GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XX. April, 1842 No. 4.

Contents

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

Painted by Prentice. Engraved by H. S. Sadd, N.Y.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XX. PHILADELPHIA: APRIL, 1842. No. 4.

THE WIFE.

———

BY AGNES PIERSOL.

———

It was the dead hour of the night. The room was a high wainscotted apartment, with furniture of a rich but antique pattern. The pale moonlight streaming through the curtained window, and struggling with the subdued light of a candle placed in a corner, disclosed the figure of a sick man extended on a bed, wrapped in an unquiet slumber. By his side sat a care-worn though still beautiful woman gazing anxiously on his face, and breathlessly awaiting the crisis of the fever—for it was now the ninth day since that strong man had been prostrated by the hand of disease, and during all that time he had raved in an incessant delirium. He had at length dropped into an unquiet slumber, broken at first by starts and moans, but during the last hour he had been less restless, and he now lay as still as a sculptured statue. His wife well knew that ere morning the crisis would be past, and she waited, with all a woman’s affection, breathlessly for the event. Aye! though few women have been wronged as Emily Walpole had been wronged, she still cherished her husband’s image, for he was, despite his errors, the lover of her youth.

Few girls had been more admired than Emily Severn. But it was not only the beauty of her features and the elegance of her form which drew around her a train of worshippers: her mind was one of no ordinary cast, and the sweetness of her temper lent an ineffable charm to all she did. No one was so eagerly sought for at a ball or a pic-nic as Emily Severn, and at her parental fireside she was the universal favorite. It was long before she loved. She was not to be misled by glitter or show. She could only bestow her affections where she thought they were deserved, and it was not until she met Edward Walpole that she learned to surrender her heart.

Edward Walpole, when he became the husband of Emily Severn, was apparently all that a woman could wish. He was warm hearted, of a noble soul, kind, gentle, and ever ready to waive his own selfish gratification at the call of duty. But, alas! he had one weakness, he did not act from principle. His generous deeds were the offspring of a warm heart rather than of a regulated intellect. As yet he had never been placed in circumstances which severely tried his principles. But, about a year after his marriage, he fell heir to the large property of a maiden aunt, and at once his whole style of life was altered. His accession of wealth brought him into contact with society in which hitherto he had never mingled, where the polish of factitious politeness often hides the most depraved morals. Above all, by abandoning his profession, he condemned himself to comparative idleness. He now began to be tortured by ennui, and sought any excitement to pass away the time. The harpies who infest society, and with the appearance of gentlemen have the hearts of fiends, now marked him for their prey; and his open and generous nature made him their victim in a comparatively short space of time. We shall not trace his downward progress. It is always a melancholy task to mark the lapse from virtue of a noble and generous character, and how much more so when the heart of a wife is to be broken by the dereliction from rectitude.

Emily saw the gradual aberration of her husband, and though she mourned the cause, no word of reproach escaped her lips, but by every gentle means she strove to bring back her husband to the paths of virtue. But a fatality seemed to have seized him. He was in a whirlpool from which he could not extricate himself. He still loved his wife, and more than once, when her looks cut him to the heart, he made an effort to break loose from his associates; but they always found means to bring him back ere long. Thus a year passed. His fortune began to give way, for he had learnt to gamble. As his losses became more frequent his thirst for cards became greater, until at length he grew sullen and desperate He was now a changed man. He no longer felt compunction at the wrongs he inflicted on his sweet wife, but if her sad looks touched his heart at all they only stung him into undeserved reproaches. He was become harsh and violent. Yet his poor wife endured all in silence. No recrimination passed her lips. But in the solitude of her chamber she shed many a bitter tear, and often, at the hour of midnight, when her husband was far away in some riotous company, her prayers were heard ascending for him.

Two years had now elapsed, and the last one had been a year of bitter sorrow to Emily. At length her husband came home one night an almost ruined man. He had been stripped at the gambling table, of every cent of his property, over which he had any control, and he was now in a state almost approaching to madness. Before morning he was in a high fever. For days he raved incessantly of his ruin, cursing the wretches by whom he had been plundered. Nine days had passed and now the crisis was at hand.

The clock struck twelve. As sound after sound rung out on the stillness and died away in echoes, reverberating through the house, the sick man moved in his sleep, until, when the last stroke was given, he opened his eyes and looked languidly and vacantly around. His gaze almost instantly met the face of his wife. For a moment his recollection could be seen struggling in his countenance, and at length an expression of deep mental suffering settled in his face. His wife had by this time risen and was now at his bedside. She saw that the crisis was past, and as she laid her hand in his, and felt the moisture of the skin, she knew that he would recover. Tears of joy gushed from her eyes and dropped on the sick man’s face.

“Heavenly father, I thank thee!” she murmured at length, when her emotion suffered her to speak, while the tears streamed faster and faster down her cheek, “he is safe. He will recover,” and though she ceased speaking, her lips still moved in silent prayer.

The sick man felt the tears on his face, he saw his wife’s grateful emotion, he knew that she was even now praying for him, and as he recalled to mind the wrongs which he had inflicted on that uncomplaining woman, his heart was melted within him. There is no chastener like sickness; the most stony bosom softens beneath it. He thought of the long days and nights during which he must have been ill, and when his insulted and abused wife had watched anxiously at his bedside. Oh! how he had crushed that noble heart; and now this was her return! She prayed for him who had wronged her. She shed tears of joy because her erring husband had been restored, as it were, to life. These things rushed through his bosom and the strong man’s eyes filled with tears.

“Emily—dear Emily,” he said, “I have been a villain, and can you forgive me? I deserve it not at your hands—but can you, will you forgive a wretch like me?”

“Oh! can I forgive you?” sobbed the grateful wife, “yes! yes! but too gladly. But it is not against me you have sinned, it is against a good and righteous God.”

“I know it—I know it,” said the repentant husband, “and to His mercy I look. I cannot pray for myself, but oh! Emily pray for me. He has saved me from the jaws of death. Pray for me, dear Emily.”

The wife knelt at the bedside, and while the husband, exhausted by his agitation, sank back with closed eyes on the pillow, she read the noble petition for the sick, from the book of Common Prayer. At times the sobs of Emily would almost choke her utterance, but the holy words she read had at length, a soothing effect both on her mind and that of her husband. When the prayer was over, she remained for several minutes kneeling, while her husband murmured at intervals his heart-felt responses. At length she rose from the bedside. Her husband would again have spoken, to beseech once more her forgiveness. But with a glad feeling at her heart—a feeling such as she had not had for years—she enjoined silence on him, and sat down again by his bedside to watch. At length he fell again into a calm slumber, while the now happy wife watched at his bedside until morning, breathing thanksgivings for her husband’s recovery, and shedding tears of joy the while.

When the sick man awoke at daybreak, he was a changed being. He was now convalescent, he was more, he was a repentant man. He wept on the bosom of his wife, and made resolutions of reformation which, after his recovery, through the blessing of God, he was enabled to fulfil.

The fortune of Walpole was mostly gone, but sufficient remained from its wrecks, to allow him the comforts, though not the luxuries of life. He soon settled his affairs and removed from his splendid mansion to a quiet cottage in a neighboring village. The only pang he felt was at leaving the home which for so many years had been the dwelling of the head of his family—the home where his uncle had died, and which had been lost only through his own folly.

Neither Walpole nor his wife ever regretted their loss of fortune; for both looked upon it as the means used by an over-ruling Providence to bring the husband back to the path of rectitude; and they referred to it therefore with feelings rather of gratitude than of repining. In their quiet cottage, on the wreck of their wealth, they enjoyed a happiness to which they had been strangers in the days of their opulence. A family of lovely children sprung up around them, and it was the daily task of the parents to educate these young minds in the path of duty and rectitude. Oh! the happy hours which they enjoyed in that white, vine-embowered cottage, with their children smiling around them, and the consciousness of a well regulated life, filling their hearts with peace.

Years rolled by and the hair of Walpole began to turn gray, while the brow of his sweet wife showed more than one wrinkle, but still their happiness remained undiminished.

LOWELL’S POEMS.[^[1]]

A NEW SCHOOL OF POETRY AT HAND.

We shall never forget our emotions when we inhaled, for the first time after a lingering illness, the fresh breezes of a September morning. Oh! the visions of dewy meadows, rustling forest trees, and silvery brooks which the delicious air called up before us. This little book has awakened much the same emotions in our bosom. It reminds us of the breezy lawns where we played when a child; of the old mossy forest trees beneath which we loved to sit and muse; of the silent, stately Brandywine that glided along at our feet, its clear waters sliding over the rocks or rippling against the long willow leaves that trembled in its current. There is a freshness about Lowell’s Poems which bewitches our fancy. They display a genius that has startled us. They breathe a healthy, honest, good old Saxon spirit, that opens our heart to them as by a sign of brotherhood. We feel that he is kin of our kin and blood of our blood, and we take his book to our bosom without suffering it to plead the exquisite petition which he has put into its mouth, for “charity in Christ’s dear name.” Lowell is a man after our own heart. We have a word or two to say of him in connection with the poetry of the day.

Every one must have perceived that a new school of poetry is at hand. No one who has thought on the subject can have failed to see that the fever for Byron, like all fevers, is both wearing itself out and exhausting the patient. With the death of the noble lord began the decline of the school to which he gave such popularity, and though he has had many imitators since, the phrenzy respecting his poetry is nearly over. We do not mean to depreciate Byron. Every great poet should be spoken of with reverence; for they all alike discourse in the language of the gods; and Byron was not only a great poet, but the greatest poet of his school. That school, however, was a bad one—the fierce, unholy offspring of an incestuous age. It was a school in which the restlessness of passion seems to have forced its votaries into poetry. They had none of the calm, enduring enthusiasm of the great poets of the past; they did not speak with the majesty of Jove, but with the fury of a Delphin priestess. They were essentially the poets of a crowd, expressing the emotions of men in a state of high excitement, and consequently whirling away their hearers with them in a phrenzy for the time unconquerable, but destined to subside with the first calm in the public mind. But the truly great poets—Milton, Shakspeare and Spencer—sit far away on a mountain by themselves, singing in calm enthusiasm to the stars of heaven, and startling the dweller on the plain as well as the shepherd on the hill-side with a melody that seems a part of heaven. The school of Byron is that of a generation; the school of the old masters is that of eternity. The one is a lurid planet, that blazes fitfully amid storm and darkness; the others are fixed stars, that shine around Milton, the greatest of all, in undimmed and undying lustre.

Ὡς δ’ οτ’ εν ουρανω αστρα φαεινην αμφι σεληνην Φαινετ’ αριπρεπεα.

We have said that a new school of poetry is at hand, and the remark may, at first sight, appear extravagant when we consider the stagnation which has been exhibited for years. But betwixt the decline of one school and the rise of another, there is always a pause. When Milton wrote, a lustrum had elapsed since Shakspeare died. After the decay of Pope, a half a century of barrenness ensued before Cowper brought in a more masculine verse. The poetic soil, during these interregnums, seems to be worn out, and to require to lie fallow until it can recruit its energies. Only a few sparse flowers bloom upon the waste. But these, although insignificant in themselves, serve to betray the changes in the soil. They are premonitory of the coming harvest. They give us a clue to the character of the approaching school, and although often vague and contradictory, they afford us hints for which we would in vain seek elsewhere. We do not say that, from such hints, the nature of a school can be certainly predicted. The public taste, to use a phrase from the geologists, is in a transition state, and what the result may be, will, in a measure, puzzle the acutest mind. But we can still approximate to the truth. And even now we may hazard a conjecture respecting the characteristics of the school which will supersede that of Byron. It will resemble, in many particulars, that of the old poets. It will have the same calm, enduring enthusiasm. It will be marked by a like earnestness of purpose, by the same comprehensive love for “suffering, sad humanity.” It will have none of the jaundiced views of Byron, and little of the petit maître style of Pope. It will be intellectual, and, we fear, pedantic also. It threatens to be disgraced by conceits. Circumstances, it is true, may occur to give a different turn to the character of the new school, or a Messiah may arise to do away by a single dispensation with all former types; but, so far as we can foresee now, the Tennysons, Longfellows, and poets of that cast of mind, will give the tone to the coming change in the public taste. Indeed they are already bringing about a revolution. Men are first acted on singly and then in masses, and the masses have even now begun to feel the influence of Longfellow and Tennyson. Wordsworth, too, is not to be disregarded in this revolution, but his influence, though powerful so far as it goes, will never be general. He is the poet of the few, not of the many. He is the priest of the metaphysicians, the seer of the refiners of fine gold. He writes poems, but his followers write twaddle. He cannot found a school. He cannot do this aside from his peculiarities. We will explain.

It is a common error to attribute the formation of a school of poetry to the influence of some one great mind, and we are pointed to Byron, Pope, Shakspeare and others, as instances to prove this creed. The theory is false and illegitimate, the offspring of shallow minds and conceited pedants. A popular poet, we grant, may have many imitators of his verbal style; but the spirit of his school, like the prophet’s inspiration, dies with him. If we look to the poets of our own language we shall find that the great masters usually followed rather than preceded their respective schools; and if we look abroad we shall, with few exceptions, discover the same fact. The school of Byron, for instance, was born of the atheism, scorn and fury of the French Revolution, and we can see foreshadowings of the spirit of Childe Harold in most of the minor poems of that day. Byron carried the school up to its culminating point, and since his death, if not before, it has been on the decline. Pope was the last of a school that had its origin as far back as the exile of Charles the Second, and the French style and sickly effeminacy of this most finished of our poets began to decline while Walpole still sat at the Treasury, when Lady Mary played the wit at Richmond, while clouded canes and full-bottomed wigs yet figured in the Mall. Milton belonged to no school but his own; he stands alone in unapproachable glory; but his genius was deeply influenced by the commotions of the civil wars. Shakspeare had few followers, but many predecessors, and as he was the last so he was the greatest of his school; while Spencer, standing as he did above the grave of chivalry and allegorical romance, only gave vent, in his immortal poem, to a requiem for the departed great. All these men embodied the characteristics of their age, and left them as a heritage to posterity. They were types of their times: they spoke the universal mind of their cotemporaries. It is the cant of the day to talk of men as being in advance of their age; but there never was and never will be such a man. Even Bacon, the giant of the modern world, and the reputed author of the inductive philosophy, was only its great high-priest; for even before he had written his advancement of learning, twenty minds, in every quarter of Europe, were stumbling on the same truths. We are not waiting, therefore, for the advent of a seer to found a new poetic school, for the school must come first, and then we may expect the seer. It will require a dozen Tennysons to make a Spencer. The days of the years of the sons of the prophets are not yet numbered—when they shall be, a new Messiah will appear in our midst.

The tendency of the age to a new school in poetry is strikingly evinced by the genius of Lowell. He was educated in the school of the older poets until his whole soul has become imbued with their spirit. Of these writers Spencer is clearly his favorite. The allusions to this fine old poet are frequent in his poems, and we often meet with expressions and turns of thought, reminding us strikingly of the Faery Queen. We do not mean to charge Lowell with plagiarism: far from it. But he has read Spencer so thoroughly that he is often guilty of unconscious imitation. His fondness for this enchanting writer, is indeed the greatest peril which threatens his poetical career. There is such a thing as being beguiled by a syren until you become her slave. We tell him to beware. Let our young countryman shake himself loose from his bewitching fetters, and be, as he is partially and can be wholly, original. Let him be his own master. Aut Cæsar, aut nihil.

This language, when applied to some, would be a satire. But Lowell has evinced the possession of powers, nearly, if not altogether equal to those of any cotemporary poet; and when, in connexion with this, we consider his youth, we feel justified in assigning to him a genius of the first rank. Let us not be misunderstood. We do not say that Lowell has written better poems than any American, but only that he has evinced a capacity, which in time, may enable him to do so. Indeed this volume of poems, although possessing high merit, is rather a proof of what he may do than of what he has done. There is scarcely a poem in the book which a critic might not prove to be full of faults; but then there would be passages scattered through it which, to an honest man, would redeem the whole. And since the publication of this volume, Lowell has written other poems evincing a progressive excellence and establishing his genius beyond cavil. In one faculty he is certainly equal to any cotemporary, and that faculty is the highest one a poet can possess—we mean IDEALITY. The imagination of Lowell is of the loftiest character. No one can read a ballad published in this Magazine for October, 1841, or a poem entitled “Rosaline,” published for February, 1842, without awarding to our young countryman the gift of this enviable faculty. Whether he is capable of conceiving and executing an extended poem remains to be seen; and we would not advise him to attempt the task until time has matured his taste and refined his powers. But if the Lycidas of Milton, or the Venus and Adonis of Shakspeare were any evidence of the intellect of these two masters, then are some of the poems of Lowell evidence that he has the power, which if properly cultivated, will enable him to write a great poem. The young eagle that flutters its wings on the mountain top may not yet be able to breast the tempest, yet it is an eagle still, and he must be deaf indeed who cannot distinguish its cry. We say that Lowell has an ideality of the loftiest order, and that no one can read his poems without discovering this. We say that ideality is the highest quality of a poet’s mind. So far forth, therefore, Lowell is entitled to rank among the foremost of our poets.

But this is not all. A poet may have the intellect of a god, and yet want the heart to make him truly great; for all true greatness is based on nobility of mind, without which mere intellect is but a tinkling cymbal. All the great old poets eminently possessed this quality. Their hearts kept time, in a majestic march, to noble sentiments. They loved their race, and in their writings showed they were in earnest. This love for his fellows is one of the finest characteristics of Lowell, and contrasts strikingly with the frippery of Pope, and the sneering misanthropy of Byron. We adore this feeling. It is the good old Saxon spirit, the sentiment of universal brotherhood. We are all the children of one father, fitted for sympathy, companionship, affection. We are not born to scorn our fellows. We have not been created to seclude ourselves from society, to dwell in caves, and cells, and lonely hermitages. We are made for nobler purposes. Our mission, like that of him of Nazareth, is to go about doing good. Nor let any man hate his fellows, thinking them regardless of his sorrows. The most unfortunate of us are not without friends, often loving us unknown and in spite of our faults. We have seen the criminal at the bar, when all others shrunk from him, cheered by the affection of the very wife or mother he had wronged; and even the houseless old beggar by the way-side finds a friend in every honest heart that sees his grey hairs tossing in the wind. All over this wide world, in hut, or cottage, or lordly hall, millions of hearts are beating with love towards each other, so that the whole human race is, as it were, interwoven together by innumerable fine threads of sympathy and affection. A word, a deed, or a kind look may make us a friend of whom we little think: and it may be that even now, some one whom we have never seen, is yearning towards us, because something that we may have written has found an echo in his bosom. God be thanked for this, the brightest gift in a poet’s mission! How many hearts have sympathised with the blind old Milton, and how many more will sympathise with him to the end of all time. And thus it is with the good of every age. They live again in the memory of posterity. The dying words of Algernon Sidney will thrill the freeman’s heart through untold centuries. The apostolic charity of Fenelon, Latimer, Bunyan, Augustine, and of all holy men, will endear them to noble hearts as long as time endures. The only immortality worth having is an immortality like this; and it matters not whether our names are known to those who bless us or not. Men have written noble sentiments and died and been forgotten, yet posterity has still yearned towards the poet when it read his lines. What comfort may not an author thus bring upon his fellows! Go out into the country and enter that lowly cottage,—you will find perhaps some mother weeping over little Nell, and drawing consolation from traits in the character which remind her of a darling child now in heaven. Thus by ten thousand links does an author bind himself to the hearts of his fellows, until at length he comes to be loved as we would love a brother. And often the precepts he instils awaken the dormant good in other hearts. Lowell has finely expressed this in one of his earliest poems⁠—

“Noble thoughts like thistle-seed,

Wing’d by nature, fall and breed

From their heedless parents far,

Where fit soil and culture are.”

This fellowship for his kind glows in every line of Lowell. Open his pages where you may, the eye lights on some kindly word, some noble thought, some sentiment overflowing with the milk of human kindness. There is a fine sonnet now before us which expresses the feeling of brotherhood in true Saxon words—

“Why should we ever weary of this life;

Our souls should widen ever, not contract,

Grow stronger, and not harder, in the strife,

Filling each moment with a noble act:

If we live thus, of vigor all compact,

Doing our duty to our fellow-men,

And striving rather to exalt our race

Than our poor selves, with earnest hand or pen,

We shall erect our names a dwelling-place

Which not all ages shall cast down agen;

Offspring of Time shall then be born each hour,

Which, as of old, earth lovingly shall guard,

To live forever in youth’s perfect flower,

And guide her future children Heavenward.”

And here is one, on the same theme, which many a brother poet would do well to emulate. How fitly this sonnet might have been read to Gray!

“Poet! who sittest in thy pleasant room,

Warming thy heart with idle thoughts of love,

And of a holy life that leads above,

Striving to keep life’s spring-flowers still in bloom,

And lingering to snuff their fresh perfume,⁠—

O, there were other duties meant for thee,

Than to sit down in peacefulness and be!

O, there are brother hearts that dwell in gloom,

Souls loathsome, foul, and black with daily sin,

So crusted o’er with baseness, that no ray

Of Heaven’s blessed light may enter in!

Come down, then, to this hot and dusty way,

And lead them back to hope and peace again,⁠—

For, save in Act, thy Love is all in vain.”

Here is the sentiment of our mission finely expressed⁠—

“We were not meant to plod along the earth,

Strange to ourselves and to our fellows strange.

We were not meant to struggle from our birth

To skulk and creep, and in mean pathways range;

Act! with stern truth, large faith, and loving will!

Up and be doing! God is with us still.”

The following lines will cheer many a lonely heart in its sore distress:

“Be of good courage, bear up to the end,

And on thine after way rejoicing go!

We all must suffer, if we aught would know;

Life is a teacher stern, and wisdom’s crown

Is oft a crown of thorns, whence, trickling down,

Blood, mix’d with tears, blinding our eyes doth flow;

But Time, a gentle nurse, shall wipe away

This bloody sweat—”

Here are three lines which deserve to pass into a proverb:

“Be noble! and the nobleness that lies

In other men, sleeping but never dead

Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;”

Lowell has a passion, if we may use the word, for images of quiet beauty. He seems to worship nature; he is evidently a dreamer. We venture to predict that he has spent many a day loitering through the summer woods, or lingering by the side of some silvery stream. He is a close observer—as what genius is not? There is a freshness about his writings which convinces you that he has not drawn his notions of the country, like many even of our rural poets, from books. He writes freely and therefore gracefully. His images of nature come to us with a delicious freshness, reminding us of forest nooks, sylvan retreats, and the fragrance of new mown hay. He seems to be peculiarly fond of water, and of the music which its dropping or its flow occasions, Thus:

“Thy voice is like a fountain

Leaping up in still starlight,

And I never weary counting

Its clear droppings lone or single,

Or when in one full gush they mingle,

Shooting in melodious light!”

“And thy light laughter rang as clear

As water drops I loved to hear

In days of boyhood as they fell

Tinkling far down the dim, still well.”

“Weary never, still thou trillest

Spring-gladsome lays,

As of moss-rimmed water brooks

Murmuring through pebbly nooks

In quiet summer days.”

“And like a moonbeam was her hair

That falls where flowing ripples are,

In summer evening, Isabel!”

Many of the poems in this volume as well as several pieces since given to the world, are love-poems, and breathe all the delicacy and exquisite tenderness of a first affection. Lowell’s conception of the female character is noble, chivalrous, pure and elevating. No poet in our language has a loftier idea of a true woman. Mere personal beauty does not appear to awaken his adoration, but every feeling of his soul kindles at a sweet voice or a lovely mind. We like him for this. A sweet voice is a talisman, and we question whether any true poet could love a woman whose voice was not low and musical. There is a witchery in a soft melodious accent that no language can describe. It seems to dissolve itself into the soul and steal us away unconsciously to ourselves. A lovely mind is the highest charm a woman can possess. How exquisitely has Lowell pictured in the following verses, the purity of a young maiden:

“Early and late, at her soul’s gate

Sits chastity in warderwise,

No thought unchallenged, small or great,

Goes thence into her eyes.”

“She is so gentle and so good

The very flowers in the wood

Do bless her with their sympathy.”

“Thou mad’st me happy with thine eyes,—

And gentle feelings long forgot

Looked up and oped their eyes,

Like violets—when they see a spot

Of summer in the skies.”

“Peace sits within thy eyes,

With white hands crost in joyful rest,

While through thy lips and face arise

The melodies from out thy breast.

She sits and sings

With folded wings.”

The poems entitled “My Love,” “Ianthe,” and “The Lover,” are peculiarly fraught with these elevated sentiments, and we recommend them, apart from their poetic merit, to all who love to contemplate true beauty in woman. The sonnets of Lowell are equally full of those delicate touches. Those on names are very fine—the one entitled “Anne” particularly so. Many others may be instanced as exquisite poems, full of tenderness and beauty.

With all this ideality, this calm enthusiasm, this love for his fellow men, this freshness and delicacy, Lowell would be entitled to rank already among the first poets of the country, if it were not for an occasional affectation, and a comparative want of artistical knowledge. His affectation is the result of his extravagant fondness for Spencer, and partakes, in a great measure, of the peculiarities of that fine poet. The most usual forms in which this affectation developes itself in Lowell, is in a tendency to push his metaphors to the verge of allegory, and in a quaintness that is as much out of place as a tie-wig on a beau of the present generation. The want of artistical knowledge is only comparative, for Lowell understands the rules of his art better than nine-tenths of the craft. Indeed we question whether the slovenliness of many of his poems, does not arise from carelessness as much as from ignorance. The writings of few men betray such rapidity of composition, evincing clearly to our mind, that the thoughts of the poet are thrown upon the paper as fast as they bubble up from his heart. Lowell seems to scorn revision. He strikes off his poems at a white heat, disdaining to polish the steel when it has grown cool. Such neglect always leads to the disbelief in an author’s artistical skill. The public will never give him the credit of being a good workman, while he shows so great an indifference to the finish of his wares.

This carelessness is not only evinced in an occasional false measure, but in other ways more detrimental. One of the slovenly habits of our poet, is in the use of the accent to lengthen a short syllable. We constantly meet with such words as “poisèd” “inspirèd,” and others of like false quantity. Against such liberties we protest. It is no argument to tell us that other poets have been guilty of the practice. Twenty wrongs do not constitute a right, nor will volumes of false quantity make a poem. An author is to take the language as he finds it and evince his skill by adapting it to his purpose. If every writer is allowed to beat a short syllable into a long one, there will soon be as many varieties of accent in our language, as there are gods in the Chinese theology. If words may be twisted as we please there will be no end to the fools who write poems. It is time that men stood up for the purity of our tongue. The affectations of Hunt, Lamb, and Hazlit, might have been forgiven: but the barbarous jargon of Carlyle deserves to be damned in the first act. There is a saint in the Brahmin calendar whom a legion of devils has been tormenting for a thousand years; and the good old manly English tongue seems to be in much the same predicament. Every lustrum or two a new onset is made at its purity. Each successive generation witnesses a mania for some foreign, illegitimate, unholy alliance. The rage in the days of Pope was for the French school, in the days of Johnson for the Latin school, and just now it is for the German school. If we live many years longer we shall expect to see men affecting the negro jargon from Coromantee.

The false accentuation of his words is not the only sin of Lowell against the purity of our tongue. His poems are disfigured, on almost every page, by the use of compound words, which he seems to fabricate, like an editor makes news, to fill out. We have “dreamy-winged,” “long-agone,” “grass-hid,” “spring-gladsome,” “moss-rimmed,” “study-withered,” “over-live,” “maiden-wise,” “rosy-white,” “full-sailed,” “deep-glowing,” “earth-forgetting,” “down-gushing,” “cross-folded,” and a host of like mongrel expressions, which no pure writer would use, and for which not even the genius of Lowell can obtain currency. The only redeeming feature in his case is that his later poems evince a decided improvement in this respect. They betray comparatively little of this carelessness. They show a wider command of words, a more sonorous and elevated verse. They are less disfigured by affectations from Spencer and others of the quaint old writers. They begin to be worthy of the genius of Lowell.

We have attributed these faults to carelessness; but they may be the result of affectation. Much of the unique appearance of the poetry of Lowell, is to be assigned unquestionably to these very things which we have denounced as errors. But if intentional the faults are only the more reprehensible. It is a very different thing whether a man commits a murder ignorantly or with malice aforethought. If the first he may be pardoned; if the second he should be hanged.

The earlier poems of Lowell are apt to be as much overrated by one set of readers, as they are to be depreciated by another set. The use of obsolete words, of arbitrary accents, of metaphors that verge on allegory, commend these poems to a certain school which seems to caress quaintness with the infatuation of Queen Titania in kissing the long ears of Bottom. But there is another school, which, possessing an honest contempt for any thing like affectation, is in danger of transferring its dislike from the errors to the author himself—of questioning his genius because of the faults of his style. We condemn each of these schools—both that which exaggerates and that which depreciates the poet. Lowell has many of the elements of a great poet inherent in his nature; while his faults are manifestly acquired, and can be corrected. His ideality, his enthusiasm, his nobility of sentiment, would enable him to produce even a great poem, if to these were added the capacity to grasp a series of incidents in one vast comprehensive whole. This capacity, or at least the elements of it, we believe him to possess, and if he adheres to a rigid course of study, and awaits the mature development of his powers, he will be enabled to prove this to the world. By that time his taste will be ameliorated and his artistical skill improved. He now writes rather as his feelings dictate than after any sustained plan. We must be understood however, as using this language only comparatively; for as we have before said, Lowell is already equal in these respects to most of his cotemporaries. But there is an empyrean to which none of them have yet attained. To that region of eternal day we would have our young countryman aspire.

We have spoken with frankness, because we love with discretion. The genius of Lowell is surpassed by no cotemporary and he has only to be known in order to be understood; but his countrymen have a right to interpose and save him from the errors into which a false taste, a pedantic clique, or indiscriminate flattery may plunge him. He cannot wholly resist the peculiarities of the approaching school, but there is no reason why he should not soften their errors and elevate their style. He can display the taste of Coleridge without his absurdities, he can be as intellectual as Shelley without his mysticism, he can emulate the ideality of Tennyson and Keats without the affectation of the one, or the redundancy of the other. He has high genius, susceptible of improvement, but capable of perversion. He is in that critical period of a poet’s life when the intoxication of success may lead to idleness, when the misguided silence of his friends may confirm him in his worst faults. The improvement which his later poems evince, fill us with high hopes for the future; but his task is not yet done, as his powers are still in the process of development. If we were his bosom friend we should speak as we have written, using that noble sentence as our apology, “strike, but hear me.”

We look forward to the future career of Lowell, with hope, not unmingled, however, with fear and trembling. To his hands, we fondly trust, has been committed the task of achieving a great original American poem, a work that shall silence the sneers of foreigners, and write his own name amid the stars of heaven. He has the dormant intellect which if rightly disciplined, will enable him to fulfil this mission. But let him bide his time. Let him husband his powers, and yet not let them rust in idleness; but gird up his loins for the work that is before him, so that when the day of his translation shall arrive he may lift up his eyes for the chariot of fire. If he does his mission aright the hour of his rejoicing will surely come. No power will be able to avert it. Against the revilings of the envious, against the sneers of the unbelieving, against the persecution of hostile powers he can bear himself proudly up, for the sight of the fiery chariot will swim before his eyes and the sounds of celestial harmonies entrance his soul.

We take leave of Lowell with a single word. He must not be discouraged if his genius should at first be questioned. Few prophets have honor in their own country.

C.

LIFE IN DEATH.

———

BY EDGAR A. POE.

———

Egli è vivo e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio.

Inscription beneath an Italian picture of St. Bruno.

My fever had been excessive and of long duration. All the remedies attainable in this wild Appennine region had been exhausted to no purpose. My valet and sole attendant in the lonely chateau, was too nervous and too grossly unskilful to venture upon letting blood—of which indeed I had already lost too much in the affray with the banditti. Neither could I safely permit him to leave me in search of assistance. At length I bethought me of a little pacquet of opium which lay with my tobacco in the hookah-case; for at Constantinople I had acquired the habit of smoking the weed with the drug. Pedro handed me the case. I sought and found the narcotic. But when about to cut off a portion I felt the necessity of hesitation. In smoking it was a matter of little importance how much was employed. Usually, I had half filled the bowl of the hookah with opium and tobacco cut and mingled intimately, half and half. Sometimes when I had used the whole of this mixture I experienced no very peculiar effects; at other times I would not have smoked the pipe more than two-thirds out, when symptoms of mental derangement, which were even alarming, warned me to desist. But the effect proceeded with an easy gradation which deprived the indulgence of all danger. Here, however, the case was different. I had never swallowed opium before. Laudanum and morphine I had occasionally used, and about them should have had no reason to hesitate. But the solid drug I had never seen employed. Pedro knew no more respecting the proper quantity to be taken, than myself—and thus, in the sad emergency, I was left altogether to conjecture. Still I felt no especial uneasiness; for I resolved to proceed by degrees. I would take a very small dose in the first instance. Should this prove impotent, I would repeat it; and so on, until I should find an abatement of the fever, or obtain that sleep which was so pressingly requisite, and with which my reeling senses had not been blessed for now more than a week. No doubt it was this very reeling of my senses—it was the dull delirium which already oppressed me—that prevented me from perceiving the incoherence of my reason—which blinded me to the folly of defining any thing as either large or small where I had no preconceived standard of comparison. I had not, at the moment, the faintest idea that what I conceived to be an exceedingly small dose of solid opium might, in fact, be an excessively large one. On the contrary I well remember that I judged confidently of the quantity to be taken by reference to the entire quantity of the lump in possession. The portion which, in conclusion, I swallowed, and swallowed without fear, was no doubt a very small proportion of the piece which I held in my hand.

The chateau into which Pedro had ventured to make forcible entrance rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those fantastic piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. Day by day we expected the return of the family who tenanted it, when the misadventure which had befallen me would, no doubt, be received as sufficient apology for the intrusion. Meantime, that this intrusion might be taken in better part, we had established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay high in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary—in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that having swallowed the opium, as before told, I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room—since it was already night—to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed—and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.

Long—long I read—and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. I felt meantime, the voluptuous narcotic stealing its way to my brain. I felt that in its magical influence lay much of the gorgeous richness and variety of the frames—much of the ethereal hue that gleamed from the canvas—and much of the wild interest of the book which I perused. Yet this consciousness rather strengthened than impaired the delight of the illusion, while it weakened the illusion itself. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by, and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I so placed it as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.

But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripened into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought—to make sure that my vision had not deceived me—to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.

That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me into waking life as if with the shock of a galvanic battery.

The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom and even the ends of the radiant hair, melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back-ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly, yet fantastically gilded and filagreed. As a work of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. The loveliness of the face surpassed that of the fabulous Houri. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half-slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting and of the frame must have instantly dispelled such idea—must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for some hours perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied of the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in a perfect life-likeliness of expression, which at first startling, finally confounded, subdued and appalled me. I could no longer support the sad meaning smile of the half-parted lips, nor the too real lustre of the wild eye. With a deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which follow:

“She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art: she a maiden of rarest beauty and not more lovely than full of glee: all light and smiles and frolicksome as the young fawn: loving and cherishing all things: hating only the Art which was her rival: dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastily in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter, (who had high renown,) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his visage from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while yet he gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ turned himself suddenly round to his beloved—who was dead. The painter then added—‘But is this indeed Death?’ ”

THE MINER’S FATE.

FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A RAMBLING ARTIST.

A bright fresh May morning smiled upon one of the loveliest landscapes in nature, and revealed to the eye of a wandering young artist a picture of such exceeding beauty, that he found it impossible to confine his attention to his canvas sufficiently long to produce the faintest semblance of the loveliness which reigned and revelled around him.

“What a grand effect is produced on that magnificent amphitheatre of hills by the sunrise purpling their rising mist as it ascends and imperceptibly mingles with the rose-colored clouds—while its base is wrapped in the cold blue tint which the stronger rays of the sun will presently disperse. If I could catch the hue of that many-tinted mist, and throw over it the soft dreamy haze which clothes the atmosphere, I should more than rival the mighty master, Claude Lorraine—one more trial; such a scene must inspire the humblest artist.”

He re-arranged a small easel as he spoke, and proceeded to cover his pallet with the choicest and most exquisite colors; but the glories of outre mêr and carmine seemed so pale and faded before the inexpressible radiance of earth and ether, that long before he had finished laying on the dead coloring of his picture, he threw it aside in despair.

“I must complete it,” he said, “at some other time when the majesty of nature may not mock my humble efforts.” He then arose, and re-packing his paint-box, deposited it safely among the mossy rocks, and sauntered slowly onward, to enjoy at least, if he could not imitate, the enchantments of nature. And truly he might well give up his heart to the passionate love of beauty which pervaded it; for the loveliness of that quiet valley was well calculated to gratify the intense desires of a mind thirsting for images of perfection. Not only did the mountain tops and mist gleam with the golden sunlight, but every flower at his feet, every blade of grass displayed each its wealth of gem-like dew glittering with unrivalled colors.

“The plumed insects swift and free,

Like golden boats on a sunny sea,”

filled the scented air, and shed their “music of many murmurings” upon his path; and he was inclined to fancy that no new feature could add beauty to the landscape around, when a sudden turn in the winding path convinced him of his error.

He had turned his back on the semi-circular range of hills, and emerged into a tract of country much more extensive, though still very broken. Huge masses of rock salt, covered with crystals whose prismatic forms lent them a startling brilliancy, gleamed upon his sight, and the green sweep of land between was diversified by many small cottages built of the gray rock which abounded throughout the country. The narrow path bordered with vines and wild roses lured him on, until the sweet accents of a female voice broke upon his ear, and he found that his path would lead him to trespass upon the enclosure of a cottage which appeared to be one of the neatest and best arranged among them. The painter paused, and his eye, (that morning destined to agreeable surprises,) readily discovered a group without the door, which immediately called out his pencil and pocket port-folio. A very bright-eyed child had thrown his chubby little arms around his father’s neck, and seemed resolved upon detaining him from his day’s labor; while the young wife, with eyes and lips scarcely less bright than those of the child, vainly endeavored to attract the infant with the most enticing toys. At length the father succeeded in unclasping the dimpled hands, and placing the baby on the floor; but the child still endeavored to detain him by holding the skirts of his coat.

“Philip seems determined that you shall not go to-day,” said the young woman; “perhaps there is a meaning in his warning.”

“If I listened to all your signs and warnings, I should very seldom leave you,” replied the husband. “I must go and that quickly, in spite of my persevering little pet.”

“But you will come back very soon?”

“I cannot even promise that,” replied the miner; for the husband was a laborer in the extensive salt mines, whose crystallizations produce so beautiful an effect in the distance. “We have a tremendous piece of work before us to-day, and there is no telling when it will be finished.”

“Would to God it were safely over.”

“Don’t look so pale and frightened, Mary; worse jobs are done every day—but they will call me sluggard if I loiter here—so good-bye, good-bye, darlings.”

“Heaven preserve you,” responded the wife; and she turned with feelings half of dread and half of hope to the cottage door.

“Just such a morning,” muttered an old woman who sat crouching in the chimney corner—“just such a morning, bright as this,—and a black night followed the bright day—a black, black night.”

“Now the saints save us!” exclaimed the young woman: “who ever heard Dame Ursula talking away at such a rate before? As sure as fate something unusual will happen. What is it you were saying grand-dame?” she added in a louder tone, approaching the thin, withered old hag who had crept slowly toward the door-step, and seating herself there, continued to mutter and mumble half indistinct words.

“Storms follow the sunshine—storms and tempests and thick darkness.”

The anxious wife followed and sat down beside her.

“Is there any evil hanging over us? for mercy sake tell me if you know,” she asked.

“Evil, did I say Evil! I spoke of the past, not the future—I spoke of the days of youth and hope and beauty.” Then as her wandering memory gradually linked together the chain of by-gone associations, her countenance brightened, and she poured into the ear of her astonished auditor the narrative of events which had taken place nearly a century before, and were generally forgotten,—treasured only in the heart of that desolate, and decrepid old creature.

“Youth and beauty, and love I said, and you marvelled at hearing such words from my lips; no wonder, for many a year has passed since these things have been aught to me save idle dreams. But the time has been, when I too was young—loving and loved—blessing and blessed. My brother, your grandfather, and myself were left, you know, in early life as orphans in the hands of strangers; and although we had no claim on them except that of helplessness, and could only repay their kindness by our exertions, we had no reason ever to complain of harshness or ill-treatment among our kind and simple people. I was older than my brother, and as I grew up to be a tall handsome lass, the young men of the village strove which could make themselves most agreeable to the light hearted and beautiful Ursula. I know it is folly in me to talk so now, and you can scarcely believe it, but eighty years hence, if you should live so long, your cheek may be wrinkled and your eye bleared like mine, so that your laughing boy will scarcely credit the tale of your former beauty.”

“Heaven forbid.”

“And if not,” resumed the crone, “the change may be far more fearful—but where was I? Oh—a merry romping lass of eighteen, with blue eyes, fair curling locks and red ripe lips—admired by all the village—but above all the favored choice of young Albert Wessenbery. The handsomest, bravest, noblest being! I wish you could have seen him, Mary, in all his pride of vast strength, and perfection of manly beauty. Words cannot express the love with which I loved him. A lifelong loneliness has proved it. Well, as I told you, I was his choice, and consequently the envy of all my acquaintances, for no one thought of denying that Albert Wessenbery was the pride of the village. So powerful, so stately, so devoted to me,—well, well! our wedding day was fixed, and the bridesmaids appointed. A week before—yes, just seven days before our wedding was to have taken place, I bade farewell to Albert for a day only, I believed. Just such a day as this, it was—and perhaps that is the reason why the soft clear sunshine, and the sweet sounds in the air have called up all these old memories so freshly. He pressed me in his arms and bade me farewell till evening. I dreaded his going out to work that day, for there was dangerous duty to be done; but he went in spite of my entreaties, and from that hour to this, I have never seen him return. I remember but dimly what followed. A stunning shock as if an avalanche had overwhelmed me. Death to him was worse than death to me. They told me he had perished in the mine. I know not whether they spoke truly. I have known nothing clearly since that time. I remember only that the light was removed from my path, and that the blackness of madness gathered round me for a while. How long this lasted I know not—when I arose from my bed of sickness, my heart and my flesh failed me, and I was as useless and decrepid as if years had passed over my head. Since that time I have struggled on through a long life of darkness and misery, dragging on a useless and tedious existence.”

“Oh say not useless my good friend; have you not while you had strength, given to others the happiness which fate denied you?”

“My brother gave me a home in his chimney corner, and here have I lived more years than I can count, and for what? God knows—perhaps I may yet live to see Albert return. I cannot fancy him altered as I am. I cannot help hoping to see him once more as he was of old. Vain as the hope may seem to you—that hope has been the only happiness I have known since he left me—the only hope. Of what other use am I in the world? why should I live? what other use? what other hope?” So speaking and shaking her palsied head, she relapsed into her former half unconscious state, occasionally muttering words to which her young companion listened with strained attention; but she could hear no more, neither did she succeed in again arousing the old woman from her apathy.

The Artist sauntered idly onward until he reached the mines; here finding that the reflection of the noon-tide brilliancy from the crystals was painful to the eyesight, he descended into one of the deepest excavations, where he found his acquaintance of the morning, and a fellow labourer at work. The day’s work was a heavy one, for they were opening a communication between the mines, and in heaving up the massive rocks there was great danger of being buried alive beneath their crumbling weight. Such things had often happened.

“Here is a mass which requires more strength than we can furnish,” said Philip, and he shouted for help. The desired assistance arrived, and after an hour’s severe labor, the huge rock was heaved upwards. This removal disclosed a solid stratum of the salt for which they were toiling; but the attainment of the object of their labor called forth no expression of pleasure from the beholders, for the attention of every one was riveted upon a strange and unlooked for apparition. Extended upon this singular couch, lay the form of a young man, apparently not more than twenty years of age; his limbs were exquisitely moulded, and he looked as if but yesterday he had been hushed in the deep sleep of death. It was evident to the minds of all, that many years must have elapsed since the being they had thus disinterred, had been overwhelmed with destruction in attempting to move that massive weight; for many years had passed since that portion of the mine had been worked upon. But was his destruction instantaneous? or did he linger on, day after day, in vain hope for the help which came not? how long had that crystalized rock been his mausoleum? who was he? where were his kindred? Here was a wide field for conjecture. Could no one remember that form which might have passed for a sculptured image of Antinous? But stranger than all this, the body seemed utterly untouched by the hand of time. The very pliability of the flesh remained! Destruction had passed harmlessly by that glorious form, and decomposition had not come near it. There he lay—he, whose existence none could remember—life-like, and beautiful—embalmed as it were in the solid rock. The sinewy, and rounded limbs told of the strength and beauty which had once been theirs, and the long black hair curled wildly over the clay cold face, and nerveless shoulders. He was in his ordinary mining dress, and by his spade and pickaxe beside him, gave evidence of his final and fatal occupation. The body was removed, and laid upon the thick green sward for further inspection, and perhaps recognition. The news spread rapidly, and the inhabitants quickly crowded around. None recollected him, although some of the oldest among them told stories of such an accident which had happened when they were little children; but none could remember the circumstances. After awhile a universal murmur broke from the crowd, for they beheld their oldest villager, Dame Ursula, approach with tottering and unsteady steps, leaning on the arm of a handsome young female. Not the exhumation of the life-like corpse itself, produced greater sensation among them, than the appearance of the living spectre—for such the old woman appeared, having never left her home for more than twenty years.

“Jesu, Maria—the Saints save us,” were echoed around her as the crowd respectfully made room for her to advance. She passed on slowly, and with difficulty, until she reached the stiff white figure of the dead miner. Then throwing herself upon the grass beside him, she passed her withered long fingers through his hair, and pressed it back from the pale brow.

“It is he, it is he—Albert Wessenbery,” she murmured; “and it was for this I have been spared through long years of loneliness, and wretchedness—long, long years—I knew not why I lived. It was for this, for this: that I might see him once more, once more in all his unearthly beauty, in his unmatched perfection: that I might see, and know that time has not marred, nor decay changed, nor the worm defiled the being I have idolized for nearly a century. Spared too to rejoice that my own Albert cannot behold the change which time, and life have wrought in a form he once loved so well. To him these withered arms and lips are welcome as if they yet retained all their former loveliness. He will not reject his early love for her age, and sickness, and unsightlessness. To him therefore I devote the remainder of my existence. Here will I fulfil the vows of love and constancy plighted in the spring time of life.”

She bent her head as she spoke and imprinted with bloodless lips a kiss upon his; her white hair streamed down, and mingled with his raven tresses, her long skinny fingers warm with life, pressed the cold marble hand of the dead! Strange union of youth and age—beauty and deformity—life and death! Seven days afterwards they were buried in the same grave, the superannuated woman, and her youthful lover. The constancy of a lifetime was rewarded, for she was permitted to rest her aged and hoary head, upon the manly, and unaltered breast of him she had loved so long and so well. Turf and flowers sprung up as greenly and freely above their grave as if they had been always young, and beautiful, and happy. Many a garland of young flowers, and the more lasting wreaths of the amaranth were hung upon that grave; and the names of Ursula and Albert, rudely sculptured on the grey stone which covered them, formed their only obituary, save the memory which survives in the hearts of the villagers.

BIRTH OF FREEDOM.

———

BY WM. WALLACE, AUTHOR OF “JERUSALEM,” “STAR LYRA,” ETC.

———

Yes, Freedom! Tyrants date thy splendid birth

With those uprisings in the bloody Past,

When all the lion-hearted of the earth

Unfurl’d their rebel-banners to the blast,

And from their limbs the dungeon-fetter cast;

But thou, Oh, idol of the brave! was’t born,

In full-grown majesty, upon that morn

When all the stars together sang, and forms

Of wondrous beauty, suns of dazzling light

Flamed from the bosom of those primal storms

Which lashed the rivers of chaotic night:

And some would drive thee from our gloomy sod;

Vainly they war with such blasphemous might;

Thy birth-place, Freedom! was the heart of God.

RECOLLECTIONS OF WEST POINT.

———

BY MISS LESLIE.

———

PART THE FIRST.

Among the numerous strangers that stop at West Point, in ascending or in coming down the Hudson, there are comparatively few who allow themselves sufficient time to become acquainted with even the half that is worthy of note, in that extraordinary place—giving but one day, or perhaps only a few hours, to a visit which ought at least to comprise a whole week. A large proportion of these travellers, after they have hurried through the rooms of the academy, walked round the camp, witnessed the parade, heard the band, or perhaps accomplished a hasty survey of the ruins of Fort Putnam, seem to believe that they are consequently familiar with all that both nature and art have done for one of the most beautiful and interesting spots on the American continent.

And beautiful indeed it is, from its romantic situation in the midst of the highlands, looking directly down on one of the finest rivers in the world—and from its picturesque combinations of mountain, valley and plain; woodland, rock, and water—scenery to which no painter has ever yet done justice. And how intensely interesting are its associations with the history of our revolutionary contest—when West Point commanded the passes of the highlands—at once opposing a barrier to the descent of the enemy from the lake country and to their ascent from the ocean. Also amid these hills lay the army of Washington, at the time it was so providentially saved by the discovery of Arnold’s treason.

And now, “when the storm of war is gone,” and the Gibraltar of America finds no farther occasion for its mountain fortresses, it has become the nucleus from whence the military science of our country radiates to its utmost boundaries; the nursery of a body of officers whose cultivated minds, polished manners, and high tone of moral feeling, have rendered them deservedly popular with their compatriots—also eliciting a favourable testimony even from the British tourists.

It is a common and, in most instances, a true remark, that first impressions are lasting: at least with regard to external objects. My own first impressions of West Point were received on a lovely summer evening that succeeded a stormy day. I had left the city of New York with my brother, at nine o’clock in the morning, in the slow and unpopular Richmond; the only boat that went up the river on that day, and the worst of the three steam-vessels which at that time comprised the establishment of what is now termed the old North River Company.

I need not say that it was during the period of the charter they had obtained for the exclusive steam-navigation of the Hudson. In those days, a voyage from New York to Albany frequently consumed twenty-four hours, and the fare was ten dollars.

I had anticipated the most extatic delight from my first view of the grand and romantic scenery of this noble river. But very soon after we left the city a heavy rain came on, and seemed to have set in for the whole day. I had recently recovered from a long illness, and could not venture to remain on the wet deck, even under the screen of an umbrella. The canvass awning was so perforated with holes from the chimney-sparks, that it afforded about as much shelter as a large sieve. There was no upper cabin, and I reluctantly compelled myself to quit admiring the Palisade Rocks and descend to the apartment appropriated to the ladies. It was very crowded and perfectly close. The berths were all occupied by females lying down in their clothes, and trying to sleep away the tedious hours. The numerous children were uncomfortable, fretful, and troublesome, as most children are when they are “cabin’d, crib’d, confin’d.” Seats were so scarce (when were they otherwise in a summer steam-boat) that many of us were glad to place ourselves on the wooden edges of the lower berths. In this extreme I could not agree with the old adage that “it is as cheap sitting as standing:” for if cheapness means convenience or agreeableness, as is generally supposed, I found it quite as convenient, and rather more agreeable, to stand leaning against something, than to sit on the perpendicular edge of a board. We had not even the pleasure of regaling our eyes with the handsome fittings-up that now when there is no monopoly and great rivalry, are deemed indispensable to the reputation of an American steam-boat. The old Richmond was furnished very plainly, alias meanly. Her cabins had common ingrain carpets of the ugliest possible patterns, pine tables painted red, and curtains of coarse dark calico. By the by, reader, never go to a boarding-house that professes a plain table; you will be almost sure to find it a mean one. Also, never engage a plain cook—you will be almost sure to find her no cook at all.

We were nearly all day in the boat, and it rained incessantly. It was very tantalizing on this, my first voyage up the Hudson, to obtain only an occasional glimpse of its beautiful shores through the small cabin windows, which windows were always monopolized by nurse-maids, seated on the transom with their babies; the babies taking no interest in the scenery, and their nurses still less.

When we came into the highlands, the storm had increased, and my first view of them was caught by ever-interrupted glances through a few inches of window-pane, and by peeping over the head of a girl whose eyes were all the time wandering among the people in the interior of the cabin. These sublime mountains loomed green and dimly through the rain-mist that veiled their rocky sides, and their towering heads were lost in the volumes of fantastic clouds that rolled around them. But it proved what is called the clearing up shower; and just as we were rounding that low projection of bare rock that runs far out into the river, and forms the extreme point of West Point, the clouds began to part in the zenith, and the blue sky appeared between them, and the sun suddenly broke out lighting up the western sides of the hills and pouring his full effulgence on the river. We landed just as the evening parade was about to commence, and I saw it from the front windows of an apartment that commanded a full view. It was a beautiful scene; on this spacious and level plain, elevated about a hundred and sixty feet above the river, which bounds it on the north and east, while on the south and west it is hemmed in by the mountains that rise directly from it. The numerous windows of the barracks were sparkling and burnishing in the setting sun that was beaming out below the retiring clouds, throwing a rosy tint on the white tents of the camp, and glittering on the bayonets of the long line of cadets drawn up for the exercise that, at a military post always concludes the day. The band was playing delightfully, and the effect of the whole was very striking at the moment when the drums rolled, the evening gun went off, the flag came down, and the officers all drew their swords and advanced to the front.

Many circumstances contributed to render my first visit to West Point peculiarly pleasant. I had never in my life spent three weeks so agreeably. Subsequently, I resided there nearly two years in the family of my brother. I have enjoyed the grand and lovely scenery of West Point under all the various aspects of the seasons. I have been there when the late, but rapid spring, with its balmy breathings, and its soft sun-light, suddenly awakens the long-slumbering vegetation of these high and northerly regions, when you can almost see the forming of the buds and their bursting into leaf; while patches of the last snow yet linger here and there about the cavities of the rocks, and in the hollows that lie among the roots of the trees, “on their cold and winter-shaded side.” At the same time, in the warmer recesses of the forests, the early flowers of the hepatica and the violet are finding their way up amid the dead leaves which the wild blasts of November have strewed thickly over the ground.

These mountains are wooded from the base to the summit, (except where a block of granite looks out from amid the trees,) and in the month of May they are variegated with all those countless and exquisite shades of green, that can only emanate from the hand of that Great Painter that colored the Universe. While some of these inimitable tints are dark almost to blackness, and some are of the richest olive, others present in endless variety, the numerous gradations of deep-green, blue-green, grass-green, apple-green, pea-green, and yellow-green; the catalpa and the locust, with their clusters of pencilled blossoms, and the dogwood with its milk-white flowers, supplying the bright lights of the picture. Then, in looking up the river, the long perspective is closed at the utmost verge of the horizon by the far-off Taghcanoke mountains: the snows that still rest on their cold and lonely summits extending in streaks of whiteness half-way down their dim blue sides.

To a stranger at West Point the commencement of a summer’s day has many circumstances of novelty and excitement that are almost lost upon those to whom custom has rendered them familiar. With the earliest blush of dawn, and at the third tap of the drum, the morning gun goes off, and when the wind is in a certain direction, I have heard its loud booming sound five times repeated by the mountain echoes, “fainter and fainter still”—but always distinctly audible. At the same moment the flag is run up, and flings out to the early breeze its waving folds of stars and stripes denoting that the place is United States’ ground, a military post, and under martial law. These ceremonies are immediately succeeded by the drums and fifes commencing the delightful réveillée, clear, sweet and exhilarating—the first notes of which seem so distinctly to express the words,

“The lark is up, the morn is gay,

The drums now beat the réveillée.”

followed by a medley of popular airs, each one concluding like a rondo, with—“The lark is up,” &c.

It is beautiful on a soft summer morning to look out upon these forest-cinctured mountains, when there has been a rain during the night, and to see the misty clouds veiling their summits and rolling off from their sides; breaking, as the sun ascends, into thin white wreaths that creep slowly about the glens, and gradually losing all distinctness of form and blending with the blue of ether. More beautiful still is the broad expanse of the Hudson, glittering with the golden sun-light, and reflecting the clear cerulean of the sky; while the white-sailed sloops seem to slumber on the calm surface of the water, as each “floats double, sloop and shadow,” and near the shore the dark mountains and the rocky precipices cast their deep masses of shade upon the liquid mirror below.

I was once at West Point when the dawn of our national anniversary was ushered in by the roar of artillery from amid the ruins of Fort Putnam, the guns having been previously conveyed up the mountain for that purpose. There is a history belonging to these guns. They were originally French; and are engraved with the name of the foundry at which they were cast; bearing also the three fleur de lis of the ancien regime, the cypher of Louis the Fourteenth, (who at that time, filled the throne of France) and the celebrated motto which he ordered to be inscribed on all his cannon—“Ultimo ratio regum.” The guns in question were sent to Quebec, and were taken by the English on the heights of Abraham, in that eventful battle, when both commanders fell in the same hour that transferred the dominion of Canada from France to England. Belonging afterwards to the army of Burgoyne, they became the property of America on the surrender at Saratoga, and finally were presented by Congress to the Military Academy. At the cadets annual ball I have seen these guns decorated with wreaths of laurel, and arranged as ornaments along a covered promenade, lighted up with lamps in front of the ball-room.

To the dwellers on the plain below, the effect on the aforesaid fourth of July was indescribably fine; the guns thundering and echoing in a region so far above us, their gleams of fire flashing out amid the clouds of white smoke that rolled their eddying volumes round the old dismantled ramparts. The salute was followed by a full burst of martial harmony from the band, who had also gone up into the ruins; all playing so admirably and in such perfect unison, that the whole of their various instruments sounded like one alone—but like one whose grand and exquisite tones seemed scarcely to belong to earth. The band had their fourth of July dinner within the dilapidated recesses of the moss-grown fortress, and frequently during the day, we heard their music. Sometimes the soft sweet warblings of the octave flute rose alone upon the air; then the clear melodious tones of Willis’s bugle seemed to “lap the soul in Elysium;” then came the clarionets deepened by the trombone; and finally the loud and thrilling notes of the bass-drum struck grandly in, and swelled the full tide of sound till the rocks seemed to tremble with its reverberations. Music, like painting, has its lights and shadows.

Nothing can be more lovely than the scenery about West Point when lighted up by the beams of the summer moon. While there, I was once on a water party, in a delightful evening towards the close of the “leafy month of June.” The gentlemen attached to the military academy had made arrangements for taking the ladies on a moonlight voyage through the highlands, in the boats belonging to the post. Of these boats I think there were eight. The first and largest was appropriated to the band—in the others followed the professors connected with the institution, the officers, and the ladies—with soldiers as oarsmen. We were rowed to the upper extremity of the highlands, beyond Butter Hill which, notwithstanding its homely name, is a magnificent mountain with a gradual slope on the land-side, but presenting to the water a perpendicular precipice in height sixteen hundred feet. In the clefts of this lofty rock tradition has asserted that the pirate Blackbeard deposited portions of his treasure more than a century ago. It is not many years since a gentleman who believed the story, was killed by losing his hold, and falling down backwards upon the stones below, in a desperate attempt to scale the precipice in quest of the rover’s gold.

As we embarked on our aquatic excursion “the moon arose curtained in clouds which her beams gradually dispelled.” When she climbed above them, as they “turned forth their silver linings to the night,” and her rays touched the top of the eastern hills, while their dark sides reposed in shadow, I thought of a song in the Carnival of Venice.

“And while the moon shines on the stream,

And while soft music breathes around,

The feathering oar returns the gleam

And dips in concert to the sound.”

Having ascended beyond the inner highlands, our boats were put about. The men resting on their oars we floated down with the tide nearly as far as the Dunderberg, and never did this picturesque and romantic region look more lovely.

In the course of our little voyage several steam-boats passed us: and all of them slackened their steam awhile, for the purpose of remaining longer in our vicinity that the passengers might enjoy the music. One of these boats, in stopping to hear us, lay directly on the broad line of moonlight that was dancing and glittering on the water, the red glare of her lanterns strangely mingling with the golden radiance beneath. Our band was just then playing the Hunter’s Chorus, that ever-charming composition which justly merits its universal popularity in every part of the world where music is known, and which would alone have been sufficient to entitle Weber to his tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Nothing can be finer than the atmospheric phenomena of these elevated regions. I remember one afternoon, when the sun was breaking out on the close of a summer shower, we seemed to find ourselves in the midst of an immense rain-bow which appeared to have descended upon the plain. The camp, the south barracks, the trees, and the eastern hills beyond the river were all brightly colored with its varied and beautiful tints, and looked as if seen through an immense prism.

A thunder storm in these mountains is sublime beyond all that imagination can conceive. In looking up the river, while the sun is yet shining brightly, and the sky is blue above our heads, we see a dark cloud far off in the direction of Newburgh, whose white houses stand out in strong relief against the deep gloom that has gathered beyond; the coming vapor rises and spreads till it appears behind the Crow’s Nest, casting its deep shade upon the tops of the mountains, while on their sides still linger the last gleams of sunshine. As the clouds accumulate, and unite their forces, the darkness descends upon the river, whose blackening surface is seen ruffled with spots of white foam; the zig-zag lightning begins to quiver up from the gloom behind the hills; and then is heard the low murmur of the distant thunder; every flash becoming brighter, every peal sounding louder and nearer. At length, the wind rises, and the whole tempest rushes rapidly on. The trees writhe and bend to their roots, and are soon covered with the circling dust of the whirl-wind. The lightning glares out in one vast sheet, “flashing intolerable day” upon the night-like darkness that shrouds the river and its shores. At the same instant, the loud crash of the thunder rattles directly over head, and it continues throughout the storm its long and incessant roll, the echoes of one peal not subsiding before those of another have commenced. The lightning glances on the bayonets of the centinels that “walk their lonely rounds” on the skirts of the camp; and frequently the tents are blown over by the violence of the gust, and lie prostrate on the wet grass. These terrific thunder-claps seem to shake the everlasting hills; the firm-set granite buildings of the institution trembling to their foundations. Often the tremendous power delegated to “the volleying bolt of heaven” is attested by a riven and blasted tree, split in a moment from its topmost spray down to its roots in the earth; while, at the same instant, every leaf of its green and flourishing foliage becomes dead and yellow, the birds that built their nests among its branches lying lifeless at its foot.

I recommend to all visiters at the West Point hotel not to neglect ascending to the belvidere or skylight room on the top of that building. The view from thence is so vast and so magnificent that it rarely fails to call forth exclamations of delighted astonishment; particularly when autumn has colored the woods with its glowing and varied tints of scarlet, crimson, and purple, and with every shade of brown and yellow from the richest to the palest—such tints as, at this season, are to be found only in the foliage of America, and are most beautiful when seen through the gauzy haze of the Indian summer—that farewell smile of the departing year. Then the dilated disk of the sun looks round and red through its thin misty veil; the calm and slumbering river reflects a sky of the mildest blue; and near the shores its waters glow with the inverted beauties of the many-colored woods and hills. If viewed at evening, the splendor of the picture is increased by the glories of an autumnal sunset, when the clouds (such as are only seen in mountainous regions) assume the grandest forms and the most gorgeous hues.

Often after the last lingering beam has faded in the west, and all the stars have come out in the deep blue heaven, a dark mist appears behind the hills in the north, and from its dun recesses arise the ever-changing corruscations of the mysterious aurora borealis. Sometimes, its broad rays extend upwards nearly to the zenith, and diffuse a cold strange light upon the river and its western banks, rendering perfectly distinct the sloops on the water, and the trees and rocks on the shore. In the houses on the bank, the front-rooms are at times so well lighted by this incomprehensible phenomenon, that a newspaper may be read after the lamps or candles have been removed from the apartment. Then, perhaps in a few minutes, “the north’s dancing streamers relinquished their fire,” and faded dimly away into darkness. Suddenly they would again revive, darting upwards in renewed brightness their far-spreading rays, tinted with crimson and purple, and sometimes even with green and blue.

In a chamber that I once occupied at West Point there was a small knot-hole in the upper part of one of the shutters, by means of which, in cold weather, when the windows were closed fast, and the room consequently darkened, I frequently at early morning saw as in a camera obscura, a landscape depicted on the white wall above the mantel-piece. So that before I was up myself, I could observe the first gleams of the dawnlight, and the changing colors of the clouds as they brightened upon the blue sky, lending their glories to the hills beyond the river: and the first rays of the sun, when they “fired the proud tops of the eastern pines.” In this way, without opening the shutters to look out, I could always tell whether the morning was clear or cloudy.

The winter at West Point is long and cold; and (before the days of rail roads,) when the river was once closed, the ice fast, and the boats laid up for the season, the inhabitants of this insulated spot seemed nearly shut out from all communication with the rest of the world; and it may easily be guessed what interest was attached to the mails, after the difficulties of transportation caused them to arrive irregularly. We were very soon convinced of the fact that

“When cold and raw the wind doth blow

Bleak in the morning early,

When all the hills are cover’d with snow

Then it is winter fairly.”

I have known the snow so deep and so drifted, as to block up the parlor windows of the house we then inhabited, precluding all possibility of opening the shutters; and as to clear it away was no trifling task, we were more than once obliged to breakfast by candle-light at eight o’clock.

In the “blue serene” of the clear and intensely cold mornings, which usually succeeded a deep fall of snow, I have seen the whole atmosphere glittering with minute particles of ice: to breathe which must, in delicate lungs, have caused a sensation similar to laceration with a sharp knife. No one afflicted with pulmonary disease should live at West Point.

The scenery, in its winter aspect, looked somewhat like a panorama done in Indian ink, or rather like a great etching: except that the sky formed a blue background to the snowy mountains, on which the leafless branches of the denuded forest seemed pencilled in black and gray. We had our winter walks too: and I never felt a more pleasant glow from exercise than in climbing Mount Independence, through the snow, to visit Fort Putnam. In addition to the ordinary steepness of the road, it was now in many places rendered slippery by broad sheets of ice, beneath which we saw the living waters of a mountain brook gliding and murmuring along under their glassy coating. The snow had drifted high among the recesses of the old fortress, and lay white and thick along the broken and roofless edges of its dark gray walls, while here and there, amid the desolation, lingered the evergreen of a lonely cedar. Long bright icicles suspended their transparent and glittering fringes from the arches of the dismantled casements, whose entrances were now even less accessible than usual, being blocked up with mounds of snow that covered the heaps of fallen stones.

One of our favorite winter walks was to the cascade; and on entering the close woods that led thither, we always felt a sensible access of warmth in the atmosphere, which was very agreeable when compared to the unsheltered bleakness of the plain. In looking down from the heights, through the steeps of the forest, we saw glimpses of the river, as it lay far below us; its solid waters now of a bluish-white, shining beneath the wintry sun. Yet the cascade still poured its resistless torrent freely among the snow-covered rocks, roaring, frothing, and pitching from ledge to ledge. An old pine tree had thrown itself horizontally across the upper fall, its dark green foliage almost touching the water, and its rough trunk forming a bridge for the passage of the minks, foxes, ground squirrels, and other petty denizens of the wild. As the foaming torrent threw up its misty spray, this tree became incrusted with ice of the most brilliant transparency; looking like an immense chandelier, with multitudes of long crystal drops depending from its feathery branches.

The last winter I spent at West Point a funeral took place in the middle of December. It was that of a gentleman attached to the institution, and he died after a long and painful illness. The river had closed at a very early period, and the little world of West Point was locked up in ice and snow. Three o’clock was the time appointed for the melancholy procession to take up its line of march; the coffin, covered with a pall, having been previously carried into the chapel, and the funeral service performed over it by the chaplain.

It was a clear, cold afternoon, and the sun was already sinking behind the mountains, whose giant shadows, magnificently colored with crimson and purple, were projected far forward upon the frozen snow that covered the plain; as a range of painted windows cast down their glowing tints upon a white marble pavement.

When the funeral began to move from the chapel, the band (preceding the coffin) commenced one of the mournful airs that are usually appropriated to “the march of death.” The muffled drums were struck only at long intervals, and their heavy notes were deadened still more by the chillness of the atmosphere; while Willis’s bugle sounded almost like music from the world of spirits. Next came the soldiers, then the cadets, afterwards the officers, and lastly the commandant; all walking with their arms inverted. I saw the sad and lonely procession moving slowly through the snow, and directing its course to the cemetery, which is about a mile from the plain. Shaded with ancient trees, the grave yard occupies the summit of a promontory that impends above the river; and the Cadet’s Monument crowned by its military trophy in white marble, forms one of the land marks of the shore. I heard (and it always seems to me the most affecting part of the ceremonial) the volley which was fired over the grave, after that cold and narrow cell had been covered in with clods of frozen earth mingled with snow.

A very extraordinary circumstance connected with military funerals is the custom, that when all is over, and the procession is returning with recovered arms, and marching in quick time, the music always performs a lively air; frequently one that is designated in the army as, “So went the merry man home to his grave.” This revolting practice is said to have originated in the same principle that is set forth in the commencing lines of the well-known song, said to have been sung by General Wolfe at his supper table on the night before the battle in which he was killed:

“Why, soldiers why,

Should we be melancholy boys

Whose business ’tis to die.”

The horrors of every war are, and must be so terrible, that its practice admits of no palliation, except when the struggle is in defence of our native land. How ought we then to rejoice that in this our own favored country, no hecatombs of human victims can be immolated to swell the pride, to gratify the ambition, or to feed the rapacity of a few of their fellow men. Surely the people of another century will regard with amazement the tales of blood and carnage that defile the pages of history. They will wonder that rational beings could be found who were willing to engage in these atrocious contests, undertaken “for the glory of heroes, the splendor of thrones.” Where are now the Buonapartes and the Bourbons, for whose sake forty thousand lives were destroyed in the dreadful day of Waterloo, “on that tremendous harvest field where death swung the scythe.”

May we not hope that the war-times will pass away with the king-times.

(To be concluded.)

FRAGMENT.

———

BY ALBERT PIKE.

———

We are all mariners on this sea of life;

And they who climb above us up the shrouds,

Have only, in their over-topping place,

Gained a more dangerous station, and foothold

More insecure. The wind that passeth over

And harmeth not the humble crowd below,

Whistles amid the shrouds, and shaketh down

These overweening climbers of the ocean,

Into the great gigantic vase of death.

DREAMS OF THE LAND AND SEA.

A NIGHT SCENE AT SEA.

———

BY DR. REYNELL COATES.

———

Oh night,

And storm, and darkness, ye are wonderous strong,

Yet lovely in your strength—as is the light

Of a dark eye in woman!——

Byron.

But few among those who constitute the educated portion of society on shore, enjoy much opportunity of feeling the grandeur,—the awful variety of night. Women are necessarily debarred from the privilege of partaking freely of its mysterious but ennobling influence by the restraints unfortunately requisite for their protection; and, in order to reap the full advantage of such communion, we must be alone with the queen of the ebon wand and starry diadem. As for those of the bolder sex,—by them, the hours of shade are usually devoted to study, pleasure, or dissipation, and only the few possessing the poetic temperament become familiar with her changeful moods.

But, on the ocean, the closeness of the cabin drives the novice frequently on deck, even in stormy weather and at unseasonable hours; and when once this compulsory introduction has been effected, it is surprising how rapidly the traveller, of either sex, becomes enamored of solitude and night—of starlight and the storm.

The changes in the heavens,—and the waters too—are quite as numerous and far more impressive by night than by day.—There is no sameness in the sea for those who are blest with capacity to feel the beauties of Nature.

Let us lounge away an hour of this lovely evening here, by the companion-way. We are between the trades, and time would hang heavily on our hands but for the baffling winds and tempting cats-paws that keep us perpetually on the alert to gain or save a mile of southing.[^[2]] At present, we are suffering all the tedium of a calm. How dark!—How absolutely black the sky appears, contrasted with the brightness of a tropical moon! And yon dazzling star, waving its long line of reflected rays athwart the glassy billows, rivalling the broad glare of the moonlight!—What diamond ever equalled it in lustre, or surpassed it in variety of hues, as its ray changes from red to yellow, and from yellow to the most delicate blue?

The sails are flapping against the mast and the ship rolls so gently that one might well suppose no gale had ever ruffled this smooth summer ocean. To see the sailors lolling on the watch, the observer would infer they lead the idlest lives that mortals could enjoy; but alas! such moments are like angel visits with the crew. Poor fellows! How rich to them is the delight of a single hour of freedom spent in spinning their “tough yarns” under the lea of the long-boat, in singing or in music! That clarionet is admirably played, for rough and tarry fingers:—and how softly the notes float on the damp night air! The mate, in his impatience, is whistling for a wind; and that “old salt,” in whom many years of service have implanted deeply all the superstitions of his class, is muttering to himself with discontented glances, “You’ll have a cap-full, and more than you want of it before long,—and in the wrong quarter too.—I never knew any good to come of this whistling for wind.”

And, in truth, to judge from appearances, the prophecy is likely, in this case, to be fulfilled. Already the moon begins to be encircled by a wide halo of vapor. It is almost imperceptible at present; but, even while we speak, it gathers, and thickens, and seems to become more palpable. Now it assumes the faint tints of the lunar rain-bow; and all around a silvery veil is falling over the face of the heavens.

Slight fleeces of denser mist are collecting in columns and squadrons across the sky, giving it a mottled aspect. They are still too thin materially to check the full-flooding of the moonlight; but, as they gradually enlarge themselves, a slow, gliding motion is perceived among them. They are wafted gently southward; but the breeze—if breeze there be to-night—will come from the opposite quarter; for the higher and lower currents of our atmosphere are almost invariably found thus at variance with each other. The signs of the weather augur nothing favorable to our success in speedily reaching the southern trades.

Mark! How the broad glare of the moon-beams on the water fades away as the vapors in the upper air increase in density! The starlight reflection has disappeared; and the bright little orb from which it was derived, still struggling hard to make itself conspicuous, shines on with fitful ray.—And now, it is extinct.—Even the waters have lost their azure hue, and all things above and below are rapidly becoming gray.

The swell is momentarily rising, though you discover no cause for the change. Though we feel not a puff of wind the sails flap less heavily against the mast, and occasionally they are buoyed up and bellied out for many seconds, as if lifted by the breath of some unseen spirit.

Listen to the voice of the waves!—For the sea has a voice as well as the winds—not only where it speaks in thunders, booming upon the level beach, or roars among the time-worn rocks of an iron-bound coast, but far off in its loneliness, also, where no barrier opposes its will. Who knows not the mild tone of the breeze of spring from the melancholy moan of the autumnal gale?—As different is the dull plash of the lazy billow in a settled calm from the threatening sound that precedes a storm.

But the steward is ringing his supper-bell. Let us go below, and if I mistake not, you will find all nature dressed in another garb when we return on deck.

An hour has passed,—and what a change!—The ship close hauled on a wind, no longer rolls listlessly over the swell; but, laboring slowly up each coming wave, she staggers and shivers from stem to stern, as the crest of the watery mountain dashes against the weather bow,—then, rushing down into the trough of the sea and plunging deep into the succeeding billow, she strains every shroud and back-stay with the sudden jerk of the masts, and sends a broad sheet of crackling foam to leeward from beneath the bows.

How different is this disagreeable motion from that which we enjoy when the wind is on the beam or the quarter!—Then, we glide gently over the sea-hills, and every wave seems playfully bent on urging us forward:—Now, we are opposed unceasingly by wind and swell, and must contest laboriously each foot of the battle-ground, till the strength of our enemies is exhausted—conscious the while, that every league we loose in this strange, fitful region, may cost us a week’s delay in the recovery.

This is “a young gale” that bids fair to prove precocious; for it is rapidly advancing towards maturity. But it cannot last. Nothing but a calm displays much tendency to permanence between the trades.

The heavens are dark as midnight:—no star or planet penetrates the gloom with a friendly ray:—yet the color of the overhanging vault is by no means uniform. Broad tracts or patches of intense obscurity cover the chief part of the field of view; but, at intervals, you may perceive long, moving, dusky lines dividing these heavy masses, made visible by a strange and unaccountable half illumination. As they sweep hurriedly by, on their northward course, seemingly almost within reach from the mast head, we are made painfully conscious that the wings of the tempest are hovering over us in dangerous proximity.

Except the lamps in the binnacle, there is no obvious source of light above or around us: yet the outlines of the vessel, with all the labyrinth of spars and rigging, are dimly traceable in the murky air. Whence do we derive this power of vision? you will naturally inquire.—A glance at the surface of the water will explain it.

Every wave, as it combs and breaks, bears on its summit a high crest of foam, visible at a great distance by its own moonlight, or soft silvery radiation. Each little ripple carries its tiny lantern. Wherever the sea is disturbed by the motion of the vessel, and especially at the bow, where the waters are rudely disparted, or in the wake, where they rush together violently as she shoots along, a gentle, milky light is broadly diffused; and here and there a brilliant spark is seen beneath the surface shining distinct and permanent, like a star submerged, or gleaming and disappearing alternately, like the fire-flies of June.

The phosphorescence of the sea is unusually feeble at present, but it is sufficient to prevent a total darkness, and by its aid we trace the dim forms of surrounding objects, while a slight reflection from the clouds betrays the threatening aspect of the weather.

Do you observe those singular luminous appearances resembling masses of pale fire, or torch lights, hurrying from place to place, turning and meandering in all directions, some feet beneath the waves, like comets liberated from their proper spheres, and wandering without rule in the abyss of waters? They are produced by fish that are playing about the vessel, and were we adepts in the sport we might chance to strike one with the grains by the glare of his own torch. But this requires the skill and long experience of many voyages. To strike a fish by day is difficult enough; for, even then, he is not to be found where he appears. When you look obliquely from the vessel’s side at any object in the water, refraction changes its apparent place to a much greater distance than the real one, and brings the image nearer to the surface. Success in reaching such an object requires your aim to be directed towards a point considerably below the spot at which your game is seen. At night the difficulty is much enhanced;—for it is not the fish itself that emits the light. The agitation produced by his rapid motions awakens the thousands of luminous animalcules swarming in every cubic foot of water, and, as they fire their little tapers in succession, they fall into the rear, while the fish darts onward under cover of the obscurity, leaving a brilliant wake which serves but to deceive, or sometimes to guide, his enemies, and to attract his prey.

But hark!—How the wind howls through the shrouds and whistles around the slender rigging!—The gale increases, and another change comes over the night scene. Do you observe how pitchy the gloom has grown to windward?—All traces of the clouds in that direction are lost.—Ha!—A flash of lightning!—Here it comes in earnest!—The pouring rain obscures even the phosphoric glimmering of the waves, and now we have “night and storm and darkness,” in all their terrible beauty! Who dares attempt to paint the scene in words!—On every hand,—above—around—within—all is confusion! The crew spring to their stations, while the loud command and the scarce audible response are mingled with the dash of waves, the roar of the blast, and the creaking of the wracked timbers in one discordant, unintelligible burst of sound.

You stand, or rather hang by the mizzen shrouds, the centre of an invisible world where the maddened elements and hardy men contend for life or conquest. You hear them, but you see them not,—save when the electric flash tinges sea and cloud with momentary brilliance. Your eye detects the foot of the nearest mast, but you endeavor in vain to trace the tall spar upwards towards the lofty perch of those brave fellows on the yard, whose shrill voices—heard as if from a mile in the distance, in answer to the trumpet of the captain,—just reach the ear amid the din of a thousand unearthly voices, and add to the wizard wildness of the scene.

The storm swells loud and more loudly; but the yielding ship has risen from the first awful impression of its force and now careers furiously before it. The brailed but unfurled topsails flap with a dull and hollow thunder, as they whirl and rebound under the restraint of the clue-lines and the iron hands of the desperate crew. See that ghastly ball of purple flame leaping from spar to spar, like the visible spirit of the tempest![^[3]]—Now it is on the foremast head,—now it glares on the bowsprit,—and again, it springs to the mainyard and flashes full in the face of you startled reefer, casting the hue of death over his boyish features, rendered clearly visible for a moment in the demon torchlight.

The first flurry of the squall is passed;—we are again on a wind!—but still wave follows wave, rolling on with an angry roar;—and each in turn, as it reaches the vessel, strikes the bow with a resounding crash. Every plank in the firmly-bolted hull trembles beneath the blow, while the billow sweeps off under the lea, hissing and frothing in baffled rage to find the gallant bark invulnerable to its power.—Ever and anon the vivid lightning gilds the wide circle of a boiling sea, covered with broad streaks of foam driven onward for miles in narrow belts before the wind, while the sharp, sudden thunder follows on the instant, with a single detonation, like the discharge of an enormous cannon. Here are no hills and valleys to awake the long reverberating echoes—no solid earth to fling back the war-note of the storm in proud defiance to the clouds!

The binnacle lamps are shining on a portion of the quarter-deck, and light up the form of the helmsman at the wheel. Firm and unmoved amid the elemental jar, he stands like a guardian spirit in the centre of an illuminated sphere, contrasted so strongly with the palpable darkness around, that the imponderable air itself is made to appear material and tangible. On him depends our fate. One error!—one instance of momentary neglect, and the mountain swell might overtop our oaken bulwarks, leaving us a shattered and unmanagable wreck upon the desert waste of waters!

But listen!—what mean those indescribable sounds making themselves audible at intervals above the roar of the gale? Look out into the gloom, and strive to penetrate the mingled rain and spray!

Do you not see from time to time, those undefined and monstrous shapes,—blacker than night itself,—rising from the deep and giving utterance to noises like the puff of a steam engine combined with the snorting of some mammoth beast? Even here, while winds and waves are raging—in this chaos of air and ocean, where the barriers of heaven and earth seem broken down, and spray and foam—the sea—the rain—the clouds—are whirled together in one wide mass of inextricable confusion—even here, there are beings whose joy is in the tempest, sporting their ungainly gambols—fearless of the scathing bolt and glorying in the pealing thunder!

We are surrounded by an army of the grampus whales. Their breathing adds a fiend-like wildness to the voices of the night,—and their dusky forms looming through the obscurity as they thrust their misshapen backs above the surface of the sea, give an almost infernal aspect to the scene, if scene that may be called which is but half perceived in dimness that appears,

“Not light, but rather darkness visible.”

But come below!—We are happily exempt from the necessity of dangerous exposure, and the force of the salt spray that has been driven in our faces with stinging effect for the last half hour begins to weaken the impression of this magnificent display of Omnipotence. Man would find room for selfishness and vanity amid “the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds.”—Your complexion is in danger! So if you would avoid the hard looks of a weather-beaten tar, it is time to seek the shelter of the cabin. There I can amuse you with pictures of other night scenes by sea and land, until this short-lived tropical squall is over, or you feel inclined to retire to your state room. In another hour we shall probably be bounding along merrily, with all sail set, and the moon beams sparkling and playing hide-and-go-seek among the little rippling waves with which a six-knot breeze roughens a subsiding swell!

AGATHÈ.—A NECROMAUNT.

IN THREE CHIMERAS.

———

BY LOUIS FITZGERALD TASISTRO.

———

Chimera III.

Another moon! And over the blue night

She bendeth, like a holy spirit bright,

Through stars that veil them in their wings of gold;

As on she floateth with her image cold

Enamell’d on the deep, a sail of cloud

Is to her left, majestically proud!

Trailing its silver drapery away

In thin and fairy webs, that are at play

Like stormless waves upon a summer sea,

Dragging their length of waters lazily.

Ay! to the rocks! and thou wilt see, I wist,

A lonely one, that bendeth in the mist

Of moonlight, with a wide and raven pall

Flung round him.—Is he mortal man at all?

For, by the meagre firelight that is under

Those eyelids, and the vision shade of wonder

Falling upon his features, I would guess

Of one that wanders out of blessedness!

Julio! raise thee! By the holy mass!

I wot not of the fearless one would pass

Thy wizard shadow. Where the raven hair

Was shorn before, in many a matted layer

It lieth now; and on a rock beside

The sea, like merman at the ebb of tide,

Feasting his wondrous vision on decay,

So art thou gazing over Agathè!

Ah me! but this is never the fair girl,

With brow of light, as lovely as a pearl,

That was as beautiful as is the form

Of sea-bird at the breaking of a storm.

The eye is open, with convulsive strain⁠—

A most unfleshly orb! the stars that wane

Have nothing of its hue; for it is cast

With sickly blood, and terribly aghast!

And sunken in its socket like the light

Of a red taper in the lonely night!

And there is not a braid of her bright hair

But lieth floating in the moonlight air,

Like the long moss beside a silver spring,

In elfin tresses, sadly murmuring.

The worm hath ’gan to crawl upon her brow⁠—

The living worm! and with a ripple now,

Like that upon the sea, are heard below

The slimy swarms all ravening as they go,

Amid the stagnate vitals, with a crush;

And one might hear them echoing the hush

Of Julio, as he watches by the side

Of the dead ladye, his betrothéd bride!

And ever and anon a yellow group

Was creeping on her bosom, like a troop

Of stars, far up amid the galaxy,

Pale, pale, as snowy showers, and two or three

Were mocking the cold finger, round and round

With likeness of a ring; and, as they wound

About its bony girth, they had the hue

Of pearly jewels glistening in the dew.

That deathly stare! it is an awful thing

To gaze upon; and sickly thoughts will spring

Before it to the heart: it telleth how

There must be waste where there is beauty now.

The chalk! the chalk! where was the virgin snow

Of that once heaving bosom? even so,

The cold, pale dewy chalk, with yellow shade

Amid the leprous hues; and o’er it play’d

The straggling moonlight and the merry breeze,

Like two fair elves that by the murmuring seas

Woo’d smilingly together; but there fell

No life-gleam on the brow, all terrible

Becoming, through its beauty, like a cloud

That waneth paler even than a shroud,

All gorgeous and all glorious before;

For waste, like to the wanton night, was o’er

Her virgin features, stealing them away⁠—

Ah me! ah me! and this is Agathè?

“Enough! enough! oh God! but I have pray’d

To thee, in early daylight and in shade,

And the mad-curse is on me still—and still!

I cannot alter the eternal will—

But—but—I hate thee Agathè! I hate

What lunacy hath made me consecrate:

I am not mad!—not now!—I do not feel

That slumberous and blessed opiate steal

Up to my brain—oh! that it only would,

To people this eternal solitude

With fancies, and fair dreams, and summer-mirth,

Which is not now—and yet my mother earth

I would not love to lie above thee so

As Agathè lies there—Oh! no! no! no!

To have these clay worms feast upon my heart!

And all the light of being to depart

Into a dismal shadow! I could die

As the red lightnings, quenching amid sky

Their wild and wizard breath; I could away

Like a blue billow bursting into spray:

But never—never have corruption here

To feed her worms and let the sunlight jeer

Above me so. ’Tis thou! I owe thee, moon,

To-night’s fair worship; so be lifting soon

Thy veil of clouds, that I may kneel as one

That seeketh for thy virgin benison!”

He gathers the cold limpets as they creep

On the gray rocks beside the lonely deep,

And with a flint breaks through into the shell,

And feeds him—by the mass! he feasteth well.

And he hath lifted water in a clam

And tasted sweetly from a stream that swam

Down to the sea; and now is turn’d away

Again, again, to gaze on Agathè!

There is a cave upon that isle—a cave

Where dwelt a hermit-man: the winter wave

Roll’d to its entrance, casting a bright mound

Of snowy shells and fairy pebbles round;

And over were the solemn ridges strewn

Of a dark rock, that, like the wizard throne

Of some sea-monarch, stood, and from it hung

Wild thorn and bramble in confusion flung

Amid the startling crevices—like sky

Through gloom of clouds, that sweep in thunder by.

A cataract fell over, in a streak

Of silver, playing many a wanton freak;

Midway, and musical, with elfin glee

It bounded in its beauty to the sea,

Like dazzling angel vanishing away.

In sooth, ’twas pleasant in the moonlight gray

To see that fairy fountain leaping so,

Like one that knew not wickedness nor woe!

The hermit had his cross and rosary:

I ween like other hermits so was he,

A holy man and frugal, and at night

He prayed, or slept, or, sometimes, by the light

Of the fair moon went wandering beside

The lonely sea, to hear the silver tide

Rolling in gleesome music to the shore;

The more he heard he loved to hear the more.

And there he is, his hoary beard adrift

To the night winds, that sportingly do lift

Its snow-white tresses; and he leaneth on

A rugged staff, all weakly and alone,

A childless, friendless man!

He is beside

The ghastly Julio and his ghastlier bride.

’Twas wond’rous strange to gaze upon the two!

And the old hermit felt a throbbing through

His pulses—“Holy Virgin! save me, save!”

He deem’d of spectre from the midnight wave,

And cross’d him thrice, and pray’d and pray’d again:

“Hence! hence!” and Julio started as the strain

Of exorcisms fell faintly on his ear:

“I knew thee, father, that thou beest here

To gaze upon this girl, as I have been.

By yonder moon! it was a frantic sin

To worship so an image of the clay;

It was like beauty—but is now away⁠—

What lived upon her features, like the light

On yonder cloud, all tender and all bright;

But it is faded as the other must,

And she that was all beauty is all dust.

“Father! thy hand upon this brow of mine

And tell me is it cold? But she will twine

No wreath upon these temples—never, never!

For there she lieth like a streamless river

That stagnates in its bed. Feel, feel me here,

If I be madly throbbing in the fear

For that cold slimy worm. Ay! look and see

How dotingly it feeds, how pleasantly!

And where it is have been the living hues

Of beauty, purer than the very dews.

So, father! seest thou that yonder moon

Will be on wane to-morrow, soon and soon?

And I, that feel my being wear away,

Shall droop beside to darkness: so, but say

A prayer for the dead, when I am gone

And let the azure tide that floweth on

Cover us lightly with its murmuring surf,

Like a green sward of melancholy turf;

Thou mayest, if thou wilt, thou mayest rear

A cenotaph on this lone island here,

Of some rude mossy stone, below a tree,

And carve an olden rhyme for her and me

Upon its brow.”

He bends, and gazes yet

Before his ghastly bride! the anchoret

Sate by him, and hath press’d a cross of wood

To his wan lips * * *

* * * * * *

* * * * * *

“My son! look up and tell thy dismal tale.

Thou seemest cold, and sorrowful, and pale.

Alas! I fear that thou hast strangely been

A child of curse, and misery, and sin.

And this,—is she thy sister?”—“nay! my bride.”

“Anon! and thou?”—“True, true! but then she died,

And was a virgin, and is virgin still,

Chaste as the moon, that taketh her pure fill

Of light from the great sun. But now, go by,

And leave me to my madness, or to die!

This heart, this brain are sore.—Come, come, and fold

Me round, ye hydra billows! wrapt in gold,

That are so writhing your eternal gyres

Before the moon, which, with a myriad tiars

Is crowning you, as ye do fall and kiss

Her pearly feet, that glide in blessedness!

Let me be torture-eaten, ere I die!

Let me be mangled sore with agony!

And be so cursed; so stricken by the spell

Of my heart’s frenzy, that a living hell

Be burning there!—back! back if thou art mad—

Methought thou wast, but thou art only sad.

Is this thy child, old man? look, look, and see!

In truth it is a piteous thing for thee

To become childless—well a-well, go by!

Is there no grave? The quiet sea is nigh,

And I will bury her below the moon:

It may be but a trance or midnight swoon.

And she may wake. Wake, Ladye! ha! methought

It was like her.—Like her! and is it not?

My angel girl? my brain, my stricken brain!⁠—

I know thee now!—I know myself again.”

He flings him on the ladye, and anon,

With loathly shudder, from that wither’d one

Hath torn him back. “Oh me! no more—no more!

Thou virgin mother! is the dream not o’er,

That I have dreamt, but I must dream again

For moons together, till this weary brain

Become distemper’d as the winter sea!

Good father! give me blessing; let it be

Upon me as the dew upon the moss.

Oh me! but I have made the holy cross

A curse; and not a blessing! let me kiss

The sacred symbol; for, by this—by this!

I sware, and sware again, as now I will⁠—

Thou Heaven! if there be bounty in thee still,

If thou wilt hear, and minister, and bring

The light of comfort, on some angel wing

To one that lieth lone; do—do it now;

By all the stars that open on thy brow

Like silver flowers! and by the herald moon

That listeth to be forth at nightly noon,

Jousting the clouds, I swear! and be it true,

As I have perjured me, that I renew

Allegiance to thy God, and bind me o’er

To this same penance, I have done before!

That night and day I watch, as I have been

Long watching, o’er the partner of my sin!

That I taste never the delight of food,

But these wild shell-fish, that may make the mood

Of madness stronger, till it grapple death⁠—

Despair—eternity!”

He saith, he saith,

And, on the jaundiced bosom of the corse,

Lieth all frenzied; one would see remorse,

And hopeless love, and hatred, struggling there,

And lunacy, that lightens up despair,

And makes a gladness out of agony.

Pale phantom! I would fear and worship thee,

That hast the soul at will, and givest it play,

Amid the wildest fancies far away;

That thronest reason, on some wizard throne

Of fairy land, within the milky zone,⁠—

Some spectre star, that glittereth beyond

The glorious galaxies of diamond.

Beautiful lunacy! that shapest flight

For love to blessed bowers of delight,

And buildest holy monarchies within

The fancy, till the very heart is queen

Of all her golden wishes. Lunacy!

Thou empress of the passions! though they be,

A sister group of wild, unearthly forms,

Like lightnings playing in their home of storms!

I see thee, striking at the silver strings

Of the pure heart, and holy music springs

Before thy touch, in many a solemn strain,

Like that of sea-waves rolling from the main!

But say, is melancholy by thy side,

With tresses in a raven shower, that hide

Her pale and weeping features? Is she never

Flowing before thee, like a gloomy river,

The sister of thyself? But cold and chill,

And winter-born, and sorrowfully still,

And not like thee, that art in merry mood,

And frolicsome amid thy solitude?

Fair Lunacy! I see thee, with a crown

Of hawthorn and sweet daisies, bending down

To mirror thy young image in a spring:

And thou wilt kiss that shadow of a thing

As soulless as thyself. ’Tis tender, too,

The smile that meeteth thine! the holy hue

Of health! the pearly radiance of the brow!

All, all as tender,—beautiful as thou!

And wilt thou say, my sister, there is none

Will answer thee? Thou art—thou art alone,

A pure, pure being! but the God on high

Is with thee ever, as thou goest by.

Thou Poetess! that harpest to the moon,

And, in soft concert to the silver tune,

Of waters play’d on by the magic wind,

As he comes streaming, with his hair untwined,

Dost sing light strains of melody and mirth,⁠—

I hear thee, hymning on thy holy birth,

How thou wert moulded of thy mother Love,

That came, like seraph, from the stars above.

And was so sadly wedded unto Sin,

That thou wert born, and Sorrow was thy twin.

Sorrow with mirthful Lunacy! that be

Together link’d for time, I deem of ye

That ye are worshipped as none others are,⁠—

One as a lonely shadow,—one a star!

Is Julio glad, that bendeth, even now,

To his wild purpose, to his holy vow?

He seeth only in his ladye-bride

The image of the laughing girl, that died

A moon before—the same, the very same—

The Agathè that lisp’d her lover’s name,

To him and to her heart: that azure eye,

That shone through sunny tresses, waving by:

The brow, the cheek, that blush’d of fire and snow,

Both blending into one ethereal glow:

And the same breathing radiancy, that swam

Around her, like a pure and blessed calm

Around some halcyon bird. And, as he kiss’d

Her wormy lips, he felt that he was blest!

He felt her holy being stealing through

His own, like fountains of the azure dew,

That summer mingles with his golden light;

And he would clasp her, till the weary night,

Was worn away.

* * * * * *

* * * * * *

And morning rose in form

Of heavy clouds, that knitted into storm

The brow of Heaven, and through her lips the wind

Came rolling westward, with a tract behind

Of gloomy billows, bursting on the sea,

All rampant, like great lions terribly,

And gnashing on each other: and anon,

Julio heard them, rushing one by one,

And laugh’d and turn’d. The hermit was away

For he was old and weary, and he lay

Within his cave, and thought it was a dream,

A summer’s dream! and so the quiet stream

Of sleep came o’er his eyelids, and in truth

He dreamt of that strange ladye and the youth

That held a death-wake on her wasting form;

And so he slept and woke not till the storm

Was over.

But they came—the wind, and sea,

And rain and thunder, that in giant glee,

Sang o’er the lightnings pale, as to and fro

They writhed, like stricken angels!—white as snow

Roll’d billow after billow, and the tide

Came forward as an army deep and wide,

To charge with all its waters. There was heard

A murmur far and far, of those that stirr’d

Within the great encampment of the sea,

And dark they were, and lifted terribly

Their water-spouts like banners. It was grand

To see the black battalions, hand in hand

Striding to conflict, and their helmets bent

Below their foamy plumes magnificent!

And Julio heard and laugh’d. “Shall I be king

To your great hosts, that ye are murmuring

For one to bear you to your holy war?

There is no sun, or moon, or any star,

To guide your iron footsteps as ye go,

But I, your king, will marshal you to flow

From shore to shore. Then bring my car of shell,

That I may ride before you terrible;

And bring my sceptre of the amber weed,

And Agathè, my virgin bride, shall lead

Your summer hosts, when these are ambling low,

In azure and in ermine, to and fro.”

He said, and madly, with his wasted hand

Swept o’er the tuneless harp, and fast he spanned

The silver chords, until a rush of sound

Came from them, solemn—terrible—profound;

And then he dash’d the instrument away

Into the waters, and the giant play

Of billows threw it back unto the shore,

A shiver’d, stringless frame—its day of music o’er!

The tide, the rolling tide! the multitude

Of the sea surges, terrible and rude,

Tossing their chalky foam along the bed

Of thundering pebbles, that are shoring dread.

And fast retreating to the gloomy gorge

Of waters, sounding like a Titan forge!

It comes! it comes! the tide, the rolling tide!

But Julio is bending to his bride,

And making mirthful whispers to her ear,

A cataract! a cataract is near,

Of one stupendous billow, and it breaks

Terribly furious, with a myriad flakes

Of foam, that fly about the haggard twain;

And Julio started, with a sudden pain,

That shot into his heart; his reason flew

Back to her throne: he rose, and wildly threw

His matted tresses over on his brow.

Another billow came, and even now

Was dashing at his feet. There was no shade

Of terror, as the serpent waters play’d

Before him, but his eye was calm as death.

Another, yet another! and the breath

Of the weird wind was with it, like a rock

Unriveted it fell—a shroud of smoke

Pass’d over—there was heard, and died away,

The voice of one shrill-shrieking “Agathè!”

The sea-bird sitteth lonely by the side

Of the far waste of waters, flapping wide

His wet and weary wings; but he is gone,

The stricken Julio! a wave-swept stone

Stands there, on which he sat, and nakedly

It rises looking to the lonely sea;

But Julio is gone, and Agathè!

The waters swept them madly to their core⁠—

The dead and living with a frantic roar!

And so he died, his bosom fondly set

On hers; and round her clay-cold waist were met

His bare and wither’d arms, and to her brow

His lips were press’d. Both, both are perish’d now!

He died upon her bosom in a swoon:

And fancied of the pale and silver moon,

That went before him in her hall of blue;

He died like golden insect in the dew,

Calm, calm and pure; and not a chord was wrung

In his deep heart—but love. He perish’d young,

But perish’d wasted by some fatal flame

That fed upon his vitals: and there came

Lunacy, sweeping lightly, like a stream,

Along his brain—he perish’d in a dream!

In sooth I marvel not

If death be only a mysterious thought,

That cometh on the heart and turns the brow

Brightless and chill, as Julio’s is now;

For only had the wasting struggle been

Of one wild feeling, till it rose within

Into the form of death, and nature felt

The light of the immortal being melt

Into its happier home beyond the sea,

And moon, and stars, into eternity!

The sun broke through his dungeon, long enthrall’d

By dismal clouds, and on the emerald

Of the great living sea was blazing down

To gift the lordly billows with a crown

Of diamond and silver. From his cave

The hermit came, and by the dying wave

Lone wander’d, and he found upon the sand,

Below a truss of sea-weed, with his hand

Around the silent waist of Agathè

The corse of Julio! Pale, pale, it lay

Beside the wasted girl. The fireless eye

Was open, and a jewell’d rosary

Flung round the neck; but it was gone—the cross

That Agathè had given.

Amid the moss

The hermit scoop’d a solitary grave

Below the pine-trees, and he sang a stave,

Or two, or three, of some old requiem

As in their narrow home he buried them;

And many a day before that blessed spot

He sate, in lone and melancholy thought,

Gazing upon the grave; and one had guess’d

Of some dark secret shadowing his breast.

And yet, to see him, with his silver hair

Adrift and floating in the sea-borne air,

And features chasten’d in the tears of woe,

In sooth, ’twas merely sad to see him so!

A wreck of nature floating far and fast,

Upon the stream of Time—to sink at last!

And he is wandering by the shore again,

Hard leaning on his staff; the azure main

Lies sleeping far before him, with his seas

Fast folded in the bosom of the breeze,

That like the angel Peace, hath dropt his wings

Around the warring waters. Sadly sings

To his own heart that lonely hermit-man,

A tale of other days when passion ran

Along his pulses like a troubled stream,

And glory was a splendor and a dream!

He stoop’d to gather up a shining gem

That lay amid the shells, as bright as them,

It was a cross, the cross that Agathè

Had given to her Julio; the play

Of the fierce sunbeams fell upon its face,

And on the glistening jewels—but the trace

Of some old thought came burning to the brain

Of the pale hermit, and he shrunk in pain

Before the holy symbol. It was not

Because of the eternal ransom wrought

In ages far away, or he had bent

In pure devotion, sad and reverent;

But now, he startled as he look’d upon

That jewell’d thing, and wildly he is gone

Back to the mossy grave, away, away:

“My child, my child! my own, own Agathè!”

It is her father,—he,—an alter’d man!

His quiet had been wounded, and the ban

Of misery came over him, and froze

The bright and holy tides, that fell and rose

In joy amid his heart. To think of her,

That he had injured so, and all so fair,

So fond, so like the chosen of his youth,⁠—

It was a very dismal thought, in truth,

That he had left her hopelessly, for aye,

Within the cloister-wall to droop, and die!

And so he could not bear to have it be;

But sought for some lone island in the sea,

Where he might dwell in doleful solitude,

And do strange penance in his mirthful mood,

For this same crime, unnaturally wild,

That he had done unto his saintly child.

And ever he did think, when he had laid

These lovers in the grave, that, through the shade

Of ghostly features melting to decay,

He saw the image of his Agathè.

And now the truth had flash’d into his brain:

And he has fallen, with a shriek of pain,

Upon the lap of pale and yellow moss;

For long ago he gave that blessed cross

To his fair girl, and knew the relic still,

By many a thousand thoughts, that rose at will

Before it of the one that was not now,

But, like a dream, had floated from the brow

Of time, that seeth many a lovely thing

Fade by him, like a sea-wave murmuring.

The heart is burst!—the heart that stood in steel

To woman’s earnest tears, and bade her feel

The curse of virgin solitude,—a veil;

And saw the gladsome features growing pale

Unmoved: ’tis rent like some eternal tower

The sea hath shaken, and its stately power

Lies lonely, fallen, scatter’d on the shore;

’Tis rent like some great mountain, that before

The Deluge stood in glory and in might,

But now is lightning-riven, and the night

Is clambering up its sides, and chasms lie strewn,

Like coffins, here and there: ’tis rent! the throne

Where passions, in their awful anarchy,

Stood sceptred! There was heard an inward sigh,

That took the being, on its troubled wings,

Far to the land of deep imaginings!

All three are dead! that desolate green isle

Is only peopled by the passing smile

Of sun and moon, that surely have a sense,

They look so radiant with intelligence,⁠—

So like the soul’s own element,—so fair!

The features of a God lie veiled there!

And mariners that have been toiling far

Upon the deep, and lost the polar star,

Have visited that island, and have seen

That lover’s grave: and many there have been

That sat upon the grey and crumbling stone,

And started as they saw a skeleton

Amid the long sad moss, that fondly grew

Through the white wasted ribs: but never knew

Of those who slept below, or of the tale

Of that brain-stricken man, that felt the pale

And wandering moonlight steal his soul away,⁠—

Poor Julio, and the Ladye Agathè!

We found them,—children of toil and tears,

Their birth of beauty shaded;

We left them in their early years

Fallen and faded.

We found them, flowers of summer hue,

Their golden cups were lighted,

With sparkles of the pearly dew⁠—

We left them blighted!

We found them,—like those fairy flowers

And the light of morn lay holy

Over their sad and sainted bowers⁠—

We left them lonely.

We found them,—like twin stars, alone,

In brightness and in feeling;

We left them,—and the curse was on

Their beauty stealing.

They rest in quiet, where they are:

Their life time is the story

Of some fair flower—some silver star,

Faded in glory!

TO A SPIRIT.

———

BY JAMES ALDRICH.

———

Not the effulgent light

Of that bright realm where live the blest departed,

Nor the grave’s gloom, Oh! loved one, and true hearted,

Can hide thee from thy sight.

Thy sweet angelic smile

Beams on my sleep. I see thee, hear thy voice,

Thou say’st unto my fettered soul, “Rejoice!

Wait but a little while.”

Sometimes ’mid cloudlets bright,

The sunset splendors of a summer’s day,

An instant thou’lt appear, then pass away

From my entranced sight.

Up in the blue heavens clear

A never-setting star hast thou become,

Pouring a silvery ray, from thy far home,

Upon my pathway here.

Where tears ne’er dim the eyes,

Shall we not meet in some far blessed land?

Shall we not walk together, hand in hand,

In bowers of Paradise?

My soul, though chained and pent,

Sore of a future glorious career,

In all its God-appointed labor here,

Toils on in calm content.

ST. AGNES’ EVE.

A CHIT-CHAT ABOUT KEATS.

God bless you, Oliver, don’t think of such a thing! I join the temperance society!—why, you old curmudgeon, would you murder me outright? Not that temperance societies haven’t done good—many a poor wife and weeping mother have they made happy—but, then, ever since I read Anacreon at college and shot buffalos at the Black Hills, I’ve had a fellow feeling for the good things of this life, especially for beef-steaks and port wine. I’m an Epicurean, sir—you needn’t talk to me of glory—I despise the whole cant about posthumous renown. The great end of life is happiness, and happiness is best secured by gratifying our physical as well as our intellectual nature. I go in, sir, for enjoying existence, and when I was in my prime, I flatter myself that few could beat me at a dinner or had a more delicate way of making love to the girls. But alas! we have fallen on troublous times. The wine of these days—I say it with tears in my eyes—isn’t the wine of my youth; and the girls—here’s a health to the sweet angels—have sadly deteriorated from what their grandmothers were. Eheu! Eheu! The world is getting upside down, and I shouldn’t wonder if an earthquake or epidemic or some other calamity should overtake us yet to fill up the catalogue of our ills.

I have just been reading Keats—shame on the wretches who tortured him to death! He is a practical argument, sir, for my creed. Genius he had unquestionably, yet he never enjoyed a happy hour. Why was this? Born in humble life, he thirsted for distinction, and trusting to his genius to achieve renown, found himself assailed by hostile critics, who dragged his private life before the public eye, and sneered at his poetry with the bitter scorn of fiends. He was naturally of a delicate constitution—of a proud and aspiring character; but of a modesty as shrinking as the sensitive plant; and when he found himself slighted, abused, maligned—when he saw that he was thrust back at every attempt to elevate himself, his delicate nature gave way, and he died of a broken heart, requesting that his epitaph might be, “Here lies one whose name was writ on water.” The world, since then, has done tardy justice to his genius—but this did not soothe his sorrows, nor will it reach him in his silent grave. What to him is posthumous renown?—what the tears of this generation or the plaudits of the next? Had he been less sensitive, had he thirsted less after glory, he might still have been living, with matured powers, extorting even from his enemies deserved commendation. But he fell in his youthful prime, an eaglet pierced before it had learnt to soar. I have shed tears over his grave at Rome—let us drink to his memory in solemn silence.

Keats would have made a giant had he lived, sir. Everything he wrote evinced high genius. Each successive poem he published displayed increased merit. His sonnets remind me of Milton—his shorter pieces breathe of Lycidas or Venus and Adonis. He had little artistical skill, but then what an exuberant fancy! Few men had a finer perception of the beautiful, the το καλον of poetry. He is one of the most Grecian—if I may use the expression—of our poets. Shelley, perhaps, was more deeply imbued with the Attic spirit, but then, although his heart was always right, his intellect was always wrong, and thus it happens that his poetry is often mystic, obscure, and even confused. Keats was not so. He had this freshness without its mysticism. He delighted in themes drawn from classic fountains, in allusions breathing of Thessaly and the gods. There was in many of his poems a voluptuousness approaching to effeminacy, reminding one of the Aphrodite in her own fragrant bowers. In others of his poems there was an Arcadian sweetness. What is finer than his ode to the Grecian Urn? Do you remember the opening?

“Thou still unravished bride of quietness!

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,

Sylvan historian who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities, or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstacy?”

Delicious, is it not? You seem to be in classic Greece itself, amid the groves of Academus, by the fountain of Castaly, beneath the god-encircled Olympus. You can hear the Dorian flutes, you can see the daughters of Ionia. There are the priest and his assistants leading the flower-decked heifer to the altar—lo! a group of bacchantes singing and dancing through the vale. And high up yonder is the snowy temple of Jove—a picture for the gods!

You shake your head—you have no taste for classic allusions. Egad! I remember, you are a devotee of the German literature, and admire nothing which is not of the romantic school, Well, well—have you ever read “The Eve of St. Agnes?” It is—let me tell you—the poem for which Keats will be loved, and you ought to walk barefooted a thousand miles, like an ancient pilgrim to Loretto, for having neglected to peruse this poem. It is not so fine as Hyperion, but then the latter is a fragment. It is as superior to Endymion as a star to a satellite. It pleases me more than Lamia or Isabella. It has the glow of a landscape seen through a rosy glass—it is warm and blushing, yet pure as a maiden in her first exceeding beauty. As Burgundy is to other wines, as a bride blushing to her lover’s side is to other virgins, so is “The Eve of St. Agnes” to other poems. What luxuriance of fancy, what scope of language, what graphic power it displays! It is a love story, and right witchingly told. How exquisite the description of Madeline, her moonlit chamber, her awakening from her dream, and the delicious intoxicating emotions which break on her when she learns that she loves and is beloved. Ah! sir, we are old now, but I never read this poem without thinking of the time when I first pressed my own Mary to my side, and felt her little warm heart beating against my own. Egad, I will just skip over “The Eve of St. Agnes,” to pass the time away while we finish this bottle.

The poem opens with a graphic picture of a winter’s night. Draw closer to the grate, for—by my ancestry!—it is a freezing theme. I will read.

“St. Agnes’ eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,

Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.”

The poet then proceeds to describe a festive scene, amid which is one fair lady, whose heart had throbbed all day on love, she having heard old dames tell that maidens might, on St. Agnes’ eve, behold their lovers in dreams, if they observed certain mystic ceremonies. The lovely Madeline has resolved to follow the old legend, and she sighs, amid her suitors, for midnight to arrive. Then goes the story thus:

“Meantime, across the moors,

Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire

For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,

Buttress’d from moonlight, stands he, and implores

All saints to give him sight of Madeline,

But for one moment in the tedious hours,

That he might gaze and worship all unseen;

Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss—in sooth such things have been.”

In that vast mansion, amid all that gay party, young Porphyro has but one friend, an old beldame, for all the rest are athirst for his blood and that of his line. While watching thus, the beldame discovers him and beseeches him to fly. He refuses. In her garrulous entreaty she reveals to Porphyro that his mistress intends playing the conjurer to discover who shall be her lover. He eagerly makes a proposition, to which the old dame objects in horror, but after many protestations on his part and a rash declaration that otherwise he will reveal himself to his foes, she finally consents. And what was his proposition? Let the poet tell. It was

——“To lead him, in close secrecy,

Even to Madeline’s chamber, and there hide

Him in a closet, of such privacy

That he might see her beauty unespied,

And win perhaps that night a peerless bride,

While legion’d fairies paced the coverlet,

And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed.”

The old dame accordingly leads the lover, through many a dusky gallery, to the maiden’s chamber, and then, hurriedly hiding him in a closet, is feeling in the dark on the landing for the stair,

“When Madeline, St. Agnes’ charmed maid,

Rose, like a missioned spirit unaware:

With silver taper’s light, and pious care,

She turn’d, and down the aged gossip led

To a safe level matting.”

Ah! we have few Madelines now-a-days. I love her for that act, as I would love an only daughter. Well may the poet exultingly say after this⁠—

“Now prepare,

Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed;

She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove frayed and fled.”

The whole picture that follows is purity itself. We wish the wind would whistle less loudly without—there! it dies away as if in homage to this maiden soft. Shut your eyes and dream, while I read in whispers.