A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near,
And ever-restless feet of one, who, now,
Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year;
There plays a gladness o'er her fair young brow
As breaks the varied scene upon her sight,
Upheaved and spread in verdure and in light.

For I have taught her, with delighted eye,
To gaze upon the mountains,-to behold,
With deep affection, the pure ample sky

And clouds along its blue abysses rolled,
To love the song of waters, and to hear
The melody of winds with charmed ear.

Here, have I 'scaped the city's stifling heat,
Its horrid sounds, and its polluted air,
And, where the season's milder fervors beat,

And gales, that sweep the forest borders, bear
The song of bird and sound of running stream,
Am come awhile to wander and to dream.

Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake, In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. The maize-leaf and the maple-bough but take,

From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away.

The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all The wide earth knows; when, in the sultry time, He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall,

He seems the breath of a celestial clime! As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow Health and refreshment on the world below.

104

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread;
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on

men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will

come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are

still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he

bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.

In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

ROMERO.

WHEN freedom, from the land of Spain,
By Spain's degenerate sons was driven,
Who gave their willing limbs again

To wear the chain so lately riven;
Romero broke the sword he wore-

"Go faithful brand," the warrior said,

"Go, undishonored, never more

The blood of man shall make thee red.
I grieve for that already shed;
And I am sick at heart to know,
That faithful friend and noble foe
Have only bled to make more strong
The yoke that Spain has worn so long.
Wear it who will, in abject fear-

I wear it not who have been free;
The perjured Ferdinand shall hear
No oath of loyalty from me."

Then, hunted by the hounds of power,
Romero chose a safe retreat,

Where bleak Nevada's summits tower
Above the beauty at their feet.
There once, when on his cabin lay
The crimson light of setting day,
When, even on the mountain's breast,
The chainless winds were all at rest,
And he could hear the river's flow
From the calm paradise below;
Warmed with his former fires again

He framed this rude but solemn strain :

I.

"Here will I make my home-for here at least I see, Upon this wild Sierra's side, the steps of Liberty; Where the locust chirps unscared beneath the unpruned lime, And the merry bee doth hide from man the spoil of the mountain

thyme;

Where the pure winds come and go, and the wild-vine strays at

will,

An outcast from the haunts of men, she dwells with Nature still.

II.

"I see the valleys, Spain! where thy mighty rivers run, And the hills that lift thy harvests and vineyards to the sun, And the flocks that drink thy brooks and sprinkle all the green, Where lie thy plains, with sheep-walks seamed, and olive-shades

between :

I see thy fig-trees bask, with the fair pomegranate near,
And the fragrance of thy lemon-groves can almost reach me here.

III.

Fair-fair—but fallen Spain! 'tis with a swelling heart,

That I think on all thou mightst have been, and look at what thou

art;

But the strife is over now, and all the good and brave,

That would have raised thee up, are gone, to exile or the grave.

Thy fleeces are for monks, thy grapes for the convent feast,

And the wealth of all thy harvest-fields for the pampered lord and priest.

IV.

"But I shall see the day—it will come before I die

I shall see it in my silver hairs, and with an age-dimmed eye;

When the spirit of the land to liberty shall bound,

As yonder fountain leaps away from the darkness of the ground:

And to my mountain-cell, the voices of the free

Shall rise as from the beaten shore the thunders of the sea."

A MEDITATION ON RHODE ISLAND COAL.

"Decolor, obscurus, vilis, non ille repexam
Cesariem regum, non candida virginis ornat
Colla, nec insigni splendet per cingula morsu
Sed nova si nigri videas miracula saxi,
Tune superat pulchros cultus et quicquid Eois
Indus litoribus rubra scrutatur in alga."

CLAUDIAN.

I SAT beside the glowing grate, fresh heaped
With Newport coal, and as the flame grew bright
-The many-colored flame-and played and leaped,
I thought of rainbows, and the northern light,