THE PAST.

Labours of good to man, Unpublish'd charity, unbroken faith :

Love that midst grief began,

And grew with years, and falter'd not in death.

Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unutter'd, unrevered;
With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappear'd.

Thine for a space are they :
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;
Thy gates shall yet give way,

Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

Has

All that of good and fair

gone into thy womb from earliest time,
Shall then come forth, to wear

The glory and the beauty of its prime.

They have not perish'd-no!

Kind words, remember'd voices once so sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,

And features, the great soul's apparent seat,

All shall come back; each tie

Of pure perfection shall be knit again;
Alone shall Evil die,

And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

And then shall I behold

Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
And her who, still and cold,

Fills the next grave-the beautiful and young.

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THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY.

BY RUFUS DAWES.

THE Spirit of Beauty unfurls her light,
And wheels her course in a joyous flight;
I know her track through the balmy air,
By the blossoms that cluster and whiten there;
She leaves the tops of the mountains green,
And gems the valley with crystal sheen.

At morn, I know where she rested at night,
For the roses are gushing with dewy delight;
Then she mounts again, and round her flings
A shower of light from her crimson wings;
Till the spirit is drunk with the music on high,
That silently fills it with ecstasy.

At noon she hies to a cool retreat,

Where bowering elms over waters meet;

She dimples the wave where the green leaves dip,
As it smilingly curls like a maiden's lip,
When her tremulous bosom would hide, in vain,
From her lover the hope that she loves again.

At eve she hangs o'er the western sky
Dark clouds for a glorious canopy,
And round the skirts of their deepen'd fold
She paints a border of purple and gold,
Where the lingering sunbeams love to stay,
When their god in his glory has pass'd away.

She hovers around us at twilight hour,

When her presence is felt with the deepest power;

TO A FLYING SWAN.

She silvers the landscape, and crowds the stream
With shadows that flit like a fairy dream;

Then wheeling her flight through the gladden'd air,
The Spirit of Beauty is everywhere.

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TO A FLYING SWAN

AT MIDNIGHT, IN THE VALE OF THE HURON.*

BY LEWIS L. NOBLE.

Он, what a still, bright night! It is the sleep
Of beauteous Nature in her bridal hall.

See, while the groves shadow the shining lake,
How the full-moon does bathe their melting green !—

I hear the dew-drop twang upon the pool.
Hark, hark, what music! from the rampart hills,
How like a far-off bugle, sweet and clear,
It searches through the list'ning wilderness! -
A Swan-I know it by the trumpet-tone:
Winging her pathless way in the cool heavens,
Piping her midnight melody, she comes.
Beautiful bird! upon the dusk still world
Thou fallest like an angel-like a lone
Sweet angel from some sphere of harmony.
Where art thou, where ?-no speck upon the blue
My vision marks from whence thy music ranges.
And why this hour-this voiceless hour-is thine,
And thine alone, I cannot tell. Perchance,

While all is hush and silent but the heart,

*The river Huron rises in the interior of Michigan, and flows into Lake Erie. Its clear waters gave it the name of its more mighty kinsman, Lake Huron.

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TO A FLYING SWAN.

E'en thou hast human sympathies for heaven,
And singest yonder in the holy deep
Because thou hast a pinion. If it be,
Oh, for a wing, upon the aerial tide
To sail with thee a minstrel mariner!

When to a rarer height thou wheelest up,
Hast thou that awful thrill of an ascension-
The lone, lost feeling in the vasty vault?
Oh, for thine ear, to hear the ascending tones
Range the ethereal chambers!—then to feel
A harmony, while from the eternal depth
Steals nought but the pure star-light evermore!
And then to list the echoes, faint and mellow,
Far, far below, breathe from the hollow earth,
For thee, soft, sweet petition, to return.

And hither, haply, thou wilt shape thy neck; And settle, like a silvery cloud, to rest, If thy wild image, flaring in the abyss, Startle thee not aloft. Lone aeronaut, That catchest, on thine airy looking-out, Glassing the hollow darkness, many a lake, Lay, for the night, thy lily bosom here. There is the deep unsounded for thy bath, The shallow for the shaking of thy quills, The dreamy cove, or cedar-wooded isle, With galaxy of water-lilies, where, Like mild Diana 'mong the quiet stars, 'Neath over-bending branches thou wilt move, Till early warblers shake the crystal shower, And whistling pinions warn thee to thy voyage.

But where art thou!-lost,-spirited away To bowers of light by thy own dying whispers? Or does some billow of the ocean-air,

TO A FLYING SWAN.

In its still roll around from zone to zone,

All breathless to the empyrean heave thee?—
There is a panting in the zenith-hush!-

The Swan-how strong her great wing times the silence !

She passes over high and quietly.

Now peals the living clarion anew;
One vocal shower falls in and fills the vale.
What witchery in the wilderness it plays!-
Shrill snort the affrighted deer; across the lake
The loon, sole sentinel, screams loud alarm;
The shy fox barks ;-tingling in every vein
I feel the wild enchantment ;-hark! they come,
The dulcet echoes from the distant hills,
Like fainter horns responsive; all the while,
From misty isles, soft-stealing symphonies.

Thou bright, swift river of the bark canoe,
Threading the prairie-ponds of Washtenung,
The day of romance wanes. Few summers more,
And the long night will pass away unwaked,
Save by the house-dog, or the village bell;
And she, thy minstrel queen, her ermine dip
In lonelier waters.

Ah! thou wilt not stoop:

Old Huron, haply, glistens on thy sky.

The chasing moon-beams, glancing on thy plumes,
Reveal thee now, a little beating blot,

Into the pale Aurora fading.

There!

Sinks gently back upon her flowery couch

The startled Night;-tinkle the damp wood-vaults
While slip the dew-pearls from her leafy curtains.
That last soft whispering note, how spirit-like!
While vainly yet mine ear another waits,
A sad, sweet longing lingers in my heart.

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