But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast,
Red as her lips and taper as her waist,
She walks the round and culls one favour'd beau,
Who leaps the luscious tribute to bestow.
Various the sport, as are the wits and brains
Of well-pleased lasses and contending swains;
Till the vast mound of corn is swept away,
And he that gets the last ear wins the day.
Meanwhile, the housewife urges all her care, The well-earn'd feast to hasten and prepare. The sifted meal already waits her hand,
The milk is strain'd, the bowls in order stand,
The fire flames high; and as a pool (that takes
The headlong stream that o'er the milldam breaks)
Foams, roars, and rages with incessant toils,
So the vex'd caldron rages, roars, and boils.
First with clean salt she seasons well the food,
Then strews the flour, and thickens all the flood.
Long o'er the simmering fire she lets it stand;
To stir it well demands a stronger hand;
The husband takes his turn: and round and round
The ladle flies; at last the toil is crown'd;
When to the board the thronging huskers pour,
And take their seats as at the corn before.
I leave them to their feast. There still belong More copious matters to my faithful song. For rules there are, though ne'er unfolded yet, Nice rules and wise, how pudding should be ate.
Some with molasses line the luscious treat, And mix, like bards, the useful with the sweet. A wholesome dish, and well deserving praise; A great resource in those bleak wintry days, When the chill'd earth lies buried deep in snow, And raging Boreas dries the shivering cow.
Bless'd cow! thy praise shall still my notes em-
ploy,
Great source of health, the only source of joy;
Mother of Egypt's god-but sure, for me,
Were I to leave my God, I'd worship thee.
How oft thy teats these precious hands have press'd!
How oft thy bounties proved my only feast!
How oft I've fed thee with my favourite grain!
And roar'd, like thee, to find thy children slain!
Yes, swains who know her various worth to prize,
Ah! house her well from winter's angry skies.
Potatoes, pumpkins should her sadness cheer,
Corn from your crib, and mashes from your beer;
When spring returns, she'll well acquit the loan,
And nurse at once your infants and her own.
Milk then with pudding I would always choose;
To this in future I confine my muse,
Till she in haste some further hints unfold,
Well for the young, nor useless to the old.
First in your bowl the milk abundant take,
Then drop with care along the silver lake
Your flakes of pudding; these at first will hide
Their little bulk beneath the swelling tide;
But when their growing mass no more can sink,
When the soft island looms above the brink,
Then check your hand; you've got the portion due:
So taught our sires, and what they taught is true.
There is a choice in spoons. Though small appear
The nice distinction, yet to me 't is clear.
The deep-bowl'd Gallic spoon, contrived to scoop
In ample draughts the thin, diluted soup,
Performs not well in those substantial things,
Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings;
Where the strong labial muscles must embrace
The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space.
With ease to enter and discharge the freight,
A bowl less concave, but still more dilate,
Becomes the pudding best. The shape, the size,
A secret rests, unknown to vulgar eyes.
Experienced feeders can alone impart
A rule so much above the lore of art.
These tuneful lips, that thousand spoons have tried,
With just precision could the point decide,
Though not in song; the muse but poorly shines
In cones, and cubes, and geometric lines;
Yet the true form, as near as she can tell,
Is that small section of a goose-egg shell,
Which in two equal portions shall divide
The distance from the centre to the side.
Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin:
Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous chin
Suspend the ready napkin; or, like me,
Poise with one hand your bowl upon your knee
Just in the zenith your wise head project;
Your full spoon, rising in a line direct,
Bold as a bucket, heeds no drops that fall,-
The wide-mouth'd bowl will surely catch them all!
BURNING OF THE NEW ENGLAND VILLAGES.*
THROUGH Solid curls of smoke, the bursting fires Climb in tall pyramids above the spires, Concentring all the winds; whose forces, driven With equal rage from every point of heaven, Whirl into conflict, round the scantling pour The twisting flames, and through the rafters roar, Suck up the cinders, send them sailing far, To warn the nations of the raging war; Bend high the blazing vortex, swell'd and curl'd, Careering, brightening o'er the lustred world: Seas catch the splendour, kindling skies resound, And falling structures shake the smouldering ground.
Crowds of wild fugitives, with frantic tread,
Flit through the flames that pierce the midnight
shade,
Back on the burning domes revert their eyes,
Where some lost friend, some perish'd infant lies.
Their maim'd, their sick, their age-enfeebled sires
Have sunk sad victims to the sateless fires;
They greet with one last look their tottering walls,
See the blaze thicken, as the ruin falls,
Then o'er the country train their dumb despair,
And far behind them leave the dancing glare;
Their own crush'd roofs still lend a trembling light,
Point their long shadows and direct their flight.
Till, wandering wide, they seek some cottage door,
Ask the vile pittance due the vagrant poor;
Or, faint and faltering on the devious road,
They sink at last and yield their mortal load.
* This and the following extracts are from the "Colum biad."
SUN of the moral world! effulgent source
Of man's best wisdom and his steadiest force,
Soul-searching Freedom! here assume thy stand,
And radiate hence to every distant land;
Point out and prove how all the scenes of strife,
The shock of states, the impassion'd broils of life,
Spring from unequal sway; and how they fly
Before the splendour of thy peaceful eye;
Unfold at last the genuine social plan,
The mind's full scope, the dignity of man,
Bold nature bursting through her long disguise,
And nations daring to be just and wise.
Yes! righteous Freedom, heaven and earth and sea
Yield or withhold their various gifts for thee;
Protected Industry beneath thy reign
Leads all the virtues in her filial train;
Courageous Probity, with brow serene,
And Temperance calm presents her placid mien;
Contentment, Moderation, Labour, Art,
Mould the new man and humanize his heart;
To public plenty private ease dilates,
Domestic peace to harmony of states.
Protected Industry, careering far,
Detects the cause and cures the rage of war,
And sweeps, with forceful arm, to their last graves,
Kings from the earth and pirates from the waves.
MORGAN in front of his bold riflers towers,
His host of keen-eyed marksmen, skill'd to pour
Their slugs unerring from the twisted bore.
No sword, no bayonet they learn to wield,
They gall the flank, they skirt the battling field,
Cull out the distant foe in full horse speed,
Couch the long tube, and eye the silver bead,
Turn as he turns, dismiss the whizzing lead,
And lodge the death-ball in his heedless head.
So toil'd the huntsman TELL. His quivering dart,
Press'd by the bended bowstring, fears to part,
Dread the tremendous task, to graze but shun
The tender temples of his infant son;
As the loved youth (the tyrant's victim led)
Bears the poised apple tottering on his head.
The sullen father, with reverted eye,
Now marks the satrap, now the bright-hair'd boy;
His second shaft impatient lies, athirst
To mend the expected error of the first,
To pierce the monster, mid the insulted crowd,
And steep the pangs of nature in his blood.
Deep doubling toward his breast, well poised and
slow,
Curve the strain'd horns of his indignant bow;
His left arm straightens as the dexter bends,
And his nerved knuckle with the gripe distends;
Soft slides the reed back with the stiff drawn strand,
Till the steel point has reach'd his steady hand;
Then to his keen fix'd eye the shank he brings;
Twangs the loud cord, the feather'd arrow sings,
Picks off the pippin from the smiling boy,
And Uri's rocks resound with shouts of joy.
Soon by an equal dart the tyrant bleeds;
The cantons league, the work of fate proceeds;
Till Austria's titled hordes, with their own gore,
Fat the fair fields they lorded long before;
On Gothard's height while Freedom first unfurl'd
Her infant banner o'er the modern world.
WHERE Spring's coy steps in cold Canadia stray,
And joyless seasons hold unequal sway,
He saw the pine its daring mantle rear,
Break the rude blast, and mock the brumal year,
Shag the green zone that bounds the boreal skies,
And bid all southern vegetation rise.
Wild o'er the vast, impenetrable round
The untrod bowers of shadowy nature frown'd;
Millennial cedars wave their honours wide,
The fir's tall boughs, the oak's umbrageous pride,
The branching beach, the aspen's trembling shade
Veil the dim heaven, and brown the dusky glade.
For in dense crowds these sturdy sons of earth,
In frosty regions, claim a stronger birth;
Where heavy beams the sheltering dome requires,
And copious trunks to feed its wintry fires.
But warmer suns, that southern zones emblaze,
A cool, thin umbrage o'er their woodland raise;
Floridia's shores their blooms around him spread,
And Georgian hills erect their shady head;
Whose flowery shrubs regale the passing air
With all the untasted fragrance of the year.
Beneath tall trees, dispersed in loose array,
The rice-grown lawns their humble garb display;
The infant maize, unconscious of its worth,
Points the green spire and bends the foliage
In various forms unbidden harvests rise,
Aud blooming life repays the genial skies.
Where Mexic hills the breezy gulf defend,
Spontaneous groves with richer burdens bend:
Anana's stalk its shaggy honours yields;
Acassia's flowers perfume a thousand fields;
Their cluster'd dates the mast-like palms unfold;
The spreading orange waves a load of gold;
Connubial vines o'ertop the larch they climb;
The long-lived olive mocks the moth of time;
Pomona's pride, that old Grenada claims,
Here smiles and reddens in diviner flames;
Pimento, citron scent the sky serene;
White, woolly clusters fringe the cotton's green;
The sturdy fig, the frail, deciduous cane,
And foodful cocoa fan the sultry plain.
Here, in one view, the same glad branches bring
The fruits of autumn and the flowers of spring;
No wintry blasts the unchanging year deform,
Nor beasts unshelter'd fear the pinching storm;
But vernal breezes o'er the blossoms rove,
And breathe the ripen'd juices through the grove.
RICHARD ALSOP was a native of Middletown, Connecticut, where he resided during the greater part of his life. He commenced writing for the gazettes at a very early age, but was first known to the public as the author of satires on public characters and events, entitled "The Echo," "The Political Greenhouse,” etc., printed in periodicals at New York and Hartford, and afterward collected and published in an octavo volume, in 1897. In these works he was aided by TRUMBILL, HOPKINS, THEODORE DWIGHT, and others, though he was himself their principal author. The Echo" was at first designed to exhibit the wretched style of the newspaper writers, and the earliest numbers contain extracts from contemporary journals, on a variety of subjects, "done into heroic verse and printed beside the originals." ALSOP and his associates were members of the Federal party, and the "Echo" contained many ludicrous travesties of political speeches and essays made by the opponents of the administration of JOHN ADAMS. The work had much wit and sprightliness, and was very popular in its time; but, with the greater part of the characters and circumstances to which it related, it is now nearly forgotten. In 1800, ALSOP published a "Monody on the Death of Washington," which was much admired; and in the following year a translation of the second canto of BERNI'S "Orlando Inamorato," under the title of "The Fairy
of the Lake," and another of the Poem of SrLIUS ITALICUS on the Second Punic War. In 1807, he translated from the Italian the "History of Chili," by the Abbe MOLINA, to which he added original notes, and others from the French and Spanish versions of the same history. At different periods he translated several less important works from the Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French languages, and wrote a number of poems and essays for the periodicals. His last publication was "The Adventures of John Jewett," printed in 1815. He died on the twentieth of August, in that year, at Flatbush, Long Island, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. He had, for a considerable period, been writing "The Charms of Fancy," a poem; and besides this, he left manuscript fragments of a poem on the Conquest of Scandinavia by ODIN; "Aristodemus," a tragedy, from the Italian of MONTI; the poem of QUINTUS CALABER on the Trojan war, from the Greek, and a prose translation of a posthumous work by FLORIAN. As a poet ALSOP was often elegant, but his verse was generally without energy. Probably no other American of his time was so well acquainted with the literature of England, France, and Italy, and few were more familiar with the natural sciences. He is said to have been deficient in strength and decision of character, but he was amiable and honourable, and had many friends and few enemies.
FROM "A MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WASHINGTON."
BEFORE the splendours of thy high renown,
How fade the glow-worm lustres of a crown!
How sink, diminish'd, in that radiance lost,
The glare of conquest and of power the boast!
Let Greece her ALEXANDER's deeds proclaim,
Or CESAR's triumphs gild the Roman name;
Stript of the dazzling glare around them cast,
Shrinks at their crimes humanity aghast;
With equal claim to honour's glorious meed,
See ATTILA his course of havoc lead;
O'er Asia's realm, in one vast ruin hurl'd,
See furious ZINGES' bloody flag unfurl'd.
On base far different from the conqueror's claim,
Rests the unsullied column of thy fame;
His on the graves of millions proudly based,
With blood cemented and with tears defaced;
Thine on a nation's welfare fixed sublime,
By freedom strengthen'd, and revered by time:
He, as the comet whose portentous light
Spreads baleful splendour o'er the glooms of night,
With dire amazement chills the startled breast,
While storms and earthquakesdread its course attest;
And nature trembles, lest in chaos hurl'd
Should sink the tottering fragment of the world;
Thine, like the sun, whose kind, propitious ray,
Opes the glad morn, and lights the fields of day,
Dispels the wintry storm, the chilling rain,
With rich abundance clothes the fertile plain,
Gives all creation to rejoice around,
And light and life extends, o'er nature's utmost bound.
Though shone thy life a model bright of praise,
Not less the example bright thy death portrays;
When, plunged in deepest wo around thy bed,
Each eye was fix'd, despairing sunk each head,
While nature struggled with extremest pain,
And scarce could life's last lingering powers retain;
In that dread moment, awfully serene,
No trace of suffering marked thy placid mien,
No groan, no murmuring plaint escaped thy tongue;
No longing shadows o'er thy brow were hung;
But, calm in Christian hope, undamp'd with fear,
Thou sawest the high reward of virtue near.
On that bright meed, in surest trust reposed,
As thy firm hand thine eyes expiring closed,
Pleased, to the will of Heaven resign'd thy breath,
And smiled, as nature's struggles closed in death.
ST. JOHN HONEYWOOD was a native of Leicester, Massachusetts, and was educated at Yale College. In 1785, being at that time about twenty years old, he removed to Schenectady, New York, where, during the two succeeding years, he was the principal of a classical school. In 1787 he became a law student in the office of PETER W. YATES, Esquire, of Albany, and on being admitted to the bar removed to Salem, in the same state, where he remained until his death, in September, 1798. He was one of the electors of President of the United States when Mr.
ADAMS became the successor of General WASHINGTON, and he held other honourable offices. He was a man of much professional and general learning, rare conversational abilities, and scrupulous integrity; and would probably have been distinguished as a man of letters and a jurist, had he lived to a riper age. The poems embraced in the volume of his writings published in 1801, are generally political, and are distinguished for wit and vigour. The longest in the collection was addressed to M. ADET, on his leaving this country for France.
Or crimes, empoison'd source of human woes, Whence the black flood of shame and sorrow flows, How best to check the venom's deadly force, To stem its torrent, or direct its course, To scan the merits of vindictive codes, Nor pass the faults humanity explodes, I sing what theme more worthy to engage The poet's song, the wisdom of the sage? Ah! were I equal to the great design, Were thy bold genius, blest BECCARIA! mine, Then should my work, ennobled as my aim, Like thine, receive the meed of deathless fame. O JAY! deserving of a purer age, Pride of thy country, statesman, patriot, sage, Beneath whose guardian care our laws assume A milder form, and lose their Gothic gloom, Read with indulgent eyes, nor yet refuse This humble tribute of an artless muse.
Great is the question which the learn'd contest, What grade, what mode of punishment is best; In two famed sects the disputants decide, These ranged on Terror's, those on Reason's side; Ancient as empire Terror's temple stood, Capt with black clouds, and founded deep in blood; Grim despots here their trembling honours paid, And guilty offerings to their idol made: The monarch led-a servile crowd ensued, Their robes distain'd in gore, in gore imbrued; O'er mangled limbs they held infernal feast, MOLOCH the god, and DRACO's self the priest. Mild Reason's fane, in later ages rear'd, With sunbeams crown'd, in Attic grace appear'd; In just proportion finish'd every part, With the fine touches of enlighten'd art. A thinking few, selected from the crowd, At the fair shrine with filial rev'rence bow'd; The sage of Milan led the virtuous choir, To them sublime he strung the tuneful lyre:
This poem was found among the author's manuscripts, after his decease; and was, doubtless, unfinished.
Of laws, of crimes, and punishments he sung,
And on his glowing lips persuasion hung:
From Reason's source each inference just he drew,
While truths fresh polish'd struck the mind as new.
Full in the front, in vestal robes array'd,
The holy form of Justice stood display'd:
Firm was her eye, not vengeful, though severe,
And e'er she frown'd she check'd the starting tear.
A sister form, of more benignant face,
Celestial Mercy, held the second place;
Her hands outspread, in suppliant guise she stood,
And oft with eloquence resistless sued;
But where 'twas impious e'en to deprecate,
She sigh'd assent, and wept the wretch's fate.
In savage times, fair Freedom yet unknown,
The despot, clad in vengeance, fill'd the throne;
His gloomy caprice scrawl'd the ambiguous code,
And dyed each page in characters of blood:
The laws transgress'd, the prince in judgment sat,
And Rage decided on the culprit's fate:
Nor stopp'd he here, but, skill'd in murderous art,
The scepter'd brute usurp'd the hangman's part;
With his own hands the trembling victim hew'd,
And basely wallow'd in a subject's blood.
Pleased with the fatal game, the royal mind
On modes of death and cruelty refined:
Hence the dank caverns of the cheerless mine,
Where, shut from light, the famish'd wretches
The face divine, in seams unsightly sear'd,
The eyeballs gouged, the wheel with gore besmear'd,
The Russian knout, the suffocating flame,
And forms of torture wanting yet a name.
Nor was this rage to savage times confined;
It reach'd to later years and courts refined.
Blush, polish'd France, nor let the muse relate
The tragic story of your DAMIEN's fate;
The bed of steel, where long the assassin lay,
In the dark vault, secluded from the day;
The quivering flesh which burning pincers tore,
The pitch, pour'd flaming in the recent sore;
His carcase, warm with life, convulsed with pain,
By steeds dismember'd, dragg'd along the plain.
As daring quacks, unskill'd in medic lore, Prescribed the nostrums quacks prescribed before; Careless of age or sex, whate'er befall, The same dull recipe must serve for all: Our senates thus, with reverence be it said, Have been too long by blind tradition led: Our civil code, from feudal dross refined, Proclaims the liberal and enlighten'd mind; But till of late the penal statutes stood In Gothic rudeness, smear'd with civic blood; What base memorials of a barbarous age, What monkish whimsies sullied every page! The clergy's benefit, a trifling brand, Jest of the law, a holy sleight of hand: Beneath this saintly cloak what crimes abhorr'd, Of sable dye, were shelter'd from the lord; While the poor starveling, who a cent purloin'd, No reading saved, no juggling trick essoin'd; His was the servile lash, a foul disgrace, Through time transmitted to his hapless race; The fort and dure, the traitor's motley doom, Might blot the story of imperial Rome. What late disgraced our laws yet stand to stain The splendid annals of a GEORGE's reign.
Say, legislators, for what end design'd
This waste of lives, this havoc of mankind?
Say, by what right (one case exempt alone)
Do ye prescribe, that blood can crimes atone?
If, when our fortunes frown, and dangers press,
To act the Roman's part be to transgress;
For man the use of life alone commands,
The fee residing in the grantor's hands.
Could man, what time the social pact he seal'd,
Cede to the state a right he never held?
For all the powers which in the state reside,
Result from compact, actual or implied.
Too well the savage policy we trace
To times remote, Humanity's disgrace;
E'en while I ask, the trite response recurs,
Example warns, severity deters.
No milder means can keep the vile in awe,
And state necessity compels the law.
But let Experience speak, she claims our trust;
The data false, the inference is unjust.
Ills at a distance, men but slightly fear;
Delusive Fancy never thinks them near:
With stronger force than fear temptations draw,
And Cunning thinks to parry with the law.
My brother swung, poor novice in his art,
He blindly stumbled on a hangman's cart;
But wiser I, assuming every shape,
AS PROTEUS erst, am certain to escape."
The knave, thus jeering, on his skill relies,
For never villain deem'd himself unwise.
When earth convulsive heaved, and, yawning wide,
Engulf'd in darkness Lisbon's spiry pride,
At that dread hour of 'ruin and dismay,
"Tis famed the harden'd felon prowl'd for prey;
Nor trembling earth, nor thunders could restrain
His daring feet, which trod the sinking fane;
Whence, while the fabric to its centre shook,
By impious stealth the hallow'd vase he took.
What time the gaping vulgar throng to see
Some wretch expire on Tyburn's fatal tree;
Fast by the crowd the luckier villain clings,
And pilfers while the hapless culprit swings.
If then the knave can view, with careless eyes,
The bolt of vengeance darting from the skies,
If Death, with all the pomp of Justice join'd,
Scarce strikes a panic in the guilty mind,
What can we hope, though every penal code,
AS DRACO's once, were stamp'd in civic blood?
The blinded wretch, whose mind is bent on ill,
Would laugh at threats, and sport with halters still;
Temptations gain more vigour as they throng,
Crime fosters crime, and wrong engenders wrong;
Fondly he hopes the threaten'd fate to shun,
Nor sees his fatal error till undone.
Wise is the law, and godlike is its aim,
Which frowns to mend, and chastens to reclaim,
Which seeks the storms of passion to control,
And wake the latent virtues of the soul;
For all, perhaps, the vilest of our race,
Bear in their breasts some smother'd sparks of grace;
Nor vain the hope, nor mad the attempt to raise
Those smother'd sparks to Virtue's purer blaze.
When, on the cross accursed, the robber writhed,
The parting prayer of penitence he breathed;
Cheer'd by the Saviour's smile, to grace restored,
He died distinguish'd with his suffering Lord.
As seeds long sterile in a poisonous soil,
If nurs'd by culture and assiduous toil,
May wake to life and vegetative power,
Protrude the germ and yield a fragrant flower:
E'en thus may man, rapacious and unjust,
The slave of sin, the prey of lawless lust,
In the drear prison's gloomy round confined,
To awful solitude and toil consign'd;
Debarr'd from social intercourse, nor less
From the vain world's seductions and caress,
With late and trembling steps he measures back
Life's narrow road, a long abandon'd track;
By Conscience roused, and left to keen Remorse,
The mind at length acquires its pristine force:
Then pardoning Mercy, with cherubic smile,
Dispels the gloom, and smooths the brow of Toil,
Till friendly Death, full oft implored in vain,
Shall burst the ponderous bar and loose the chain;
Fraught with fresh life, an offering meet for God,
The rescued spirit leaves the dread abode.
Nor yet can laws, though SOLON's self should
Each shade of guilt discriminate and name;
For senates well their sacred trust fulfil,
Who general cures provide for general ill.
Much must by his direction be supplied,
In whom the laws the pardoning power confide;
He best can measure every varying grade
Of guilt, and mark the bounds of light and shade:
Weigh each essoin, each incident review,
And yield to Mercy, where she claims her due:
And wise it were so to extend his trust,
With power to mitigate-when 't were unjust
Full amnesty to give-for though so dear
The name of Mercy to a mortal's ear,
Yet should the chief, to human weakness steel'd,
Rarely indeed to suits for pardon yield;
For neither laws nor pardons can efface
The sense of guilt and memory of disgrace
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