THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. [Born, 1822.] | already touched on this ground very successfully "In lands less free, less fair, but far more known, Winding uncertain through inconstant France, MR. READ was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, on the twelfth of March, 1822. His A family having separated, in consequence of the death of his father, he in 1839 went to Cincinnati, where he was employed in the studio of CLEVENGER the sculptor, and here his attention was first directed to painting, which he chose for his profession, and soon practised with such skill as to arrest the favourable notice of some of the most eminent persons of the city and adjoining country, several of whom, including the late President HARRISON, sat to him for portraits, which he carried as specimens of his abilities to New York, when he settled in that city in 1841, while still under twenty years of age. After a few months he removed to Boston, where he remained until 1846, when he went to Philadelphia, and there practised his profession, occasionally writing for the periodicals, until 1850, in which year he made his first visit to Europe. After spending a few months in Great Britain and on the continent, he returned, in 1852, passed the following winter in Cincinnati, and in the summer of 1853 went abroad a second time, accompanied by his family, and settled in Florence, where he has since resided, in friendly intercourse with an agreeable society of artists and men of letters. Here, in July, 1855, his wife and Mr. READ's distinguishing characteristic is a dedaughter died suddenly of a prevailing epidemic. licate and varied play of fancy. His more ambiMr. READ's earliest literary performances were tious productions display its higher exercise, rather a series of lyrics published in the "Boston Courier" than that of a distinct and creative imagination; in 1843 and 1844. In 1847 he printed in Boston he is a lark, flickering aloft in the pure air of song, the first collection of his "Poems;" in 1848, in not an eagle, courting its storms and undazzled by Philadelphia, "Lays and Ballads;" in 1849, in the its meridian splendour. And, to extend the comsame city, "The Pilgrims of the Great Saint Ber-parison, his muse most delights in common and nard," a prose romance, in the successive numbers of a magazine; in 1853 an illustrated edition of his "Poems," comprising, with some new pieces, all he wished to preserve of his other volumes; and in 1855 the longest of his works, "The New Pastoral," in thirty-seven books. Familiar experiences enable him to invest his descriptions with a peculiar freshness. His recollections are of the country, and of the habits of the primitive Pennsylvania farmers, in many respects the most picturesque and truly pastoral to be found in these active and practical times. A school of American pastoral poetry is yet to be established. The fresh and luxuriant beauty of our inland scenery has been sung in noble verse by BRYANT and WHITTIER, and with less power in the sweet and plaintive strains of CARLOS WILCOX, and the striking productions of STREET and GALLAGHER; but the life of an American farmer has not yet received a just degree of attention from our poets. Mr. READ has made it the subject of a work in every way creditable to his talents and taste. He had The poem consists of a series of sketches of rustic and domestic life, mostly of primitive simplicity, and so truthful as to be not less valuable as history than attractive as poetry. humble subjects. The flowers that spring by the dusty wayside, the cheerful murmur of the meadow brook, the village tavern, and rustic mill, and all quiet and tender impulses and affections, are his favourite sources of inspiration. He excels in homely description, marked frequently by quaintness of epithet and quiet and natural pathos. His verse, though sometimes irregular, is always musical. Indeed, in the easy flow of his stanzas and in the melody of their cadences, he seems to follow some chime of sound within his brain. This is the pervading expression of his poems, many of which might more properly be called songs. Though he has written in the dramatic form with freedom and unaffected feeling, and extremely well in didactic and descriptive blank verse, his province is evidently the lyrical. Like most of our poets, in his earlier poems, Mr READ wrote from the inspiration of foreign song and story, and he seems but lately to have per ceived that the most appropriate field for the exer cise of his powers is to be found at home. THE BRICKMAKER. I. LET the blinded horse go round In no stately structures skill'd, Long, and dark, and smother'd aisles: Hear him shout his loud alarms; But his chains at last shall sever; Then, when this shall break asunder, There shall grow a stately building Airy dome and column'd walls; Mottoes writ in richest gilding Blazing through its pillar'd halls. In those chambers, stern and dreaded, Old defenders of the land. There shall mighty words be spoken, But anon those glorious uses In these chambers shall lie dead, And the world's antique abuses, Hydra-headed, rise instead. But this wrong not long shall linger The old capitol must fall; For, behold! the fiery finger Flames along the fated wall. II. Let the blinded horse go round But when break the walls asunder, There shall grow a church whose steeple To the music of the choir. On the infant, robed in whiteness, There shall stand enwreathed in marriage Shall bring forms and hearts grown still! With his cane, oppress'd and poor, III. Let the blinded horse go round With a throbbing, burning head, Mark'd with honourable scars, Shall gaze idly through the bars: Shall walk honour'd through the crowd. READ Yet these wrongs not long shall linger 1 The benighted pile must fall; For, behold! the fiery finger Flames along the fated wall! IV. Let the blinded horse go round Till the mass to brick be moulded— THE STRANGER ON THE SILL. Oh, ye who daily cross the sill, A SONG. BRING me the juice of the honey fruit, The large translucent, amber-hued, Rare grapes of southern isles, to suit The luxury that fills my mood. And bring me only such as grew Where rarest maidens tend the bowers, And only fed by rain and dew 583 Which first had bathed a bank of flowers. They must have hung on spicy trees In airs of far, enchanted vales, And all night heard the ecstasies Of noble-throated nightingales: So that the virtues which belong To flowers may therein tasted be, Which hath too long in silence hung, THE DESERTED ROAD. ANCIENT road, that wind'st deserted Through the level of the vale, Sweeping toward the crowded market Like a stream without a sail; Standing by thee, I look backward, And, as in the light of dreams, See the years descend and vanish Like thy whitely-tented teams. Here I stroll along the village As in youth's departed morn; But I miss the crowded coaches, And the driver's bugle-hornMiss the crowd of jovial teamsters Filling buckets at the wells, With their wains from Conestoga, And their orchestras of bells. To the mossy wayside tavern Comes the noisy throng no more; And the faded sign, complaining, Swings unnoticed at the door; While the old, decrepit tollman, Waiting for the few who pass, Reads the melancholy story In the thickly-springing grass, Ancient highway, thou art vanquish'd; The usurper of the vale Rolls in fiery, iron rattle, Exultations on the gale. Thou art vanquish'd and neglected; Shall be deathless as the sun. THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. THE CLOSING SCENE. WITHIN his sober realm of leafless trees The gray barns looking from their hazy hills All sights were mellow'd and all sounds subdued, The embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold, On slumb'rous wings the vulture held his flight; The sentinel-cock upon the hill-side crew- His alien horn, and then was heard no more. An early harvest and a plenteous year;— There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers; Amid all this, in this most cheerless air, While yet her cheek was bright with summerler, Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe. AN INVITATION. COME thou, my friend;-the cool autumnal eves The winds unkennell'd round the casements whine, The leafless branches chafe the roof all night, The muffled owl within the swaying elm Till sorrow seems to spread her shadowy realm About all outward things. Come, then, my friend, and this shall seem no more, And when old Winter through his fingers numb Then come, for nights like these have power to wake And I will weave athwart the mystic gloom, thee Plied the swift wheel, and with her joyless mien, The white-haired matron with monotonous tread, Bright webs of fancy from the golden loom Of charméd Poesy. And let no censure in thy looks be shown, thrown Through mightier warps of old. Pr T MY HERMITAGE. WITHIN a wood, one summer's day, To live as lives a hermit monk. My cell was a ghostly sycamore, The roots and limbs were dead with age; Decay had carved the gothic door Which looked into my hermitage. My library was large and full, Where, ever as a hermit plods, I read until my eyes are dull With tears; for all those tomes were God's. The vine that at my doorway swung Not brief-though each stayed never long- For while they borrowed still they lent. The tap of a blue-winged visiter. Afar the stately river swayed, And poured itself in giant swells, The springs gave me their crystal flood, A height and depth, and breadth sublime Seemed drowning their dividing bars. And voices which the day ne'er hears, And visions which the sun ne'er sees, In love with that which round me shone, The time went by-till one fair dawn A visionary city drawn, With dusky lines of domes and spires. The wind in sad and fitful spells That rung above a world forlorn. My wakened heart for utterance yearnedThe clamorous wind had broke the spellI heeds must teach what I had learned Within my simple woodland cell. PASSING THE ICEBERGS. A FEARLESS shape of brave device, The navies of the northern main. These arctic ventures, blindly hurled The proofs of Nature's olden force,Like fragments of a crystal world Long shattered from its skiey course. These are the buccaneers that fright The middle sea with dream of wrecks, And freeze the south winds in their flight, And chain the Gulf-stream to their decks. At every dragon prow and helm There stands some Viking as of yore; Grim heroes from the boreal realm Where Odin rules the spectral shore. And oft beneath the sun or moon Their swift and eager falchions glowWhile, like a storm-vexed wind, the rune Comes chafing through some beard of snow. And when the far north flashes up With fires of mingled red and gold, Yon looming phantom as we pass! Within the compass of your glass. See at her mast the steadfast glow Of that one star of Odin's throne; The Constellation on our own. If from her heart the words could thaw, That sweep the pole from sea to sea; Where day and darkness dimly meet;- |