Beautiful island! then it only seemed

A lovely stranger; it has grown a friend.
I gazed on its smooth slopes, but never dreamed
How soon that green and quiet isle would send
The treasures of its womb across the sea,
To warm a poet's room and boil his tea.

Dark anthracite! that reddenest on my hearth,

Thou in those island mines didst slumber long; But now thou art come forth to move the earth,

And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong: Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee, And warm the shins of all that underrate thee.

Yea, they did wrong thee foully-they who mocked
Thy honest face, and said thou wouldst not burn;
Of hewing thee to chimney-pieces talked,

And grew profane, and swore, in bitter scorn,
That men might to thy inner caves retire,
And there, unsinged, abide the day of fire.

Yet is thy greatness nigh. I pause to state,
That I too have seen greatness-even I-
Shook hands with Adams, stared at La Fayette,
When, barehead, in the hot noon of July,

He would not let the umbrella be held o'er him,

For which three cheers burst from the mob before him.

And I have seen-not many months ago-
An eastern Governor in chapeau bras
And military coat, a glorious show!

Ride forth to visit the reviews, and ah!

How oft he smiled and bowed to Jonathan!

How many hands were shook and votes were won!

'Twas a great Governor; thou too shalt be

Great in thy turn, and wide shall spread thy fame And swiftly; furthest Maine shall hear of thee, And cold New Brunswick gladden at thy name; And, faintly through its sleets, the weeping isle That sends the Boston folks their cod shall smile.

For thou shalt forge vast railways, and shalt heat
The hissing rivers into steam, and drive
Huge masses from thy mines, on iron feet,
Walking their steady way, as if alive,
Northward, till everlasting ice besets thee,
And South as far as the grim Spaniard lets thee.

Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea,
Like its own monsters-boats that for a guinea
Will take a man to Havre-and shalt be

The moving soul of many a spinning-jenny,
And ply thy shuttles, till a bard can wear
As good a suit of broadcloth as the mayor.

Then we will laugh at winter when we hear
The grim old churl about our dwellings rave:
Thou, from that "ruler of the inverted year,"

Shalt pluck the knotty sceptre Cowper gave,
And pull him from his sledge, and drag him in,
And melt the icicles from off his chin.

New York, January, 1826.

"New York Review," April, 1826.

"I CANNOT FORGET WITH WHAT FERVID DEVOTION."

I

CANNOT forget with what fervid devotion

I worshipped the visions of verse and of fame; Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean, To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.

And deep were my musings in life's early blossom,
Mid the twilight of mountain-groves wandering

long;

How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom,

When o'er me descended the spirit of song!

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened To the rush of the pebble-paved river between, Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,

All breathless with awe have I gazed on the

scene;

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing, From the gloom of the thicket that over me hung, And the thoughts that awoke, in that rapture of feeling,

Were formed into verse as they rose to my tongue.

Bright visions! I mixed with the world, and ye faded,
No longer your pure rural worshipper now;
In the haunts your continual presence pervaded,
Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow.

In the old mossy groves on the breast of the mountains,

In deep lonely glens where the waters complain, By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the fountain, I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in vain.

Oh, leave not forlorn and forever forsaken,
Your pupil and victim to life and its tears!
But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken
The glories ye showed to his earlier years.
Cummington, 1815; New York, 1826.

"New York Review," February, 1826.