Hymn to the North Star.-BRyant. THE sad and solemn Night Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires ; Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires; Day, too, hath many a star To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they: Unseen, they follow in his flaming way. And thou dost see them rise, Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set. Thou keep'st thy old, unmoving station yet, Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, There, at Morn's rosy birth, Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air; Chases the Day, beholds thee watching there; There Noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls Alike, beneath thine eye, The deeds of darkness and of light are done; High towards the star-lit sky Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud. On thy unaltering blaze The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, Fixes his steady gaze, And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right. And, therefore, bards of old, Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood, Did in thy beams behold A beauteous type of that unchanging good, Connecticut.-F. G. HALLECK. From an unpublished Poem. AND still her gray rocks tower above the sea Where breathes no castled lord or cabined slave; And where none kneel, save when to Heaven they pray, Nor even then, unless in their own way. Theirs is a pure republic, wild, yet strong, A " fierce democracie," where all are true To what themselves have voted-right or wrong- (If red, they might to Draco's code belong;) A vestal state, which power could not subdue, A justice of the peace, for the time being, And knowing all things;—and should Park appear The Niger's source, they'd meet him with-We know. They love their land, because it is their own, A stubborn race, fearing and flattering none. All-but a few apostates, who are meddling With merchandise, pounds, shillings, pence, and peddling Or, wandering through the southern countries, teaching Gallant and Godly, making love and preaching, A decent living. The Virginians look Upon them with as favorable eyes As Gabriel on the devil in paradise. But these are but their outcasts. View them near And there the lowliest farm-house hearth is graced Faithful in love, in honor stern and chaste, In friendship warm and true, in danger brave, And minds have there been nurtured, whose control Men who swayed senates with a statesman's soul, Whose leaves contain their country's history. * Hers are not Tempe's nor Arcadia's spring, Of Florence and the Arno-yet the wing Of life's best angel, Health, is on her gales Through sun and snow-and, in the autumn time, Her clear, warm heaven at noon,-the mist that shrouds The glorious splendor of her sunset clouds, And his mind's brightest vision but displays And when you dream of woman, and her love; To the green land I sing, then wake; you'll find them there. The Rising Moon.-W. O. B. PEABODY. THE moon is up! How calm and slow The weary winds forget to blow, The way-worn travellers, with delight, It glistens where the hurrying stream It falls upon the forest shade, So once, on Judah's evening hills, And still that light upon the world The waning moon, in time, shall fail America to Great Britain.*-WASHINGTON ALLSTON. ALL hail! thou noble land, Our father's native soil! O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore Canst reach to where the light Of Phoebus travels bright The world-o'er! The Genius of our clime, From his pine-embattled steep, Shall hail the great sublime; While the Tritons of the deep With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim. O'er the main our naval line, 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, In which our Milton told How the vault of heaven rung, *This poem was written in the year 1810. It was first printed, we be lieve, in Coleridge's Sybilline Leaves. Coleridge inserted it among his own poems, with the following note : "This poem, written by an American gentleman, a valued and dear friend, I communicate to the reader for its moral, no less than its poetic, spirit." After such a commendation from the greatest poet, and perhaps the great. est man living, any additional one would be superfluous.-ED. |