And Italy shall feel thy breathing on her shores,
Where Liberty once more takes up her lance;
And when thou hurriest back, full of high themes,
Great Albion shall joy through every cliff,
And lordly hall, and peasant-home, and old
Cathedral where earth's emperors sleep-whose

crowns

Were laurel and whose sceptres pen and harp-
The mother of our race shall joy to hear
Thy low, sweet murmuring: her sonorous tongue
Is thine, her glory thine; for thou dost bear
On thy rejoicing tide, rejoicing at the task,
The manly Saxon sprung from her own loins
In far America.

Roll on! roll on,

Thou river of the North! Tell thou to all
The isles, tell thou to all the continents
The grandeur of my land. Speak of its vales
Where Independence wears a pastoral wreath
Amid the holy quiet of his flock ;

And of its mountains with their cloudy beards
Toss'd by the breath of centuries; and speak
Of its tall cataracts that roll their bass
Among the choral of its midnight storms,
And of its rivers lingering through the plains,
So long, that they seem made to measure Time ;
And of its lakes that mock the haughty sea;
And of its caves where banish'd gods might find
Night large enough to hide their crownless heads;
And of its sunsets, glorious and broad
Above the prairies spread like oceans on
And on, and on over the far dim leagues,
Till vision shudders o'er immensity.*
Roll on! rol on, thou river of the North!
Bear on thy wave the music of the crash
That tells a forest's fall, wide woods that hold
Beneath their cloister'd bark a registry
Where Time may almost find how old he is.†
Keep in thy memory the frequent homes,
That from the ruin rise, the triumphs these
Of real kings whose conquering march shines up
Into the wondering Oregon.

Oh, tell,

Thou glorious stream! to Europe's stately song,
Whose large white brows are fullest of the god—
To Asia's mighty hordes, whose dark eyes gaze
With wonder and unchangeable belief
On mountains where JEHOVAH sat, when Earth
Was fit to hold JEHOVAH on her thrones-
To Afric, with her huge, rough brain on fire,
And Titan energy gone mad-tell thou to all,
That Freedom hath a home; that man arose
Even as a mountain rises when its heart
Of flame is stirr'd, and its indignant breast
Heaves, and hurls off the enormous chain of ice
That marr'd its majesty. Say to the tribes,
"There is a hope, a love, a home for all;
The rivers woo them to their lucent lengths;
The woods to their green haunts; the prairies sigh
Throughout their broad and flowery solitudes

A reference to American geography will show that there is no extravagance in these lines. Witness Niagara, the Mississippi river, Lake Superior, the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the Grand Prairie of Illinois.

†The concentric circles of trees designate their age.

For some companionship. True, there aria
On certain swarthy limbs. It shall not be
Forever. Yes! the fetter'd shall be loo
And liberty beam ample as the land!"

And, fearless river! tell to all the tribes
The might that lives in every human soul,
And what a feeble thing a tyrant is!
So speaking, that their hearts will bow
Before the beautiful, which holds the true.
As heaven in its sweet azure holds the sun;
So speaking, that they see the universe
Was made for Beauty's sake, and like a rube
It undulates around the inner soul,
A feeling and a harmony, a thought
That shows a deeper thought, until the soul
Trembles before the vision, and the voice.
Made musical by worship, whispers," Joy!"
But utter all most calmly, with thy voice
Low as a seraph's near the eternal throne,
For mighty truths are always very calm.

CHANT OF A SOUL.

My youth has gone-the glory, the delight
That gave new moons unto the night,
And put in every wind a tone

And presence that was not its own.
I can no more create,

What time the Autumn blows her solemn tron
And goes with golden pomp
Through our unmeasurable woods:

I can no more create, sitting in youthful state
Above the mighty floods,

And peopling glen, and wave, and air,
With shapes that are immortal. Then
The earth and heaven were fair,
While only less than gods seem'd all my fellow-men

Oh! the delight, the gladness,
The sense yet love of madness,
The glorious choral exultations,
The far-off sounding of the banded nations,
The wings of angels at melodious sweeps
Upon the mountain's hazy steeps-
The very dead astir within their coffin'd deeps;
The dreamy veil that wrapp'd the star and sol-
A swathe of purple, gold, and amethyst;
And, luminous behind the billowy mist,
Something that look'd to my young eyes like Gon.

Too late I learn I have not lived aright,
And hence the loss of that delight
Which put a moon into the moonless night.
I mingled in the human maze;
I sought their horrid shrine;
I knelt before the impure blaze;
I made their idols mine.

I lost mine early love-that land of balme
Most musical with solemn psalms
Sounding beneath the tall and graceful palms.
Who lives aright?
Answer me, all ye pyramids and piles
That look like calmest power in your still might
Ye also do I ask, O continents and isles!

Gemm'd sceptres with a thunderous sound
Before the miracle:

Ah! sick at soul-but they, the bards,
Song's calm immortals in the eclipse,
Throng'd up and held the nectar-cup
To their pale lips;

And each, with an eager, fond look, stirr'd
Certain melodious strings,

While the startled tempest-bearing bird,
Poised tremblingly his wings:

Then loftier still their harps resounded,
And louder yet their voices roll'd
Between the arches, and rebounded
Dreamily from the roof of gold:

"Ye cannot leave your throned spheres,

Though faith is o'er,

And a mightier ONE than Jove appears
On Earth's expectant shore !"

Slowly the daring words went trampling through
the balls-

"Not in the earth, nor hell, nor sky,
The IDEAL, O ye gods! can ever die,
But to the soul of man immortal calls.

"Still, JOVE, sublime, shall wrap
His awful forehead in Olympian shrouds,
Or take along the heavens' dark wilderness
His thunder-chase behind the hunted clouds:
And mortal eyes upturned shall behold
APOLLO'S rustling robe of gold

Sweep through the corridors of the ancient sky
That kindling speaks its Deity:

And HE the ruler of the sunless land
Of restless ghosts shall fitfully illume
With smouldering fires that stir in cavern'd eyes
Hell's house of shuddering gloom:
Still the ethereal huntress, as of old,
Shall roam amid the sacred Latmos mountains,
And lave her virgin limbs in waters cold

That earth holds up for her in marble fountains:
And in his august dreams along the Italian* streams,
The poor old throneless god, with angry frown,
Will feebly grasp the air for his lost crown-
Then murmur sadly low of his great overthrow.
And wrapp'd in sounding mail shall he appear,
War's giant charioteer !—

And where the conflict reels,

Urge through the swaying lines his crashing wheels;
Or pause to list amid the horrent shades,
The deep, hoarse cry of battle's thirsty blades,
Led by the hungry spear-

Till at the weary combat's close,
They gave their passionate thanks,
Amid the panting ranks of conquer'd foes;
Then, drunken with their king's red wine,
Go swooning to repose around his purple shrine.
"And HE the trident-wielder still shall see
The adoring billows kneel around his feet,
While, at his call, the winds in ministry
Before their altar of the tempest meet:
Or-leaning gently o'er the Paphian isles,
Cheer'd by the music of some Triton's horn-
Lift up the shadowy curtains of the night

• Saturn was banished to Italy.

To their hid window-tops above,
And bathe thy drowsy eyelids with the light
Voluptuous queen of love!
And thou, ah, thou,

Born of the white sea-foam

That dreams a-troubled still around thy home-
Awaking from thy slumbers, thou shalt press
Thy passionate lips on his resplendent brow
In some sweet, lone recess,

Where waters murmur and the dim leaves ter
And young ENDYMION
At midnight's pallid noon

Shall still be charm'd from his dewy sleep

By the foolish, lovesick Moon,
Who thrills to find him in some lovely vale
Before her silver lamp may fail:
And PAN shall play his pleasant reed
Down in the hush'd arcades,

And fauns shall prank the sward amid
Thessalia's sunny shades.

"Nor absent SHE whose eyes of azure throw'
Truth's sunburst on the world below:
Still shall she calmly watch the choral years
Circling fast the beamy spheres
That tremble as she marches through their plans.
While momently rolls out a sullen sound
From Error's hoary mountains tumbling round-
Heard by the Titan, who from his high rock,
Fill'd with immortal pains

That his immortal spirit still can mock,
Exultant sees-despite the oppressor's ire,
The frost, the heat, the vulture, and the stor
Earth's ancient vales rejoicing in his fire,
The homes, the loves of men-those beings wrought
To many a beauteous form†

In the grand quiet of his own great thought:
And over all, bright, beautiful, serene,
And changeless in thy prime,
Thou, PSYCHE, glory-cinctured shalt be seen,
Whispering forever that one word sublime,
Down through the peopled gallery of Time-
'ETERNITY!-in whose dread cycles stand
Men and their deities, alike on common land."

Like far-off sters that glimmer in a cloud,
Deathless, O gods! shall ye illume the past;
To ye the poet-voice will cry aloud,
Faithful among the faithless to the last-
Ye must not die!"

Long as the dim robes of the ages trail
O'er Delphi's steep or Tempé's flowery vale-
Ye shall not die!

Though time and storm your calm old temples rend,
And, rightly, men to our "ONE ONLY" bend--
Ye were the things in which the ancient mind
Its darkling sense of Deity enshrined.
To Sinai still Olympus reverent calls,
And Ida leans to hear Mount Zion's voice:
Gods of the past! your shapes are in our halls;
Upon our clime your mighty presence fails,
And Christian hearts with Grecian souls rejoice.

Thou, Pallas. Wisdom's blue-eyed queen!

† According to the Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from heaven and created man, for which Jove pur ished him.

STRE THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS, son of Dr. T. W. 'ARSONS, was born in Boston on the eighteenth f August, 1819, and at nine years of age entered Ehe Latin School in that city, where he remained ada luring six years. After a brief interval of study it home, he travelled abroad, having sailed in comany with his father for Malta and Messina, in the autumn of 1836. Prevented by the cholera, which was then raging in southern Italy, from visiting either of the Sicilies, he went from Malta kuras in an Italian brig to Leghorn, having a tempestuious passage of fourteen days, during which the little vessel escaped wreck by putting into the island of Elba. He spent the winter partly in Pisa, but principally in Florence and Rome, proceeded to Paris, and thence to London; and near the close of 1837 returned home, where he commenced the study of medicine, which circumstances afterwards led him to relinquish.

C

In Florence Mr. PARSONS had accidentally became acquainted with a lady, Signora GUISEPPA DANTI, in whose house he dwelt during the whole period of his stay in that city. Whether from a coincidence of name, or from the delight, natural to a boy, of acquiring some insight into the "Divina Commedia" amid the gentle influences of the Etrurian Athens, Mr. PARSONS seems to have learned a passionate admiration for the poet in whose native city he was a resident. That the lady's instruction was not without its charm may be inferred from the following dedication to a translation of "The First Ten Cantos of the Inferno," which he published in Boston in 1843:

"TO GUISEPPA DANTI,

Under whose roof, in Florence,

The language of her immortal namesake
First grew familiar to her GRATEFUL GUEST."

In 1847 Mr. PARSONS made a second voyage to Europe in company with his friend, Professor DANIEL TREADWELL, and passed a year abroad. His poems, written in the various intervals of business, have mostly appeared in periodicals. A few of them, collected in a volume, were published in Boston in 1855. His translation of the "Inferno" has been completed several years, but has not yet been given to the press.

to the ear and the brain, and their old-fashioned
music is in keeping with their vigorous sense, fine
humour, sharp, but not ungenial wit, and delicate
though always manly sentiment. His volume
opens with a series of "Letters" supposed to have
been written by a British traveller in this country
to some of his friends in London. They are full
of brilliant sarcasm and just reflection. In one
of them, addressed to WALTER Savage Landor,
he has some lines which may have been intended
as an apology for his love of Italian art, and pre-
ference of Italian before American subjects for
poetical illustration.
Here," he says—

66

"Here, by the ploughman, as with daily tread
He tracks the furrows of his fertile ground,
Dark locks of hair, and thigh-bones of the dead,
Spear-heads, and skulls, and arrows oft are found.
"On such memorials unconcerned we gaze;

No trace returning of the glow divine,
Wherewith, dear WALTER! in our Eton days
We eped a fragment from the Palentine.
"It fired us then to trace upon the map

The forum's line-proud empire's church-yard paths,
Ay, or to finger but a marble scrap

Or stucco piece from Diocletian's baths.
"Cellini's workmanship could nothing add
Nor any casket rich with gems and gold,
To the strange value every pebble had
O'er which perhaps the Tiber's wave had rolled.
"A like enchantment all thy land pervades,

Mellows the sunshine-softens every breeze-
O'erhangs the mouldering town, and chestnut shades,
And glows and sparkles in her storied seas...
"Art's rude beginnings, wheresoever found,

The same dull chord of feeling faintly strike;
The Druid's pillar, and the Indian mound,

And Uxmal's monuments, are mute alike.
"Nor here, although the gorgeous year hath brought
Crimson October's beautiful decay,
Can all this loveliness inspire a thought
Beyond the marvels of the fleeting day.
"For here the Present overpowers the Past;
No recollections to these woods belong,
(O'er which no minstrelsy its veil hath cast,)
To rouse our worship, or supply my song."

He has not however been altogether neglectful of American themes. His "Hudson River" is the noblest tribute any stream on this continent has received from a poet; and his lines “On the Death of Daniel Webster," are a display of genius suitable for their impressive occasion: far better than any thing else ever written in verse on the death of an American statesman.

That portion of his version of DANTE which Mr. PARSONS has published, is executed in a very masterly manner. The best critics have pronounced it the most successful reproduction of the spirit and power of the "Divina Commedia" in the English language. His original poems are variously admirable. They have the careful finish to which poets endeavoured to attain when it was deemed of importance not only that poetry should have meaning, but that both its writers and its readers should understand it. His verses are clear alike arts from that venerable institution.

Although not a graduate of any university, Mr. PARSONS was, at the instance of the late Rev. ANDREWS NORTON, elected a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, and in 1853 received the honorary degree of master of