That, to my eyes of ignorance, they seem Like honest rustics on the homeward way; They are to us, like many a living form, Hymn of the Cherokee Indian.-I. MCLELLAN, JUN. They waste us; ay, like April snow In the warm noon, we shrink away; Till they shall fill the land, and we Are driven into the western sca. Bryant. LIKE the shadows in the stream, Like the evanescent gleam Of the twilight's failing blaze, Like all things that soon decay, Indian son, and Indian sire! Now the hunter's bow's unbent, Is the red man of the wild; To his day there'll dawn no morrow; From his hills the stag is fled, And the birds have left the mountain, Indian woman, to thy breast We, the rightful lords of yore, By the river's lonely marge, Therefore, Indian people, flee Red men and their realms must sever; Lake Superior.-S. G. GOODRICH. "FATHER OF LAKES!" thy waters bend Beyond the eagle's utmost view, When, throned in heaven, he sees thee send Back to the sky its world of blue. Boundless and deep, the forests weave Their twilight shade thy borders o'er, Pale Silence, mid thy hollow caves, Sends the hoarse wolf-notes of thy woods Nor can the light canoes, that glide The spell of stillness reigning there. Yet round this waste of wood and wave, The thunder-riven oak, that flings To the lone traveller's kindled eye. The gnarled and braided boughs, that show The very echoes round this shore Have caught a strange and gibbering tone; For they have told the war-whoop o'er, Till the wild chorus is their own. Wave of the wilderness, adieu! Adieu, ye rocks, ye wilds and woods! Roll on, thou element of blue, And fill these awful solitudes! Thou hast no tale to tel' of man— God is thy theme. Ye sounding cavesWhisper of Him, whose mighty plan Deems as a bubble all your waves! Oriental Mysticism.-LEONARD Woods. The following passage is translated from a German version of the Dachau har Odsat, a Persian poem of the thirteenth century, and is here offered as a specimen of the mystic writings of the East, a single sprig brought to town from a distant and unfrequented garden. These writings are characterized by wildness of fancy, a philosophy extremely abstruse, and especially by a deep spiritual life. They prove, as will be seen in the lines which follow, that the human mind has strong religious instincts; which, however, unless guided by a higher wisdom, are liable to great perversion.-Extravagant as the conception of the passage here selected must appear to us, it has still its foundation in truth. That the ideas of infinite and divine things, which slumber in the mind, are often violently awakened by external objects, is what every one has experienced. Says a modern poet, in prospect of “clear, placid Leman," And what is the story of Rudbari and Hassan, but an exhibition, a la mode orimtale, of the same truth? In ancient days, as the old stories run, Strange hap befell a father and his son. Rudbari was an old sea-faring man, And loved the rough paths of the ocean; And Hassan was his child,-a boy as bright, As the keen moon, gleaming in the vault of night. Rose-red his cheek, Narcissus-like his eye, And his form might well with the slender cypress vie. And Hassan pure as a drop of early dew. Now, because Rudbari loved this only child, He was feign to take him o'er the waters wild. The ship is on the strand-friends, brothers, parents, there Take the last leave with mingled tears and prayer. The sailor calls, the fair breeze chides delay, The sails are spread, and all are under way. But when the ship, like a strong-shot arrow, flew, And the well known shore was fading from the view, Such mystic words as none could understand: "On this troubled wave in vain we seek for rest. Who builds his house on the sea, or his palace on its breast? He will love, when home returned at last, To tell, in his native cot, of dangers past.' Then Hassan said: "Think not thy brave boy fears Hold me not back; I will not be denied." Rudbari now wept o'er his wildered child: "What mean these looks, and words so strangely wild? Dearer, my boy, to me than all the gain That I've earned from the bounteous bosom of the main! A light from the INFINITE broke in upon my soul!" And would better suit the mouth of some star-gazing sage." "Thy words, my father, cannot turn away Mine eye, now fixed on that supernal day." "Dost thou not, Hassan, lay these dreams aside, I'll plunge thee headlong in this whelming tide." "Do this, Rudbari, only not in ire, 'Tis all I ask, and all I can desire. For on the bosom of this rolling flood, Slumbers an awful mystery of Good; And he may solve it, who will self expunge, And in the depths of boundless being plunge." He spake, and plunged, and as quickly sunk beneath As the pearl is by the shell that clasps it round. And they slumber both on the bottom of the deep! To a Sister about to embark on a Missionary Enterprise.→ B. B. THATCHER. O SISTER! Sister! hath the memory Of other years no power upon thy soul, That thus, with tearless eye, thou leavest me- |