell in glory out!
Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart,
And my stirred spirit hears thee with a start,
As boyhood's old remembered shout!
VI.
O, have ye heard that peal,
From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements,
Or from the guarded field and warrior tents,
Like some near breath around ye steal!
VII.
Or have ye, in the roar
Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle's clamor to the skies,
Where wings and tempests never soar!
VIII.
Go, go; no other sound,
No music, that of air or earth is born,
Can match the mighty music of that horn,
On Midnight's fathomless profound!
Maou
"T IS A LOWLY GRAVE.
BY W. G. SIMM S.
'Tis a lowly grave but it suits her best,
Since it breathes of fragrance and speaks of rest,
And meet for her is its calm repose,
Whose life was so stormy and sad to its close.
'Tis a shady dell where they laid her form,
And the hills gather round it to break the storm,
While above her head the bending trees
Arrest the wing of each ruder breeze.
A trickling stream, as it winds below,
Has a music of peace in its quiet flow,
And the buds that are ever in bloom above,
Tell of some ministering spirit's love.
It is sweet to think, that when life is o'er,
And life's fevered pulses shall fret no more,
There still shall be one, with a fond regret,
Who will not forsake, and who cannot forget:
210
T IS A LOWLY GRAVE.
One kindlier heart, all untainted by earth,
That has kept the fresh bloom from its bud and its birth,
Whose tears for the sorrows of youth shall be shed,
And whose prayer shall still rise for the early dead.
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SONG, FROM "YAMOYDEN."
BY R. C. SANDS.
THEY say, that afar in the land of the west,
Where the bright golden sun sinks in glory to rest,
'Mid fens where the hunter ne'er ventured to tread,
A fair lake, unruffled and sparkling, is spread;
Where, lost in his course, the rapt Indian discovers,
In distance seen dimly, the green isle of lovers.
212
SONG.
There verdure fades never; immortal in bloom,
Soft waves the magnolia its groves of perfume;
And low bends the branch with rich fruitage depressed,
All glowing like gems in the crowns of the east;
There the bright eye of nature in mild glory hovers:
'Tis the land of the sunbeam, the green isle of lovers.
Sweet strains wildly float on the breezes that kiss.
The calm-flowing lake round that region of bliss:
Where, wreathing their garlands of amaranth, fair choirs
Glad measures still weave to the sound that inspires
The dance and the revel, 'mid forests that cover,
On high, with their shade, the green isle of the lover.
But fierce as the snake, with his eyeballs of fire,
When his scales are all brilliant and glowing with ire,
Are the warriors to all, save the maids of their isle,
Whose law is their will and whose life is their smile;
From beauty, there, valor and strength are not rovers,
And peace reigns supreme in the green isle of lovers.
And he who has sought to set foot on its shore,
In mazes perplexed, has beheld it no more;
It fleets on the vision, deluding the view;
Its banks still retire as the hunters pursue :
O, who, in this vain world of wo, shall discover
The home undisturbed, the green isle of the lover!
DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.
BY W. C. BRYANT.
THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown
and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves
lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the
jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the
gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately
sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of
ours.
The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold Novem-
ber rain
Calls not, from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.
The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the wild-rose and the orchis died amid the summer
glow;
214
DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty
stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the
plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland,
glade and glen.
And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such
days will come,
To call the squirrel and the bee from cut their winter
home,
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the
trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance
late he bore,
[more.
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no
And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my
side :
In the cold moist earth we laid her when the forest cast
the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;
Yet not unmeet it was, that one, like that young friend of
ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.
THE PARTING A PICTURE.
BY G. MELLE N.
He loved her to the last. And when they parted
He spake not of farewell-but bent his brow
Into her hand, that lay among his hair,
Which gathered o'er its whiteness-dark, and damp,
And scattered like the locks of one whose dreams
Have made his pillow like Procrustes' bed,
And his night sleepless. And her Parian hand,
Veined like the marble that it rivaled, shook
Over his forehead, as the hand of one
Whose spirit is o'ermastered by her tears
And tells you of her sobbings-while her face
Is bowed and veiled before you. She had turned
Away. She could not gaze nor look on him.
Her fancies were too fearful. She believed
Their parting was for ever—and her heart
Wept like her eyes! She had heard whispers come
Often, at midnight when the storm was loud,
That told of distant seas—and whirlpools there —
Which he too soon must buffet. Yet her lips
Had scarce done with repeating of the vow
216
THE PARTING A PICTURE.
She made him at the altar-and his voice
Low, but with music she could ne'er forget,
Like clarion rung in her rememb'ring ear.
But they must part. His call was to a land
Where his white brow might blacken with the shade
Of rank disease-and hot and withering airs
Devour the beauty of his manliness,
And shrink those hands to talons, that now lay
Like sculpture on her own. He must go forth
Where men were like the wolves that swept the land,
And blood was poured for pastime. He must go
Where love must be forgotten-and the heart
Sink inward-silent, dungeoned, and forlorn.
Again he bent above her, but spake not.
She raised her lips and eye.—She was alone.
TO A WAVE.
J. O. ROCKWELL.
BY J. O.
LIST! thou child of wind and sea,
Tell me of the far off deep,
Where the tempest's wing is free,
And the waters never sleep.
Thou perchance the storm hath aided,
In its works of stern despair,
Or perchance thy hand hath braided,
In deep caves, the mermaid's hair.
Wave! now on the golden sands,
Silent as thou art, and broken,
Bearest thou not from distant strands
To my heart some pleasant token?
Tales of mountains of the south,
Spangles of the ore of silver,
Which with playful singing mouth,
Thou hast leaped on high to pilfer?
218
TO A WAVE.
Mournful Wave! I deemed thy song
Was telling of a floating prison,
Which when tempests swept along,
And the mighty winds were risen,
Foundered in the ocean's grasp,
While the brave and fair were dying.
Wave! didst mark a white hand clasp
In thy folds as thou wert flying?
Hast thou seen the hallowed rock,
Where the pride of kings reposes,
Crowned with many a misty lock,
Wreathed with samphire green and roses?
Or with joyous playful leap
Hast thou been a tribute flinging
Up that bold and jutting steep,
Pearls upon the south wind stringing?
Faded Wave! a joy to thee
Now thy flight and toil are over!
Oh! may my departure be
Calm as thine, thou ocean rover!
When this soul's last joy or mirth
On the shore of time is driven,
Be its lot like thine on earth,
To be lost away in heaven.
A PLEDGE TO THE DYING YEAR.
BY M. E. BROOKS.
FILL to the brim! one pledge to the past,
As it sinks on its shadowy bier;
Fill to the brim! 'tis the saddest and last
We pour to the grave of the year!
Wake, the light phantoms of beauty that won us
To linger awhile in those bowers ;
And flash the bright day-beams of promise upon us,
That gilded life's earlier hours.
Here's to the love-though it flitted away,
We can never, no, never forget!
Through the gathering darkness of many a day,
One pledge will we pour to it yet.
Oh, frail as the vision, that witching and tender,
And bright on the wanderer broke,
When Irem's own beauty in shadowless splendour,
Along the wild desert awoke.
Fill to the brim! one pledge to the glow
Of the heart in its purity warm!
220
A PLEDGE TO THE DYING YEAR.
Ere sorrow had sullied the fountain below,
Or darkness enveloped the form;
Fill to that life-tide! oh warm was its rushing
Through Adens of arrowy light,
And yet like the wave in the wilderness gushing,
"T will gladden the wine-cup to-night.
Fill to the past! from its dim distant sphere
Wild voices in melody come;
The strains of the by-gone, deep echoing here,
We pledge to their shadowy tomb;
And like the bright orb, that in sinking flings back
One gleam o'er the cloud-covered dome,
May the dreams of the past, on futurity track
The hope of a holier home!
PASSING AWAY-A DREAM.
BY J. PIERPONT.
WAS it the chime of a tiny bell,
That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,
Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell
That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,
And he, his notes as silvery quite,
While the boatman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?
Hark! the notes, on my ear that play,
Are set to words: -as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"
But no; it was not a fairy's shell,
Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,
Striking the hour, that filled my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl for a pendulum swung,
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a Canary bird swing,)
222
PASSING AWAY.

And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,
Passing away! passing away!"
(6
O, how bright were the wheels, that told
Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow!
And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold,
Seemed to point to the girl below.
And lo! she had changed :—in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride,
That told me. she soon was to be a bride;
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
"Passing away! passing away!"
PASSING AWAY.
While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;
223
And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels,
That marched so calmly round above her,
Was a little dimmed,—as when Evening steals
Upon Noon's hot face. -Yet one couldn't but love her,
For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay
Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day;-
And she seemed, in the same silver tone to say,
"Passing away! passing away
While yet I looked, what a change there came !
Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan:
Stooping and staffed was her withered frame,
Yet, just as busily, swung she on;

224
PASSING AWAY.
The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust;
The hands, that over the dial swept,
Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept,
And still there came that silver tone
From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone,~
(Let me never forget till my dying day
The tone or the burden of her lay,-)
-!""
Passing away! passing away!
TO THE CONDOR
BY E. F. ELLET.
WONDROUS, majestic bird! whose mighty wing
Dwells not with puny warblers of the spring;
Nor on earth's silent breast-
Powerful to soar in strength and pride on high,
And sweep the azure bosom of the sky,—
Chooses its place of rest.
Proud nursling of the tempest, where repose
Thy pinions at the daylight's fading close?
In what far clime of night
Dost thou in silence, breathless and alone-
While round thee swells of life no kindred tone
Suspend thy tireless flight?
The mountain's frozen peak is lone and bare,
No foot of man hath ever rested there ;-
Yet 'tis thy sport to soar
Far o'er its frowning summit-and the plain
Would seek to win thy downward wing in vain,
Or the green sea-beat shore.
226
TO THE CONDOR.
The limits of thy course no daring eye
Has marked; thy glorious path of light on high
Is trackless and unknown;
The gorgeous sun thy quenchless gaze may share;
Sole tenant of his boundless realm of air,
Thou art, with him, alone.
Imperial wanderer! the storms that shake
Earth's towers, and bid her rooted mountains quake,
Are never felt by thee!-
Beyond the bolt-beyond the lightning's gleam,
Basking for ever in the unclouded beam-
Thy home-immensity!
And thus the soul, with upward flight like thine,
May track the realms where heaven's own glories
shine,
And scorn the tempest's power;
Yet meaner cares oppress its drooping wings;
Still to earth's joys the sky-born wanderer clings-
Those pageants of an hour!
THE FUTURE.
BY A. M. WELLS.
THE flowers, the many flowers
That all along the smiling valley grew,
While the sun lay for hours,
Kissing from off their drooping lids the dew;
They, to the summer air
No longer prodigal, their sweet breath yield;
Vainly, to bind her hair,
The village maiden seeks them in the field.
The breeze, the gentle breeze
That wandered like a frolic child at play,
Loitering mid blossomed trees,
Trailing their stolen sweets along its way,
No more adventuresome,
Its whispered love is to the violet given;
The boisterous North has come,
And scared the sportive trifler back to heaven.
The brook, the limpid brook
That prattled of its coolness as it went
228
THE FUTURE.
Forth from its rocky nook,
Leaping with joy to be no longer pent,
Its pleasant song is hushed;
The sun no more looks down upon its play ;-
Freely, where once it gushed,
The mountain torrent drives its noisy way.
The hours, the youthful hours,
When in the cool shade we were wont to lie,
Idling with fresh culled flowers,
In dreams that ne'er could know reality;
Fond hours, but half enjoyed,
Like the sweet summer breeze they passed away,
And dear hopes were destroyed
Like buds that die before the noon of day.
Young life, young turbulent life,
If, like the stream, it take a wayward course,
'Tis lost mid folly's strife,-
O'erwhelmed, at length, by passion's curbless force.
Nor deem youth's buoyant hours
For idle hopes, or useless musings given:
Who dreams away his powers,
The reckless slumberer shall not wake to heaven!
HAPPINESS.
BY A. P. DINNIE S.
Happiness is of the heart, and it is the mind that gives its tone and coloring
to Nature.
THERE is a spell in every flower-
A sweetness in each spray,
And every simple bird has power
To please me with its lay!
And there is music on each breeze
That sports along the glade!
The crystal dew-drops on the trees
Are gems, by Fancy made:
There's gladness too in everything,
And beauty over all,
For everywhere comes on, with Spring,
A charm which cannot pall!
辈
​230
HAPPINESS.
And I!-my heart is full of joy,
And gratitude is there,
That He, who might my life destroy,
Has yet vouchsafed to spare.
The friends I once condemned, are now
Affectionate and true :
I wept a pledged one's broken vow—
But he proves faithful too.
And now there is a happiness
In everything I see,
Which bids my soul rise up and bless
The God who blesses me.
MOONLIGHT ON THE HUDSON.
BY C. F. HOFFMAN.
[Written at West Point.]
I'm 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 stirred
By things around him, that 'tis vain concealing
A little music in his soul still lingers
Whene'er its keys are touched by Nature's fingers :
And even here, upon this 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 cold and calm as ever?
Bright Dian, who, Camilla like, dost skim yon
Azure fields-Thou who, once earthward bending,
Didst loose thy virgin zone to young Endymion
On dewy Latmos to his arms descending-
Thou whom the world of old on every shore
Type of thy sex, Triformis, did adore :
232
MOONLIGHT ON THE HUDSON.
Tell me where'er thy silver barque 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 spot than this the wide world over?
Doth Achelous or Araxes flowing
Twin-born from Pindus, but ne'er meeting brothers-
Doth Tagus o'er his golden pavement glowing,
Or cradle-freighted Ganges, the reproach of mothers,
The storied Rhine, or far-famed Guadalquiver,
Match they in beauty my own glorious river?
What though no turret gray nor ivied column
Along these cliffs their sombre ruins rear?
What though no frowning tower nor temple solemn
Of despots tell and superstition here—
What though that mouldering fort's fast-crumbling walls
Did ne'er enclose a baron's bannered 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
Called forth chivalric host to battle fray :
MOONLIGHT ON THE HUDSON.
233
For here amid these woods did He keep 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 chosen
bowed-
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 wondered,
Within these wild ravines have had their birth;
Young Freedom's cannon from these glens have thundered,
And sent their startling echoes 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-souled memories only,
Is every moon-touched headland round me gleaming,
Each cavernous glen and leafy valley lonely,
And silver torrent o'er the bald rock streaming :
But such soft fancies here may breathe around,
As make Vaucluse and Clarens hallowed ground.
Where, tell me where, pale watcher of the night-
Thou that to love so oft hast lent its soul,
Since the lorn Lesbian languished 'neath thy light
Or fiery Romeo to his Juliet stole
Where dost thou find a fitter place on earth
To nurse young love in hearts like theirs to birth?
234
MOONLIGHT ON THE HUDSON.
Even as I gaze upon my memory's track,
Bright as that coil of light along the deep,
A scene of early youth comes dream-like back,
Where two are gazing from yon tide-swept steep:
A sanguine strippling, just toward manhood flushing ;
A girl scarce yet in ripened beauty blushing.

The hour is his! and while his hopes are soaring
Doubts he that lady will become his bride?
Can she resist that gush of wild adoring
Fresh from a heart full volumed as the tide?
Tremulous yet various is that glorious daughter
Of loveliness, as is the star-paved water.
MOONLIGHT ON THE HUDSON.
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.
235
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.
TO THE HUMA.
A bird peculiar to the East. It is supposed to fly constantly in the air and nev-
er touch the ground.]
BY L. P. SMITH.
FLY on nor touch thy wing, bright bird,
Too near our shaded earth,
Or the warbling, now so sweetly heard,
May lose its note of mirth.
Fly on-nor seek a place of rest
In the home of "care-worn things;"
"Twould dim the light of thy shining crest
And thy brightly burnished wings,
To dip them where the waters glide
That flow from a troubled earthly tide.
The fields of upper air are thine,
Thy place where stars shine free:
I would thy home, bright one, were mine,
Above life's stormy sea.
I would never wander, bird, like thee,
So near this place again,
TO THE HUMA.
With wing and spirit once light and free-
They should wear no more the chain
With which they are bound and fettered here,
For ever struggling for skies more clear.
There are many things like thee, bright bird,
Hopes as thy plumage gay;
Our air is with them for ever stirred,
But still in air they stay.
And Happiness, like thee, fair one,
Is ever hovering o'er,
But rests in a land of brighter sun,
On a waveless peaceful shore,
And stoops to lave her weary wings,
Where the fount of "living waters" springs.
237
:

دار مشهور که در
THE SETTLER.
BY A. B. STREET.
His echoing axe the settler swung
Amid the sea-like solitude,
And rushing, thundering, down were flung
The Titans of the wood;
Loud shrieked the eagle as he dashed
From out his mossy nest, which crashed
With its supporting bough,
And the first sunlight, leaping, flashed
On the wolf's haunt below.
THE SETTLER.
239
Rude was the garb, and strong the frame,
Of him who plied his ceaseless toil:
To form that garb, the wild-wood game
Contributed their spoil;
The soul that warmed that frame, disdained
The tinsel, gaud, and glare, that reigned
Where men their crowds collect;
The simple fur, untrimmed, unstained,
This forest tamer decked.
The paths which wound 'mid gorgeous trees,
The stream whose bright lips kissed their flowers,
The winds that swelled their harmonies
Through those sun-hiding bowers,
The temple vast—the green arcade,
The nestling vale-the grassy glade,
Dark cave and swampy lair;
These scenes and sounds majestic, made
His world, his pleasures, there.
His roof adorned a pleasant spot,
'Mid the black logs green glowed the grain,
And herbs and plants the woods knew not,
Throve in the sun and rain.
The smoke-wreath curling o'er the dell,
The low-the bleat-the tinkling bell,
All made a landscape strange,
240
THE SETTLER.
Which was the living chronicle
Of deeds that wrought the change.
The violet sprung at Spring's first tinge,
The rose of Summer spread its glow,
The maize hung out its Autumn fringe,
Rude Winter brought his snow;
And still the lone one laboured there,
His shout and whistle woke the air,
As cheerily he plied
His garden spade, or drove his share
Along the hillock's side.
He marked the fire-storm's blazing flood
Roaring and crackling on its path,
And scorching earth and melting wood,
Beneath its greedy wrath;
He marked the rapid whirlwind shoot,
Trampling the pine tree with its foot,
And darkening thick the day
With streaming bough and severed root,
Hurled whizzing on its way.
His gaunt hound yelled, his rifle flashed,
The grim bear hushed his savage growl,
In blood and foam the panther gnashed
His fangs, with dying howl;
The fleet deer ceased its flying bound,
THE SETTLER.
Its snarling wolf-foe bit the ground,
And with its moaning cry,
The beaver sank beneath the wound
Its pond-built Venice by.
Humble the lot, yet his the race!
When Liberty sent forth her cry,
Who thronged in Conflict's deadliest place,
To fight-to bleed-to die.
Who cumbered Bunker's height of red,
By hope, through weary years were led,
And witnessed York Town's sun
Blaze on a Nation's banner spread,
A Nation's freedom won.
241
BALLAD.
BY E. C. EMBUR Y.
66 La rose cueillie et le cœur gagne ne plaisent qu'un jour.”
THE maiden sat at her busy wheel,
Her heart was light and free,
And ever in cheerful song broke forth
Her bosom's harmless glee.
Her song was in mockery of love,
And oft I heard her say,
"The gathered rose, and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day."
I looked on the maiden's rosy cheek,
And her lip so full and bright,
And I sighed to think that the traitor love,
Should conquer a heart so light:
But she thought not of future days of wo,
While she carolled in tones so gay;
"The gathered rose and the stolen heart,
Can charm but for a day."
A year passed on, and again I stood
By the humble cottage-door;
:
BALLAD.
The maid sat at her busy wheel,
But her look was blithe no more;
The big tear stood in her downcast eye,
And with sighs I heard her say,
"The gathered rose, and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day."
Oh! well I knew what had dimmed her eye,
And made her cheek so pale ;
The maid had forgotten her early song,
While she listened to love's soft tale.
She had tasted the sweets of his poisoned cup,
It had wasted her life away :
And the stolen heart, like the gathered rose,
Had charmed but for a day.
243

*
SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
BY N. P. WILLIS.
I LOVE to look on a scene like this,
Of wild and careless play,
And persuade myself that I am not old,
And my locks are not yet gray;
For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart,
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice,
And the light of a pleasant eye.
I have walked the world for fourscore years;
And they say that I am old,
And my heart is ripe for the reaper, Death,
And my years are well nigh told.
It is very true; it is very true;
I'm old, and "I 'bide my time :"
But my heart will leap at a scene like this
And I half renew my prime.
Play on, play on; I am with you there,
In the midst of your merry ring;
C
245
SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
I can feel the thrill of the daring jump,
And rush of the breathless swing.
I hide with you in the fragrant hay,
And I whoop the smothered call,
And my feet slip up on the seedy floor,
And I care not for the fall.
I am willing to die when my time shall come,
And I shall be glad to go;
For the world at best is a weary place,
And my pulse is getting low
But the grave is dark, and the heart will fail
In treading its gloomy way;
And it wiles my heart from its dreariness,
To see the young so gay.
THE CHINA TREE.
BY R. M. BIRD.
THOUGH the blossoms be ripe on the China tree,
Though the flower of the orange be fair to see,—
And the pomegranate's blush, and the humming-bird's
wing,
Throw the charms of elysium, O South, on thy spring;
It is dearer to me to remember the North,
Where scarce the green leaf yet comes timidly forth,-
To walk in thy gardens, and dream that I roam
Through the verdureless fields and the forests of Home.
If the golden-hued oriole sing from the tide,
Oh, the blue bird is sweeter by Delaware's side:
And the sound of that flood on the beaches so dear!
Ne'er ripples the river so pleasantly here.
Oh, the pebble-strown beaches, that echo all day
To the kill-deer's shrill shriek and the bank-swallow's lay,
And at eve, when the harvest moon mellows the shade,
To the sigh of the lover, the laugh of the maid!
China tree! though thy blossoms, in chaplets, may bond
The brows of the brave, and the necks of the fond,
THE CHINA TREE.
247
Never think that fit garlands our oak cannot form,
For heads as majestic, and bosoms as warm,
They may sit in thy shade, but their dreams are away,
With the far hills and forests, yet naked the gray,
With the floods roaring wildly, the fields lying bare,
And the hearts,-oh, the hearts,—that make paradise
there!

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.
****
BY MRS.
1
ONE evening wet and weary came Friendship to my door,
And begged for shelter from the storm-I'd sheltered
him before-
A piteous look he gave me, and asked in accents mild
If his companion I'd let in, he said, a harmless child.
I stirred the dying embers, and soon the fagot blazed,
I spread my frugal table, the wine their spirits raised;
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.
249
For Friendship a soft couch I made, and e'er he sunk to
rest,
The urchin his companion thus his thanks to me expressed:
"Dear ma'am,” lisped he, in accents so winning, soft,
and sweet,
"If not saved by your kindness, I had perished at your feet;
I pray accept my thanks, ma'am, for ne'er was bounty cast
On heart that more could feel it—or where 't will longer
last."
I stroked his flaxen ringlets, and kissed his snowy brow,
"You are welcome, pretty child," I said, "no thanks to
me you owe,"
Then first, I saw the urchin had a quiver by his side:
And with good store of arrows, too, that quiver was sup-
plied.
know-
I started at so strange a sight, and begged their use to
[this is my bow,
"They are arrows, ma'am," he archly said, "and this
I hid it 'neath my cloak, ma'am, lest it some harm should get,
And much I fear my bow is spoiled, for see, the string is
wet.
"But if to all your kindness, ma'am, you'd add one favor
more,
I'd beg to try just if my bow is good as 'twas before;"
*
250
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.
And ere I could reply to him, he pulled and sped the dart,
“You've hit me, little wretch,” I cried, “I feel it through
my heart."
"Compose yourself, dear ma'am," said he, "I'll hie me to
my rest;"
‘And I,” I said, "will pour my woes into kind Friend-
ship's breast:"
Then quick to Friendship's couch I flew to tell him my
despair,
But ah! I found that he had fled, and Love alone was
there.
SPIRIT OF BEAUTY.
BY R. DAWES.
:
THE Spirit of Beauty unfurls her light,
And wheels her course in a joyous flight;
I know her track through the balmy air,
By the blossoms that cluster and whiten there;
She leaves the tops of the mountains green,
And gems the valley with crystal sheen.
At morn, I know where she rested at night,
For the roses are gushing with dewy delight;
Then she mounts again, and round her flings
A shower of light from her crimson wings;
Till the spirit is drunk with the music on high,
That silently fills it with ecstacy.
At noon she hies to a cool retreat,
Where bowering elms over waters meet,
She dimples the wave where the green leaves dip,
As it smilingly curls like a maiden's lip,
When her tremulous bosom would hide, in vain,
From her lover, the hope that she loves again.
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SPIRIT OF BEAUTY.
At eve she hangs o'er the western sky
Dark clouds for a glorious canopy,
And round the skirts of their deepened fold,
She paints a border of purple and gold,
Where the lingering sunbeams love to stay,
When their god in his glory has passed away.
She hovers around us at twilight hour,
When her presence is felt with the deepest power,
She silvers the landscape, and crowds the stream
With shadows that flit like a fairy dream;
Then wheeling her flight through the gladdened air,
The Spirit of Beauty is every where.
THE WIFE.
BY A. P. DINNIE 8.
"She flung her white arms around him-Thou art all
That this poor heart can cling to.”
I COULD have stemmed misfortune's tide,
And borne the rich one's sneer,
Have braved the haughty glance of pride,
Nor shed a single tear.
I could have smiled on every blow
From life's full quiver thrown,
While I might gaze on thee, and know
I should not be "alone."
I could-I think I could have brooked,
E'en for a time, that thou
Upon my fading face hadst looked
With less of love than now;
For then I should at least have felt
The sweet hope still my own,
To win thee back, and, whilst I dwelt
On earth, not been "alone."
254
THE WIFE.
But thus to see, from day to day,
Thy brightening eye and cheek,
And watch thy life-sands waste away,
Unnumbered, slowly, meek;
To meet thy smiles of tenderness,
And catch the feeble tone
Of kindness, ever breathed to bless,
And feel, I'll be "alone;"
To mark thy strength each hour decay,
And yet thy hopes grow stronger,
As filled with heaven-ward trust, they say,
"Earth may not claim thee longer;"
Nay, dearest, 't is too much-this heart
Must break when thou art gone;
It must not be; we may not part;
I could not live "alone !"
SONNETS ON A SUMMER VOYAGE.
BY E. SARGEANT.
MORNING AFTER THE GALE.
BRAVELY our trim ship rode the tempest through;
And, when the exhausted gale had ceased to rave,
How broke the day-star on the gazer's view!
How flushed the orient every crested wave!
The sun threw down his shield of golden light
In fierce defiance on the ocean's bed;
Whereat, the clouds betook themselves to flight,
Like routed hosts, with banners soiled and red.
The sky was soon all brilliance, east and west;
All traces of the gale had passed away-
The chiming billows by the breeze caressed,
Tossed lightly from their heads the feathery spray.
Ah! thus may Hope's auspicious star again
Rise o'er the troubled soul where gloom and grief have
been!
TO A LAND-BIRD.
Thou wanderer from green fields and leafy nooks!
Where bloom the flower and toils the honey-bee-
Where odorous blossoms drift along the brooks,
And woods and hills are very fair to see-
256
SONNETS ON A SUMMER VOYAGE.
Why hast thou left thy native bough to roam,
With drooping wing, far o'er the briny billow?
Thou canst not, like the osprey, cleave the foam,
Nor, like the petrel, make the wave thy pillow.
Thou 'rt like those fine-toned spirits, gentle bird!
Which, from some better land, to this rude life
Seem borne-they struggle, 'mid the common herd,
With powers unfitted for the selfish strife!
Haply, at length, some zephyr wafts them back
To their own home of peace, across the world's dull
track.
A WISH.
That I were in some forest's green retreat!
Beneath a towering arch of proud old elms;
Where a clear streamlet gurgled at my feet-
Its wavelets glittering in their tiny helms!
Thick clustering vines, in many a rich festoon,
From the high, rustling branches should depend;
Weaving a net, through which the sultry noon
Might stoop in vain its fiery beams to send,
There, prostrate on some rock's gray sloping side,
Upon whose tinted moss the dew yet lay,
Would I catch glimpses of the clouds that ride,
Athwart the sky-and dream the hours away;
[imbued.
While through the alleys of the sunless wood
The fanning breeze might steal, with wild-flowers' breath

MUSIC.
BY F. G. HALLECK.
[To a boy four years old, on hearing him play on the harp.]
SWEET boy! before thy lips can learn
In speech thy wishes to make known,
Are "thoughts that breathe and words that burn”
Heard in thy music's tone.
Were Genius tasked to prove the might,
The magic of her hidden spell,
She well might name thee with delight
As her own miracle.
258
MUSIC.
Who that hath heard, from summer trees,
The sweet wild song of summer birds,
When morning to the far-off breeze
Whispers her bidding words;
Or listened to the bird of night,
The minstrel of the star-light hours,
Companion of the fire-fly's flight,
Cool dews, and closed flowers ;
But deemed that spirits of the air
Had left their native homes in heaven,
And that the music warbled there
To earth awhile was given?
For with that music came the thought
That life's young purity was theirs,
And love, all artless, and untaught,
Breathed in their woodland airs.
And when, sweet boy! thy baby fingers
Wake sounds of heaven's own harmony,
How welcome is the thought that lingers
Upon thy lyre and thee!
It calls up visions of past days,
When life was infancy and song
སྦེ
MUSIC.
To us, and old remembered lays,
Unheard, unheeded long;
Revive in joy or grief within us,
Like lost friends wakened from their sleep
With all their early power to win us
Alike to smile or weep.
And when we gaze upon that face,
Blooming in innocence and truth,
And mark its dimpled artlessness,
Its beauty and its youth;
We think of better worlds than this,
Of other beings pure as thou,
Who breathe, on winds of Paradise,
Music as thine is now.
And know the only emblem meet
Of that pure Faith the heart adores,
To be a child like thee, whose feet
Are strangers on Life's shores.
259

SONG OF THE ZEPHYR SPIRIT.
BY W. G. SIMMS;
I COME from the deeps where the mermaiden twines,
In her bowers of amber, her garlands of shells:
Where the sands are of gold, and, of crystal the vines,
And the spirit of gladness unchangingly dwells-
I breathed on the harp at Zephyrus' cave,
And the strain, as it rose, glided upward with me;
No dwelling on earth, but my home is the wave,
And my couch is the coral grove, deep in the sea.
ܙ ، ܐ
SONG OF THE ZEPHYR SPIRIT.
261
Thou hast dreamed-hast thou not?-of those wave-
girdled bowers,
Where all that can win the heart, beams on the sight:
Where life is a frolic through fancies and flowers,
And the soul lives in dreams of a lasting delight.
Thou wouldst win what thy dreams have long brought
to thy view,
Thou wouldst dwell with the moon that now beams
upon thee,
To the fears of the earth-to its cares, bid adieu,
Come, rest in the coral grove, deep in the sea.
With my breath I will fan thee when noon-day is nigh,
The gentlest of mermaids will lull thee to sleep;
She will watch by thy couch when the sun passes by,
Nor fly when the moon leaves her home in the deep.
Each joy thou hast sighed for, shall there be thine own,
The sorrows of time from thy slumbers shall flee,
Then come with me-win all the pleasures I've shown,
Come rest in the coral grove, deep in the sea.
ODE TO JAMESTOWN.
BY J. K. PAULDING.
OLD cradle of an infant world,
In which a nestling empire lay,
Struggling awhile, 'ere she unfurled,
Her gallant wing and soared away,
All hail! thou birthplace of the glowing west,
Thou seemst the towering eagle's ruined nest!
What solemn recollections throng,
What touching visions rise,
As wandering these old stones among,
I backward turn mine eyes,
And see the shadows of the dead flit round,
Like spirits, when the last dread trump shall sound!
The wonders of an age combined
In one short moment memory supplies,
ODE TO JAMESTOWN.
They throng upon my wakened mind,
As time's dark curtains rise.
The volume of a hundred buried years,
Condensed in one bright sheet, appears.
I hear the angry ocean rave,
I see the lonely little barque
Scudding along the crested wave,
Freighted like old Noah's ark,
As o'er the drowned earth it whirl'd,
With the forefathers of another world.
I see a train of exiles stand,
Amid the desert, desolate,
The fathers of my native land,
The daring pioneers of fate,
Who braved the perils of the sea and earth,
And gave a boundless empire birth.
I see the gloomy Indian range
His woodland empire, free as air;
I see the gloomy forest change,
The shadowy earth laid bare,
And, where the red man chased the bounding deer,
The smiling labours of the white appear.
I see the haughty warrior gaze
In wonder or in scorn,
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264
ODE TO JAMESTOWN.
As the pale faces sweat to raise
Their scanty fields of corn,
While he, the monarch of the boundless wood,
By sport, or hairbrained rapine, wins his food.
A moment, and the pageant's gone;
The red men are no more ;
The palefaced strangers stand alone
Upon the river's shore;
And the proud wood king, who their arts disdained,
Finds but a bloody grave, where once he reigned.
The forest reels beneath the stroke
Of sturdy woodman's axe;
The earth receives the white man's yoke,
And pays her willing tax
Of fruits, and flowers, and golden harvest fields,
And all that nature to blithe labour yields.
Then growing hamlets rear their heads,
And gathering crowds expand,
Far as my fancy's vision spreads,
O'er many a boundless land,
Till what was once a world of savage strife,
Teems with the richest gifts of social life.
Empire to empire swift succeeds,
Each happy, great, and free;
ODE TO JAMESTOWN.
One empire still another breeds,
A giant progeny,
To war upon the pigmy gods of earth,
The tyrants, to whom ignorance gave birth.
Then, as I turn my thoughts to trace
The fount whence these rich waters sprung
I glance toward this lonely place,
And find it, these rude stones among.
Here rest the sires of millions, sleeping sound
The Argonauts, the golden fleece that found.
Their names have been forgotten long;
The stone, but not a word, remains;
They cannot live in deathless song,
Nor breathe in pious strains.
Yet this sublime obscurity, to me
More touching is, than poet's rhapsody.
They live in millions that now breathe;
They live in millions yet unborn,
And pious gratitude shall wreathe
As bright a crown as e'er was worn,
And hang it on the green-leaved bough,
That whispers to the nameless dead below.
No one that inspiration drinks;
No one that loves his native land;
265
266
ODE TO JAMESTOWN.
No one that reasons, feels, or thinks,
Can 'mid these lonely ruins stand,
Without a moistened eye, a grateful tear,
Of reverent gratitude to those that moulder here.
The mighty shade now hovers round-
Of HIM whose strange, yet bright career,
Is written on this sacred ground,
In letters that no time shall sere;
Who in the old world smote the turbaned crew,
And founded Christian empires in the new.
And SHE! the glorious Indian maid,
The tutelary of this land,
The angel of the woodland shade,
The miracle of God's own hand,
Who joined man's heart, to woman's softest grace,
And thrice redeemed the scourgers of her race.
Sister of charity and love,
Whose life blood was soft Pity's tide,
Dear Goddess of the sylvan grove.
Flower of the Forest, nature's pride,
He is no man who does not bend the knee,
And she no woman who is not like thee!
Jamestown, and Plymouth's hallowed rock,
To me shall ever sacred be-
ODE TO JAMESTOWN.
I care not who my themes may mock,
Or sneer at them and me.
I envy not the brute who here can stand,
Without a prayer for his own native land.
And if the recreant crawl her earth,
Or breathe Virginia's air,
Or, in New England claim his birth,
From the old Pilgrims there,
He is a bastard, if he dare to mock,
267
Old Jamestown's shrine, or Plymouth's famous rock.
STANZAS ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD.
BY C. E. DAPON TE.
THOU who art hid for ever from these eyes,
Thou who hast lain so long in that dark sleep,
Unconscious that thy mother still doth weep
Beside thy early tomb with heavy sighs,-
My own fair child, thy voice no more replies
To the accustomed call of her whose tone
Dies on the chilly wind unheard, unknown.
My child, thy spirit bending from the skies,
Can view the wretched in the hour of prayer.
Look on me now—and though it may not be
That I shall trace thy heavenly form in air-
Shadow immortal that I cannot see,
O! wander round, and I shall deem I hear
Thy low voice whisper-"Weep no more for me.”

110
ANNE BOLEYN.
BY. R. DAWES.
I WEEP While gazing on thy modest face,
Thou pictured history of woman's love!
Joy spreads his burning pinions on thy cheek,
Shaming its whiteness; and thine eyes are full
Of conscious beauty, as they undulate.
Yet all thy beauty, poor deluded girl!
Served but to light thy ruin.-Is there not,
Kind Heaven! some secret talisman of hearts
Whereby to find a resting-place for love?
Unhappy maiden! let thy story teach
The beautiful and young, that while their path
Softens with roses,-danger may be there;
That love may watch the bubbles of the stream,
But never trust his image on the wave.


:
AN AMERICAN FOREST SPRING.
BY A. B. STREET.
Now fluttering breeze-now stormy blast,
Mild rain, then blustering snow-
Winter's stern fettering cold is passed,
But, sweet Spring! where art thou?
The white cloud floats 'mid smiling blue,
The broad bright sunshine's golden hue
Bathes the still frozen earth,
'Tis changed!—above, black vapours roll,
We turn from our expected stroll,
And seek the blazing hearth.
Hark, that sweet carol! with delight
We leave the stifling room;
The little blue-bird greets our sight,
Spring, glorious Spring has come!
The south-wind's balm is in the air,
The melting snow-wreaths every where
Are leaping off in showers,
And Nature, in her brightening looks,
Tells that her flowers, and leaves, and brooks,
And birds, will soon be ours.
AN AMERICAN FOREST SPRING.
A few soft sunny days have shone,
The air has lost its chill,
A bright green tinge succeeds the brown
Upon the southern hill.
Off to the woods—a pleasant scene
Here sprouts the fresh young wintergreen,
There swells a mossy mound,
Though in the hollows drifts are piled,
The wandering wind is sweet and mild,
And buds are bursting round.
Where its long rings uncurls the fern,
The violet, nestling low,
Casts back the white lid of its urn,
Its purple streaks to show:
Beautiful blossom! first to rise
And smile beneath Spring's wakening skies,
The courier of the band
Of coming flowers, what feelings sweet
Gush, as the silvery gem we meet
Upon its slender wand.
A sudden roar
—a shade is cast
We look up with a start,
And sounding like a transient blast,
O'erhead the pigeons dart;
Scarce their blue glancing shapes the eye
Can trace, ere, dotted on the sky,
271
272
AN AMERICAN FOREST SPRING.
They wheel in distant flight.
A chirp and swift the squirrel scours
Along the prostrate trunk, and cowers
Within its clefts, from sight.
Amid the creeping vine, which spreads
Its thick and verdant wreath,
The scaur-berry's downy spangle sheds
Its rich delicious breath.
The bee-swarm murmurs by, and now
It clusters black on yonder bough-
The robin's mottled breast
Glances that sunny spot across,
As round it seeks the twig and moss,
To frame its summer nest.
Warmer is each successive sky,
More soft the breezes pass,
The maple's gems of crimson lie
Upon the thick green grass.
The dogwood sheds its clusters white,
The birch has dropped its tassels slight,
Cowslips are round the rill,
The thresher whistles in the glen,
Flutters around the warbling wren,
And swamps have voices shrill.
AN AMERICAN FOREST SPRING.
A simultaneous burst of leaves
Has clothed the forest now,
A single day's bright sunshine weaves
This vivid gorgeous show.
Masses of shade are cast beneath,
The flowers are spread in varied wreath,
Night brings its soft sweet moon,
Morn wakes in mist, and twilight gray,
Weeps its bright dew, and smiling May
Melts blooming into June!
273
THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP.
BY W. G. SIMM S.
'Tis a wild spot and hath a gloomy look;
The bird sings never merrily in the trees,
And the young leaves seem blighted. A rank growth
Spreads poisonously round, with power to taint,
With blistering dews, the thoughtless hand that dares
To penetrate the covert. Cypresses
Crowd on the dank, wet earth; and, stretched at length
The cayman—a fit dweller in such home-
Slumbers, half-buried in the sedgy grass,
Beside the green ooze where he shelters him.
A whooping crane erects his skeleton form,
And shrieks in flight. Two summer-ducks aroused
To apprehension, as they hear his cry,
Dash up from the lagoon, with marvellous haste,
Following his guidance. Meetly taught by these,
And startled at our rapid, near approach,
The steel-jawed monster, from his grassy bed,
Crawls slowly to his slimy, green abode,
Which straight receives him. You behold him now,
THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP.
His ridgy back uprising as he speeds,
In silence to the centre of the stream,
Whence his head peers alone. A butterfly,
That, travelling all the day, has counted climes
Only by flowers, to rest himself awhile,
Lights on the monster's brow. The surly mute
Straightway goes down, so suddenly, that he,
The dandy of the summer flowers and woods,
Dips his light wings, and spoils his golden coat,
With the rank water of that turbid pond.
Wondering and vexed, the plumed citizen
Flies with an hurried effort, to the shore,
Seeking his kindred flowers :-but seeks in vain
Nothing of genial growth may there be seen,
Nothing of beautiful! Wild, ragged trees,
That look like felon spectres-fetid shrubs,
That taint the gloomy atmosphere- dusk shades,
That gather, half a cloud, and half a fiend
In aspect, lurking on the swamp's wild edge,—
Gloom with their sternness and forbidding frowns
The general prospect. The sad butterfly,
Waving his lackered wings, darts quickly on,
And, by his free flight, counsels us to speed,
For better lodgings, and a scene more sweet,
Than these drear borders offer us to-night.
275
THE SONG OF THE STROMKERL.
BY PARK BENJAMIN.
[The Swedes delight to tell of the Stromkerl, or boy of the stream, who haunts
the glassy brooks that steal gently through green meadows, and sits on the
silver waves at moonlight, playing his harp to the elves who dance on the
flowery margin.-W. Irving.]
COME, dance, elfins, dance! for my harp is in tune,
The wave-rocking gales are all lulled to repose;
And the breath of this exquisite evening of June,
Is scented with laurel and myrtle and rose.
Each lily that bends to the breast of my stream,
And sleeps on the waters transparently bright,
Will in ecstacy wake, like a bride from her dream,
When my tones stir the dark plumes of silence and
night.
My silken winged bark shall career by the shore,
As calmly as yonder white cloud on the air;
And the notes ye have heard with such rapture before,
Shall impart new delight to the young and the fair.
THE SONG OF THE STROMKER L.
277
The banks of my stream are enamelled with flowers
Come, shake from their petals the sweet, starry dew;
Such music and incense can only be ours,
While clear falls the summer sky's curtain of blue!
Come, queen of the revels-come, form into bands
The elves and the fairies that follow your train:
Tossing your tresses, and wreathing your hands,
Let your dainty feet glance to my wave-wafted strain!
'Tis the Stromkerl who calls you, the boy of the stream
I hear the faint hum of your voices afar :—
Come, dance! I will play till the morn's rosy beam
Into splendour shall melt the last lingering star!
A SKETCH.
BY CAROLINE GILMAN.
THE gay saloon was thronged with grace and beauty,
While astral rays shone out on lovely eyes,
And lovely eyes looked forth a clearer beam.
Fashion was there—not in her flaunting robes,
Lavish of charms—but that fair sprite, who moulds
All to her touch, yet leaves it nature still.
The light young laugh came reed-like on the ear,
Touching the chord of joy, electrical;
And smiles, too graceful for a sound, passed out
From ruby lips, like perfume from a flower.
Catching the gracious word of courtesy,
The listening maid turned to the speaker's eye;
And bowing in his honoured lowliness,
His manly head inclined to her slight form.
A SKETCH.
279
There was a hum of social harmony,
"Like the soft south" upon the rushing seas.
Between its pauses, burst the harp's rich tone,
Poured out by one who filled the Poet's eye
With fond fruition of his classic dream.
A voice was there-clear and distinct it rose
Like evening's star when other stars are dim:—
Clear, sweet, and lonely, as that southern bird's
Who on far turrets trills his midnight lay.
In the heart's cavern, deep that voice went down,
Waking up echoes of the silent past.
Oh, woman! lovely in thy beauty's power!
Thrice lovely, when we know that thou canst turn
To duty's path, and tread it with a smile.
1
THE DEAD MARINER.
BY G. D. PRENTICE.
SLEEP on-sleep on-above thy corse
The winds their Sabbath keep,
The wave is round thee-and thy breast
Heaves with the heaving deep;
O'er thee, mild eve her beauty flings,
And there the white gull lifts her wings;
And the blue halcyon loves to lave
Her plumage in the holy wave.
Sleep on-no willow o'er thee bends
With melancholy air,
No violet springs, nor dewy rose
Its soul of love lays bare;
But there the sea-flower bright and young
Is sweetly o'er thy slumbers flung;
And, like a weeping mourner fair,
The pale flag hangs its tresses there.
THE DEAD MARINER.
Sleep on-sleep on-the glittering depths
Of ocean's coral caves;
Are thy bright urn-thy requiem
The music of its waves;—
The purple gems for ever burn
In fadeless beauty round thy urn;
And, pure and deep as infant love,
The blue sea rolls its waves above.
Sleep on-sleep on-the fearful wrath
Of mingling cloud and deep,
May leave its wild and stormy track
Above thy place of sleep.
But when the wave has sunk to rest,
As now 'twill murmur o'er thy breast;
And the bright victims of the sea
Perchance will make their home with thee.
Sleep on-thy corse is far away,
But love bewails thee yet,-
For thee the heart-wrung sigh is breathed,
And lovely eyes are wet :—
And she, the young and beauteous bride,
Her thoughts are hovering by thy side :
As oft she turns to view with tears
The Eden of departed years.
281
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*
<
TO THE EVENING WIND.
BY W. C. BRYANT.
SPIRIT that breathest through my lattice, thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day!
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow;
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their
spray
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea!
Nor I alone—a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight;
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And languishing to hear thy welcome sound,
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight.
Go forth, into the gathering shade; go forth,-
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth!
TO THE EVENING WIND.
283
Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,
Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,
Summoning, from the innumerable boughs,
The strange deep harmonies that haunt his breast:
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,
And where the o'ershadowing branches sweep the grass.
Stoop o'er the place of graves, and softly sway
The sighing herbage by the gleaming stone;
That they who near the church-yard willows stray,
And listen in the deepening gloom, alone,
May think of gentle souls that passed away,
Like thy pure breath, into the vast unknown,
Sent forth from heaven among the sons of men,
And gone into the boundless heaven again.
The faint old man shall lean his silver head
To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moistened curls that overspread
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep;
And they who stand about the sick man's bed,
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,
And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow.

284
TO THE EVENING WIND.
Go-but the circle of eternal change,
Which is the life of nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,
Thee to thy birth-place of the deep once more;
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

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