We will not, or we cannot fling
Its sadness from our breast,
We cling to it instinctively,
We pant for its unrest!
We are scatter'd-we are scatter'd!
Yet may we meet again
In a brighter and a purer sphere,
Beyond the reach of pain! Where the shadows of this lower world Can never cloud the eyeWhen the mortal hath put brightly on Its immortality!
DEEM not, beloved, that the glow
Of love with youth will know decay; For, though the wing of Time may throw A shadow o'er our way;
The sunshine of a cloudless faith,
The calmness of a holy trust,
Shall linger in our hearts till death
Consigns our "dust to dust!"
The fervid passions of our youth-
The fervour of affection's kiss-
Love, born of purity and truth-
All memories of bliss
These still are ours, while looking back
Upon the past with dewy eyes;
O, dearest! on life's vanish'd track
How much of sunshine lies!
Men call us poor-it may be true
Amid the gay and glittering crowd;
We feel it, though our wants are few,
Yet envy not the proud.
The freshness of love's early flowers,
Heart-shelter'd through long years of want,
Pure hopes and quiet joys are ours,
That wealth could never grant.
Something of beauty from thy brow,
Something of lightness from thy tread,
Hath pass'd--yet thou art dearer now
Than when our vows were said:
A softer beauty round thee gleams,
Chasten'd by time, yet calmly bright;
And from thine eye of hazel beams
A deeper, tenderer light:
An emblem of the love which lives
Through every change, as time departs;
Which binds our souls in one, and gives
New gladness to our hearts!
Flinging a halo over life
Like that which gilds the life beyond!
Ah! well I know thy thoughts, dear wife!
To thoughts like these respond.
The mother, with her dewy eye,
Is dearer than the blushing bride
Who stood, three happy years gone by,
In beauty by my side!
Our Father, throned in light above,
Hath bless'd us with a fairy child--
A bright link in the chain of love--
The pure and undefiled:
Rich in the heart's best treasure, still
With a calm trust we'll journey on,
Link'd heart with heart, dear wife! until
Life's pilgrimage be done!
Youth-beauty--passion--these will pass
Like every thing of earth away-
The breath-stains on the polish'd glass
Less transient are than they.
But love dies not--the child of GoD--
The soother of life's many woes-
She scatters fragrance round the sod
Where buried hopes repose!
She leads us with her radiant hand
Earth's pleasant streams and pasture by,
Still pointing to a better land
Of bliss beyond the sky!
HOPE, strewing with a liberal hand
Thy pathway with her choicest flowers,
Making the earth an Eden-land,
And gilding time's departing hours;
Lifting the clouds from life's blue sky,
And pointing to that sphere divine
Where joy's immortal blossoms lie
In the rich light of heaven-be thine! Love, with its voice of silvery tone,
Whose music melts upon the heart
Like whispers from the world unknown,
When shadows from the soul depart-
Love, with its sunlight melting through
The mists that over earth are driven,
And giving earth itself the hue
And brightness of the upper-heaven-
Peace, hymning with her seraph-tones
Amid the stillness of thy soul,
Till every human passion owns
Her mighty but her mild control-
Devotion, with her lifted eye,
All radiant with the tears of bliss,
Looking beyond the bending sky
To worlds more glorious than this
Duty, untiring in her toil
Earth's parch'd and sterile wastes amongZeal, delving in the rocky soil,
With words of cheer upon her tongue-
Faith, with a strong and daring hand
Rending aside the veil of heaven,
And claiming as her own the land
Whose glories to her view are given-
These, with the many lights that shine
Brightly life's pilgrim-path upon,—
These, with the bliss they bring, be thine,
Till purer bliss in heaven be won;
Till, gather'd with the loved of time,
Whose feet the "narrow way" have trod,
Thy soul shall drink of joys sublime,
And linger in the smile of GOD!
BELIEVE not the slander, my dearest KATRINE!
For the ice of the world hath not frozen my heart;
In my innermost spirit there still is a shrine
Where thou art remember'd, all pure as thou art:
The dark tide of years, as it bears us along,
Though it sweep away hope in its turbulent flow,
Cannot drown the low voice of Love's eloquent song,
Nor chill with its waters my faith's early glow.
True, the world hath its snares, and the soul may
grow faint
In its strifes with the follies and falsehoods of
earth;
And amidst the dark whirl of corruption, a taint
May poison the thoughts that are purest at birth.
Temptations and trials, without and within,
From the pathway of virtue the spirit may lure;
But the soul shall grow strong in its triumphs o'er sin,
And the heart shall preserve its integrity pure.
The finger of Love, on my innermost heart,
Wrote thy name, O adored! when my feelings
And the record shall 'bide till my soul shall depart,
And the darkness of death o'er my being be flung.
Then believe not the slander that says I forget,
In the whirl of excitement, the love that was thine;
Thou wert dear in my boyhood, art dear to me yet:
For my sunlight of life is the smile of KATRINE!
"LIKE thee, O stream! to glide in solitude
Noiselessly on, reflecting sun or star,
Unseen by man, and from the great world's jar
Kept evermore aloof: methinks 't were good
To live thus lonely through the silent lapse
Of my appointed time." Not wisely said,
Unthinking Quietist! The brook hath sped
Its course for ages through the narrow gaps
Of rifted hills and o'er the reedy plain,
Or mid the eternal forests, not in vain;
The grass more greenly groweth on its brink,
And lovelier flowers and richer fruits are there,
And of its crystal waters myriads drink,
That else would faint beneath the torrid air.
INACTION NOW is crime. The old earth reels
Inebriate with guilt; and Vice, grown bold,
Laughs Innocence to scorn. The thirst for gold
Hath made men demons, till the heart that feels
The impulse of impartial love, nor kneels
In worship foul to Mammon, is contemn'd.
He who hath kept his purer faith, and stemm'd
Corruption's tide, and from the ruffian heels
Of impious tramplers rescued peril'd right,
Is call'd fanatic, and with scoffs and jeers Maliciously assail'd. The poor man's tear Are unregarded; the oppressor's might Revered as law; and he whose righteous w Departs from evil, makes himself a prey.
THE ceaseless hum of men, the dusty streets,
Crowded with multitudinous life; the din
Of toil and traffic, and the wo and sin,
The dweller in the populous city meets:
These have I left to seek the cool retreats
Of the untrodden forest, where, in bowers
Builded by Nature's hand, inlaid with flowes,
And roof'd with ivy, on the mossy seats
Reclining, I can while away the hours In sweetest converse with old books, or give My thoughts to Gon; or fancies fugitive
Indulge, while over me their radiant showers Of rarest blossoms the old trees shake down, And thanks to HIM my meditations crown!
DASHING in big drops on the narrow pane,
And making mournful music for the mind,
While plays his interlude the wizard wind,
I hear the ringing of the frequent rain:
How doth its dreamy tone the spirit lull,
Bringing a sweet forgetfulness of pain,
While busy thought calls up the past again,
And lingers mid the pure and beautiful
Visions of early childhood! Sunny faces
Meet us with looks of love, and in the moans
Of the faint wind we hear familiar tones,
And tread again in old familiar places!
Such is thy power, O Rain! the heart to bless,
Wiling the soul away from its own wretchedness!
THE PILGRIM FATHERS.
BOLD men were they, and true, that pilgrim-band,
Who plough'd with venturous prow the stormy
Seeking a home for hunted Liberty
Amid the ancient forests of a land
Wild, gloomy, vast, magnificently grand!
Friends, country, hallow'd homes they left, to be
Pilgrims for CHRIST's sake, to a foreign strand-
Beset by peril, worn with toil, yet free!
Tireless in zeal, devotion, labour, hope;
Constant in faith; in justice how severe!
Though fools deride and bigot-skeptics sneer,
Praise to their names! If call'd like them to cope,
In evil times, with dark and evil powers,
O, be their faith, their zeal, their courage ours!
THE Reverend LOUIS LEGRAND NOBLE was born in the valley of the Butternut Creek, in Otsego county, in New York. While he was a youth his father removed to the banks of the Wacamutquiock, -now called the Huron, a small river in Michigan, and there, among scenes of remarkable wildness and beauty, he passed most of his time until the commencement of his college-life. In a letter to me, he says: "I was ever under a strong impulse to imbody in language my thoughts, feelings, fancies, as they sprung up in the presence of the rude but
beautiful things around me: the prairies on fire, the sparkling lakes, the park-like forests, Indians on the hunt, guiding their frail canoes amid the rapids, or standing at night in the red light of their festival fires. I breathed the air of poetry."
Mr. NOBLE was admitted to orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, in 1840. His principal poetical work is "Ne-mah-min," an Indian story, in three cantos, in which he has made good use of his experience of forest life. In 1853 he published in one volume, a Memoir of Mr. COLE, the painter.
Upon an Indian rush-mat, spread
Where burr-oak boughs a coolness shed,
Alone he sat, a cripple-child,
With eyes so large, so dark and wild,
And fingers, thin and pale to see,
Locked upon his trembling knee.
A-gathering nuts so blithe and gay,
The children early tripp'd away;
And he his mother had besought
Under the oak to have him brought;-
It was ever his seat when blackbirds sung
The wavy, rustling tops among ;—
They calm'd his pain,--they cheer'd his loneliness-
The gales,-the music of the wilderness.
Upon a prairie wide and wild
Look'd off that suffering cripple-child:
The hour was breezy, the hour was bright;O, 't was a lively, a lovely sight!
An eagle sailing to and fro Around a flitting cloud so whiteAcross the billowy grass below Darting swift their shadows' light:And mingled noises sweet and clear, Noises out of the ringing wood, Were pleasing trouble in his ear, A shock how pleasant to his blood: O, happy world!--Beauty and Blessing slept On everything but him-he felt, and wept.
Humming a lightsome tune of yore,
Beside the open log-house door,
Tears upon his sickly cheek
Saw his mother, and so did speak ;
"What makes his mother's HENRY Weep?
You and I the cottage keep;
They hunt the nuts and clusters blue,
Weary lads for me and you;
And yonder see the quiet sheep--
Why, now-I wonder why you weep!”—
"Mother, I wish that I could be
A sailor on the breezy sea!"
"A sailor on the stormy sea, my son!What ails the boy!-what have the breezes done!"
"I do!-I wish that I could be
A sailor on the rolling sea:
In the shadow of the sails
I would ride and rock all day,
Going whither blow the gales,
As I have heard a seaman say:
I would, I guess, come back again
For my mother now and then;
And the curling fire so bright,
When the prairie burns at night;
And tell the wonders I had seen
Away upon the ocean green;" —
"Hush! hush! talk not about the ocean so;
Better at home a hunter hale to go."
Between a tear and sigh he smiled; And thus spake on the cripple-child : "I would I were a hunter hale, Nimbler than the nimble doe, Bounding lightly down the dale, But that will never be, I know! Behind the house the woodlands lie; A prairie wide and green before; And I have seen them with my eye A thousand times or more; Yet in the woods I never stray'd, Or on the prairie-border play'd ;O, mother dear, that I could only be A sailor-boy upon the rocking sea!"
The boy's it was a bitter lot
She always felt, I trow;
Yet never till then its bitterness
At heart had grieved her so.
Nature had waked the eternal wish;
-Liberty, far and wide!—
And now, to win him health, with joy,
She would that morn have died.
Till noon,
she kept the shady door-way chair,
But never a measure of that ancient air.
Piped the March-wind; pinch'd and slow
The deer were trooping in the snow;
He saw them out of the cottage-door,
The lame boy sitting upon the floor:
"Mother, mother, how long will it be
Till the prairie go like a waving sea?
Will the bare woods ever be green, and when?
O, will it ever be summer again?"-
She look'd in silence on her child:
That large eye, ever so dark and wild,
O me, how bright!-it may have been
That he was grown so pale and thin.
It
came, the emerald month, and sweetly shed
Beauty for grief, and garlands for the dead.
FLYING AT MIDNIGHT, IN THE VALE OF THE HURON."
Он, what a still, bright night! It is the sleep
Of beauteous Nature in her bridal hall.
See, while the groves shadow the shining lake,
How the full-moon does bathe their melting green!-
I hear the dew-drop twang upon the pool.
Hark, hark, what music! from the rampart hills,
How like a far-off bugle, sweet and clear,
It searches through the list'ning wilderness!-
A Swan-I know it by the trumpet-tone:
Winging her pathless way in the cool heavens,
Piping her midnight melody, she comes.
Beautiful bird! upon the dusk, still world
Thou fallest like an angel-like a lone
Sweet angel from some sphere of harmony.
Where art thou, where ?-no speck upon the blue
My vision marks from whence thy music ranges.
And why this hour-this voiceless hour-is thine,
And thine alone, I cannot tell. Perchance,
While all is hush and silent but the heart,
E'en thou hast human sympathies for heaven,
And singest yonder in the holy deep
Because thou hast a pinion. If it be,
Oh, for a wing, upon the aerial tide
To sail with thee a minstrel mariner!
When to a rarer height thou wheelest up,
Hast thou that awful thrill of an ascension-
The river Huron rises in the interior of Michigan, and flows into Lake Erie. Its clear waters gave it the name of its more mighty kinsman, Lake Huron.
The lone, lost feeling in the vasty vault?
Oh, for thine ear, to hear the ascending tones
Range the ethereal chambers!-then to fel
A harmony, while from the eternal depth
Steals nought but the pure star-light evermor
And then to list the echoes, faint and mellow,
Far, far below, breathe from the hollow earth,
For thee, soft, sweet petition, to return.
And hither, haply, thou wilt shape thy ned
And settle, like a silvery cloud, to rest,
If thy wild image, flaring in the abyss,
Startle thee not aloft. Lone aeronaut,
That catchest, on thine airy looking-out,
Glassing the hollow darkness, many a lake,
Lay, for the night, thy lily bosom here.
There is the deep unsounded for thy bath,
The shallow for the shaking of thy quills,
The dreamy cove, or cedar-wooded isle,
With galaxy of water-lilies, where,
Like mild Diana 'mong the quiet stars,
'Neath over-bending branches thou wilt move,
Till early warblers shake the crystal shower,
And whistling pinions warn thee to thy voyage
But where art thou ?-lost,-spirited away
To bowers of light by thy own dying whispers
Or does some billow of the ocean-air,
In its still roll around from zone to zone,
All breathless to the empyrean heave thee?-
There is a panting in the zenith-hush!-
The Swan-how strong her great wing times the
She passes over high and quietly. [silence!-
Now peals the living clarion anew;
One vocal shower falls in and fills the vale.
What witchery in the wilderness it plays!-
Shrill snort the affrighted deer; across the lake
The loon, sole sentinel, screams loud alarm;-
The shy fox barks;-tingling in every vein
I feel the wild enchantment;-hark! they come,
The dulcet echoes from the distant hills,
Like fainter horns responsive; all the while,
From misty isles, soft-stealing symphonies.
Thou bright, swift river of the bark canoe,
Threading the prairie-ponds of Washtenung,
The day of romance wanes. Few summers more,
And the long night will pass away unwaked,
Save by the house-dog, or the village bell;
And she, thy minstrel queen, her ermine dip
Ah! thou wilt not stoop:
Old Huron, haply, glistens on thy sky.
The chasing moon-beams, glancing on thy plumes,
Reveal thee now, a little beating blot,
Into the pale Aurora fading.
Sinks gently back upon her flowery couch
The startled Night;-tinkle the damp wood-vaults
While slip the dew-pearls from her leafy curtains.
That last soft whispering note, how spirit-like!
While vainly yet mine car another waits,
A sad, sweet longing lingers in my heart.
THIS amiable poet is the son of a Scottish gentleman who, resigning a commission in the British navy, emigrated to New York, where he was married, and resided till his death. He was born in that city on the twelfth of August, 1812; in 1826 began to learn the printing business; in 1833 took charge of Mr. L. JOHNSON's extensive stereotype foundry, in Philadelphia, in which he is now a partner; and
LIFE'S EVENING.
THE world to me is growing gray and old;
My friends are dropping one by one away; Some live in far-off lands- some in the clay Rest quietly, their mortal moments told.
My sire departed ere his locks were gray;
My mother wept, and soon beside him lay;
My elder kin have long since gone- and I
Am left-a leaf upon an autumn tree,
Among whose branches chilling breezes steal, The sure precursors of the winter nigh;
And when my offspring at our altar kneel To worship God, and sing our morning psalm, Their rising stature whispers unto me My life is gently waning to its evening calm.
THE SLEEPING WIFE.
My wife! how calmly sleepest thou!
A perfect peace is on thy brow:
Thine eyes beneath their fringed lid,
Like stars behind a cloud, are hid;
Thy voice is mute, and not a sound
Disturbs the tranquil air around;
I'll watch, and mark each line of grace
That GOD has drawn upon thy face.
My wife! my wife! thy bosom fair,
That heaves with breath more pure than air
Which dwells within the scented rose,
Is wrapped in deep and still repose;—
So deep, that I erewhile did start,
And lay my hand upon thy heart,
In sudden fear that stealthy death
Had slyly robbed thee of thy breath.
My wife! my wife! thy face now seems
To show the tenor of thy dreams;
Methinks thy gentle spirit plays
Amid the scenes of earlier days;
Thy thoughts, perchance, now dwell on him
Whom most thou lov'st; or in the dim
And shadowy future strive to pry,
With woman's curious, earnest eye.
Sleep on! sleep on! my dreaming wife!
Thou livest now another life,
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REMEMBER the Poor!
It fearfully snoweth,
And bitterly bloweth;
Thou couldst not endure
The tempest's wild power
Through night's dreary hour,
Then pity the poor!
Remember the poor!
The father is lying
In that hovel, dying
With sickness of heart.
No voice cheers his dwelling,
A Saviour's love telling,
Ere life shall depart.
Remember the poor!
The widow is sighing,
The orphans are crying,
Half starving for bread;
In mercy be speedy
To succor the needy,-
Their helper is dead!
Remember the poor!
The baby is sleeping,
Its cheeks wet with weeping,
On its mother's fond breast;
Whose cough, deep and hollow,
Foretells she'll soon follow
Her husband to rest!
Remember the poor!
To him who aid lendeth,
Whatever he spendeth
The LORD will repay;
And sweet thoughts shall cheer him,
And God's love be near him,
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