It is but a word, and the chain is unbound,
The bracelet of steel drops unclasped to the ground;
No hand shall replace it, — it rests where it fell,
It is but one word that we all know too well.

Yet the hawk with the wildness untamed in his eye, If you free him, stares round ere he springs to the

sky;

The slave whom no longer his fetters restrain
Will turn for a moment and look at his chain.

Our parting is not as the friendship of years,
That chokes with the blessing it speaks through its

tears;

We have walked in a garden, and, looking around, Have plucked a few leaves from the myrtles we found.

But now at the gate of the garden we stand,

And the moment has come for unclasping the hand; Will you drop it like lead, and in silence retreat Like the twenty crushed forms from an omnibus seat?

Nay! hold it one moment, the last we may

I stretch it in kindness, and not for my fare;
You may pass through the doorway in rank or in file,
If your ticket from Nature is stamped with a smile.

For the sweetest of smiles is the smile as we part, When the light round the lips is a ray from the heart;

And lest a stray tear from its fountain might swell, We will seal the bright spring with a quiet farewell.

THE HUDSON.

AFTER A LECTURE AT ALBANY.

WAS a vision of childhood that came with its dawn,

Ere the curtain that covered life's day

star was drawn ;

The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long, And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song.

"There flows a fair stream by the hills of the west,"

She sang to her boy as he lay on her breast;

66

Along its smooth margin thy fathers have played; Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid."

I wandered afar from the land of my birth,
I saw the old rivers, renowned upon earth,
But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream
With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream.

I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine, Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change it to wine;

I stood by the Avon, whose waves as they glide Still whisper his glory who sleeps at their side.

But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the waves

That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves;
If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear,
I care not who sees it, -no blush for it here!

Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of the West!
I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast;
Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold,
Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled!

DECEMBER, 1854.

A POEM

FOR THE MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION AT NEW YORK,

MAY 5, 1853.

HOLD a letter in my hand,

A flattering letter-more's the pity,—
By some contriving junto planned,
And signed per order of Committee;

It touches every tenderest spot,
My patriotic predilections,

My well known

-

- something don't ask what, My poor old songs, my kind affections.

They make a feast on Thursday next,

And hope to make the feasters merry; They own they're something more perplexed For poets than for port and sherry; They want the men of (word torn out);

Our friends will come with anxious faces

(To see our blankets off, no doubt,

And trot us out and show our paces).

They hint that papers by the score
Are rather musty kind of rations;
They don't exactly mean a bore,

But only trying to the patience;

That such as you know who I mean
Distinguished for their―what d' ye call 'em-
Should bring the dews of Hippocrene
To sprinkle on the faces solemn.

-The same old story; that's the chaff To catch the birds that sing the ditties; Upon my soul, it makes me laugh

To read these letters from Committees ! They're all so loving and so fair,

All for your sake such kind compunction, 'T would save your carriage half its wear To touch its wheels with such an unction!

Why, who am I, to lift me here

And beg such learned folk to listen,
To ask a smile, or coax a tear

Beneath these stoic lids to glisten?
As well might some arterial thread
Ask the whole frame to feel it gushing,
While throbbing fierce from heel to head
The vast aortic tide was rushing.

As well some hair-like nerve might strain
To set its special streamlet going,
While through the myriad-channelled brain
The burning flood of thought was flowing;
Or trembling fibre strive to keep

The springing haunches gathered shorter,
While the scourged racer, leap on leap,

Was stretching through the last hot quarter!

Ah me! you take the bud that came
Self-sown in your poor garden's borders,
And hand it to the stately dame

That florists breed for, all she orders;
She thanks
you it was kindly meant —

(A pale affair, not worth the keeping,)· Good morning; - and your bud is sent To join the tea-leaves used for sweeping.

Not always so, kind hearts and true, —
For such I know are round me beating;
Is not the bud I offer you,

Fresh gathered for the hour of meeting,
Pale though its outer leaves may be,
Rose-red in all its inner petals,

Where the warm life we cannot see -
The life of love that gave it - settles?

We meet from regions far away,

Like rills from distant mountains streaming; The sun is on Francisco's bay,

O'er Chesapeake the lighthouse gleaming; While summer girds the still bayou

In chains of bloom, her bridal token,.
Monadnock sees the sky grow blue,
His crystal bracelet yet unbroken.

Yet Nature bears the self-same heart
Beneath her russet-mantled bosom,
As where with burning lips apart

She breathes, and white magnolias blossom; The self-same founts her chalice fill

With showery sunlight running over,

On fiery plain and frozen hill,

On myrtle-beds and fields of clover.