Kythe* like the passing meteor of the deep:
Yet ere to-morrow shall those sunny waves,
That wanton round her, as they were in love,
Turn dark and fierce, and swell, and swallow her:
So is he girt by death on every side,
As heedless of it. Thus he perishes.
Such were my thoughts upon a summer eve,
As forth I walked to quaff the cooling breeze
The setting sun was curtaining the west
With purple and with gold, so fiercely bright,
That eye of mortal might not look on it-
Pavilion fitting for an angel's home.
The sun's last ray fell slanting on a thorn
With blossoms white, and there a blackbird sat
Bidding the sun adieu, in tones so sweet
As fancy might awake around his throne.
My heart was full, yet found no utterance,
Save in a half-breathed sigh and moistening tear.
I wandered on, scarce knowing where I went,
Till I was seated on an infant's grave.
Alas! I knew the little tenant well:
She was one of a lovely family,
That oft had clung around me like a wreath
Of flowers, the fairest of the maiden spring-
It was a new-made grave, and the green sod
Lay loosely on it; yet affection there
Had reared the stone, her monument of fame.
I read the name-I loved to hear her lisp-
'Twas not alone, but every name was there
That lately echoed through that happy dome.
I had been three weeks absent; in that time
The merciless destroyer was at work,
And spared not one of all the infant group.
The last of all I read the grandsire's name,
On whose white locks I oft had seen her cheek
Like a bright sunbeam on a fleecy cloud,
Rekindling in his eye the fading lustre,
Breathing into his heart the glow of youth.
He died at eighty of a broken heart,
Bereft of all for whom he wished to live.
* Kythe or kithe; Show, used here as a neuter verb: The oldest English
poets use it actively. "Ne kithe hire jalousie."-Chaucer.
Stanzas written at Midnight.-D. MOIR. "TIS night-and in darkness the visions of youth Flit solemn and slow in the eye of the mind; The hope they excited hath perished, and truth
Laments o'er the wrecks they are leaving behind. "Tis midnight-and wide o'er the regions of riot
Are spread, deep in silence, the wings of repose;
And man, soothed from revel, and lulled into quiet,
Forgets in his slumbers the weight of his woes.
How gloomy and dim is the scowl of the heaven,
Whose azure the clouds with their darkness invest;
Not a star o'er the shadowy concave is given,
To omen a something like hope to the breast.
Hark! how the lone night-wind uptosses the forest!
A downcast regret through the mind slowly steals:
But ah! 'tis the tempest of fortune that sorest
The bosom of man in his solitude feels!
Where, where are the spirits in whom was my trust,
Whose bosoms with mutual affection did burn?
Alas! they have gone to their homes in the dust,
The grass rustles drearily over their urn:
While I, in a populous solitude, languish,
'Mid foes that beset me, and friends that are cold;
Ah! the pilgrim of earth oft has felt in his anguish,
That the heart may be widowed before it is old!
Affection can sooth but its votaries an hour,
Doomed soon in the flames that it raised to depart;
And ah! disappointment has poison and power
To ruffle and sour the most patient of heart.
Too oft, 'neath the barb-pointed arrows of malice,
Has merit been destined to bear and to bleed;
And they, who of pleasure have emptied the chalice,
Have found that the dregs were full bitter indeed.
Let the storms of adversity lower; 'tis in vain
Tho' friends should forsake me, and foes should combine-
Such may kindle the breasts of the weak to complain,
They only can teach resignation to mine :
For far o'er the regions of doubt and of dreaming,
The spirit beholds a less perishing span;
And bright through the tempest the rainbow is streaming,
The sign of forgiveness from Heaven to man!
LESSON LXXVI.
Slavery. Cowper.
O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more. My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colored like his own; and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every
Of all your empire; that, where Britain's power Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
The same Subject.-MONTGOMERY.
THE broken heart, which kindness never heals,
The home-sick passion which the negro feels,
When toiling, fainting in the land of canes,
His spirit wanders to his native plains;
His little lovely dwelling there he sees,
Beneath the shade of his paternal trees,
The home of comfort :-then before his eyes
The terrors of captivity arise.
-'Twas night :—his babes around him lay at rest,
Their mother slumbered on their father's breast;
A yell of murder rang around their bed;
They woke; their cottage blazed; the victims fled;
Forth sprang the ambush'd ruffians on their prey,
They caught, they bound, they drove them far away;
The white man bought them at the mart of blood;
In pestilential barks they cross'd the flood;
Then were the wretched ones asunder torn,
To distant isles, to separate bondage borne,
Denied, though sought with tears, the sad relief
That misery loves, the fellowship of grief.
The negro, spoiled of all that nature gave-
The freeborn man, thus shrunk into a slave;
His passive limbs to measured tasks confined,
Obeyed the impulse of another mind;
A silent, secret, terrible control,
That ruled his sinews, and repress'd his soul.
Not for himself he waked at morning light,
Toil'd the long day, and sought repose at night;
His rest, his labor, pastime, strength, and health,
Were only portions of a master's wealth;
His love-O, name not love, where Britons doom
The fruit of love to slavery from the womb.-
Thus spurned, degraded, trampled, and oppress'd,
The negro-exile languished in the west,
With nothing left of life but hated breath,
And not a hope except the hope in death,
To fly for ever from the Creole-strand,
And dwell a freeman in his father's land.
Lives there a savage ruder than the slave?
-Cruel as death, insatiate as the grave,
False as the winds that round his vessel blow,
Remorseless as the gulf that yawns below,
Is he who toils upon the wafting flood,
A Christian broker in the trade of blood:
Boisterous in speech, in action prompt and bold,
He buys, he sells, he steals, he kills, for gold.
At noon, when sky and ocean, calm and clear,
Bend round his bark, one blue unbroken sphere;
When dancing dolphins sparkle through the brine,
And sunbeam circles o'er the waters shine;
He sees no beauty in the heaven serene,
No soul-enchanting sweetness in the scene,
But, darkly scowling at the glorious day,
Curses the winds that loiter on their way.
When swoln with hurricanes the billows rise,
To meet the lightning midway from the skies;
When from the unburthen'd hold his shrieking slaves
Are cast, at midnight, to the hungry waves;
Not for his victims strangled in the deeps,
Not for his crimes the harden'd pirate weeps,
But, grimly smiling, when the storm is o'er,
Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.
The Slave Trade.-Extract from a Discourse delivered at Plymouth, Mass. Dec. 22, 1820, in commemoration of the first settlement of New-England.-By DANIEL WEBSTER. Ir the blessings of our political and social condition have not now been too highly estimated, we cannot well over-rate the responsibility which they impose upon us. We hold these institutions of government, religion, and learning, to be trănsmitted as well as enjoyed. We are in the line of conveyance through which whatever has been obtained by the
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