Where the dew gathers on the mouldering stones,
And fanes of banished gods, and open tombs,
And roofless palaces, and streets and hearths

Of cities dug from their volcanic graves?
I hear a sound of many languages,

The utterance of nations now no more,
Driven out by mightier, as the days of heaven
Chase one another from the sky. The blood
Of freemen shed by freemen, till strange lords
Came in their hour of weakness, and made fast
The yoke that yet is worn, cries out to heaven.

What then shall cleanse thy bosom, gentle Earth. From all its painful memories of guilt?

The whelming flood, or the renewing fire, Or the slow change of time?-that so, at last, The horrid tale of perjury and strife, Murder and spoil, which men call history, May seem a fable, like the inventions told By poets of the gods of Greece. O thou, Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep, Among the sources of thy glorious streams, My native Land of Groves! a newer page In the great record of the world is thine; Shall it be fairer ? Fear, and friendly Hope, And Envy, watch the issue, while the lines, By which thou shalt be judged, are written down. Pisa, 1834.

VOL. I.-16

'New York Mirror," March, 1835.

SEVENTY-SIX.

WHAT heroes from the woodland sprung,

WHA

When, through the fresh-awakened land,

The thrilling cry of freedom rung

And to the work of warfare strung

The yeoman's iron hand!

Hills flung the cry to hills around,

And ocean-mart replied to mart,

And streams, whose springs were yet unfound,

Pealed far away the startling sound

Into the forest's heart.

Then marched the brave from rocky steep,

From mountain-river swift and cold;

The borders of the stormy deep,

The vales where gathered waters sleep,

Sent up the strong and bold,

As if the very earth again.

Grew quick with God's creating breath,

And, from the sods of grove and glen,
Rose ranks of lion-hearted men

To battle to the death.

The wife, whose babe first smiled that day,

The fair fond bride of yestereve, And aged sire and matron gray, Saw the loved warriors haste away, And deemed it sin to grieve.

Already had the strife begun ;

Already blood, on Concord's plain, Along the springing grass had run, And blood had flowed at Lexington, Like brooks of April rain.

That death-stain on the vernal sward
Hallowed to freedom all the shore;
In fragments fell the yoke abhorred-
The footstep of a foreign lord

Profaned the soil no more.

“New York Mirror," May, 1835.

TO THE APENNINES.

OUR peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines!

YOUR peaks

In the soft light of these serenest skies; From the broad highland region, black with pines, Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise, Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold In rosy flushes on the virgin gold.

There, rooted to the aërial shelves that wear

The glory of a brighter world, might spring Sweet flowers of heaven to scent the unbreathed air, And heaven's fleet messengers might rest the wing To view the fair earth in its summer sleep, Silent, and cradled by the glimmering deep.

Below you lie men's sepulchres, the old

Etrurian tombs, the graves of yesterday;

The herd's white bones lie mixed with human mould, Yet up the radiant steeps that I survey

Death never climbed, nor life's soft breath, with pain, Was yielded to the elements again.

Ages of war have filled these plains with fear;
How oft the hind has started at the clash
Of spears, and yell of meeting armies here,
Or seen the lightning of the battle flash
From clouds, that rising with the thunder's sound,
Hung like an earth-born tempest o'er the ground!

Ah me! what armèd nations-Asian horde,

And Libyan host, the Scythian and the Gaul— Have swept your base and through your passes poured, Like ocean-tides uprising at the call

Of tyrant winds—against your rocky side

The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died!

How crashed the towers before beleaguering foes,

Sacked cities smoked and realms were rent in twain ;

And commonwealths against their rivals rose,

Trode out their lives and earned the curse of Cain! While, in the noiseless air and light that flowed Round your fair brows, eternal Peace abode.

Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar-flames
Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng,
Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names;
While, as the unheeding ages passed along,
Ye, from your station in the middle skies,
Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and wise.