LIFE.

H Life! I breathe thee in the breeze,

O' the bounding in

I feel thee bounding in my veins,

I see thee in these stretching trees,

These flowers, this still rock's mossy stains.

This stream of odors flowing by

From clover-field and clumps of pine,

This music, thrilling all the sky,

From all the morning birds, are thine.

Thou fill'st with joy this little one,

That leaps and shouts beside me here,
Munich

Where Isar's clay-white rivulets run

Through the dark woods like frightened deer.

Ah! must thy mighty breath, that wakes
Insect and bird, and flower and tree,
From the low-trodden dust, and makes

Their daily gladness, pass from me—

سنة

Pass, pulse by pulse, till o'er the ground

These limbs, now strong, shall creep with pain,

And this fair world of sight and sound

Seem fading into night again?

The things, oh LIFE! thou quickenest, all
Strive upward toward the broad bright sky,
Upward and outward, and they fall

Back to earth's bosom when they die.

All that have borne the touch of death,
All that shall live, lie mingled there,
Beneath that veil of bloom and breath,

That living zone 'twixt earth and air.

There lies my chamber dark and still,
The atoms trampled by my feet
There wait, to take the place I fill

In the sweet air and sunshine sweet.

Well, I have had my turn, have been

Raised from the darkness of the clod,

And for a glorious moment seen

The brightness of the skirts of God;

And knew the light within my breast,
Though wavering oftentimes and dim,
The power, the will, that never rest,

And cannot die, were all from him.

"EARTH'S CHILDREN CLEAVE TO EARTH."

E

ARTH'S children cleave to Earth-her frail

Decaying children dread decay.

Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale
And lessens in the morning ray-
Look, how, by mountain rivulet,

It lingers as it upward creeps,

And clings to fern and copsewood set
Along the green and dewy steeps:
Clings to the flowery kalmia, clings
To precipices fringed with grass,
Dark maples where the wood-thrush sings,
And bowers of fragrant sassafras.

Yet all in vain-it passes still

From hold to hold, it cannot stay,

And in the very beams that fill

The world with glory, wastes away,

Till, parting from the mountain's brow,
It vanishes from human eye,

And that which sprung of earth is now
A portion of the glorious sky.

New York, 1836.

"New York Mirror," July, 1836.

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS.

H

I.

ERE halt we our march, and pitch our tent

On the rugged forest-ground,

And light our fire with the branches rent

By winds from the beeches round. Wild storms have torn this ancient wood, But a wilder is at hand,

With hail of iron and rain of blood,

To sweep and waste the land.

II.

How the dark wood rings with our voices shrill,
That startle the sleeping bird!
To-morrow eve must the voice be still,

And the step must fall unheard.
The Briton lies by the blue Champlain,

In Ticonderoga's towers,

And ere the sun rise twice again,

Must they and the lake be ours.