So should it be--for no heart beats
Within his cold and silent breast;
To him no gentle voice repeats
The soothing words that make us blest. And more than this-his deep repose
Is troubled by no thoughts of sorrow; He hath no weary eyes to close,
No cause to hope or fear to-morrow.
Farewell! I go my distant way;
Perchance, in some succeeding years, The eyes that know no cloud to-day,
May gaze upon thee dim with tears. Then may thy calm, unaltering form Inspire in me the firm endeavourLike thee, to meet each lowering storm, Till life and sorrow end forever.
"TIs the high festival of night!
The earth is radiant with delight;
And, fast as weary day retires,
The heaven unfolds its secret fires,
Bright, as when first the firmament
Around the new-made world was bent,
And infant seraphs pierced the blue,
Till rays of heaven came shining through.
And mark the heaven's reflected glow
On many an icy plain below;
And where the streams, with tinkling clash,
Against their frozen barriers dash,
Like fairy lances fleetly cast,
The glittering ripples hurry past;
And floating sparkles glance afar,
Like rivals of some upper star.
And see, beyond, how sweetly still
The snowy moonlight wraps the hill,
And many an aged pine receives
The steady brightness on its leaves,
Contrasting with those giant forms,
Which, rifled by the winter storms,
With naked branches, broad and high,
Are darkly painted on the sky.
From every mountain's towering head
A white and glistening robe is spread,
As if a melted silver tide
Were gushing down its lofty side;
The clear, cold lustre of the moon
Is purer than the burning noon;
And day hath never known the charm
That dwells amid this evening calm.
The idler, on his silken bed,
May talk of nature, cold and dead;
But we will gaze upon this scene,
Where some transcendent power hath been,
And made these streams of beauty flow
In gladness on the world below,
Till nature breathes from every part
The rapture of her mighty heart.
LIFT high the curtain's drooping fold,
And let the evening sunlight in;
I would not that my heart grew cold
Before its better years begin.
"T is well; at such an early hour,
So calm and pure, a sinking ray
Should shine into the heart, with power
To drive its darker thoughts away.
The bright, young thoughts of early days
Shall gather in my memory now,
And not the later cares, whose trace
Is stamp'd so deeply on my brow.
What though those days return no more!
The sweet remembrance is not vain,
For Heaven is waiting to restore
The childhood of my soul again.
Let no impatient mourner stand
In hollow sadness near my bed,
But let me rest upon the hand,
And let me hear that gentle tread
Of her, whose kindness long ago,
And still, unworn away by years,
Has made my weary eyelids flow
With grateful and admiring tears.
I go, but let no plaintive tone
The moment's grief of friendship tell;
And let no proud and graven stone
Say where the weary slumbers well.
A few short hours, and then for heaven!
Let sorrow all its tears dismiss;
For who would mourn the warning given
Which calls us from a world like this?
BEHOLD the western evening light!
It melts in deepening gloom;
So calmly Christians sink away,
Descending to the tomb.
The wind breathes low; the withering leaf
Scarce whispers from the tree;
So gently flows the parting breath,
When good men cease to be.
How beautiful on all the hills
The crimson light is shed!
"T is like the peace the Christian gives
To mourners round his bed.
How mildly on the wandering cloud
The sunset beam is cast!
'Tis like the memory left behind
When loved ones breathe their last.
And now, above the dews of night,
The yellow star appears;
So faith springs in the heart of those
Whose eyes are bathed in tears.
But soon the morning's happier light
Its glory shall restore;
And eyelids that are seal'd in death
Shall wake, to close no more.
[Born, 1799. Died, 1841.]
GRENVILLE MELLEN was the third son of the Slate Chief Justice PRENTISS MELLEN, LL. D., of Maine, and was born in the town of Biddeford, in that state, on the nineteenth day of June, 1799. He was educated at Harvard College, and after leaving that seminary became a law-student in the office of his father, who had before that time removed to Portland. Soon after being admitted to the bar, he was married, and commenced the practice of his profession at North Yarmouth, a pleasant village near his native town. Within three
years-in October, 1828-his wife, to whom he was
devotedly attached, died, and his only child fol-
lowed her to the grave in the succeeding spring.
From this time his character was changed. He
had before been an ambitious and a happy man.
The remainder of his life was clouded with melan-
choly.
I believe Mr. MELLEN did not become known
as a writer until he was about twenty-five years
old. He was then one of the contributors to the
Cambridge "United States Literary Gazette." In
the early part of 1827, he published a satire en-
titled "Our Chronicle of Twenty-six," and two
years afterward, "Glad Tales and Sad Tales," a
collection of prose sketches, which had previously
been printed in the periodicals. "The Martyr's
Triumph, Buried Valley, and other Poems," ap-
peared in 1834. The principal poem in this volume
is founded on the history of Saint Alban, the first
Christian martyr in England. It is in the measure
of the Faery Queene," and has some creditable
passages; but, as a whole, it hardly rises above
mediocrity. In the "Buried Valley" he describes
the remarkable avalanche near the Notch in the
White Mountains, by which the Willey family
were destroyed, many years ago. In a poem enti-
ted "The Rest of Empires," in the same collection,
he laments the custom of the elder bards to immor
talize the deeds of conquerors alone, and contrasts
their prostitution of the influence of poetry with
the nobler uses to which it is applied in later days,
in the following lines, which are characteristic of
"We have been taught, in oracles of old,
Of the enskied divinity of song;
That Poetry and Music, hand in hand,
Came in the light of inspiration forth,
And claini'd alliance with the rolling heavens.
And were those peerless bards, whose strains have come
In an undying echo to the world,
Whose numbers floated round the Grecian isles,
And made melodious all the hills of Rome,
Were they inspired-Alas, for Poetry!
That her great ministers, in early time,
Sung for the brave alone-and bade the soul
Battle for heaven in the ranks of war!
It was the treason of the godlike art
That pointed glory to the sword and spear,
And left the heart to moulder in its mail!
It was the menial service of the bard-
It was the basest bondage of his powers,
In later times to consecrate a feast,
And sing of gallantry in hall and bower,
To courtly knights and ladies.
"But other times have strung new lyres again,
And other music greets us. Poetry
Comes robed in smiles, and, in low breathing sounds,
Takes counsel, like a friend, in our still hours,
And points us to the stars-the waneless stars-
That whisper an hereafter to our souls.
It breathes upon our spirits a rich balm,
And, with its tender tones and melody,
Draws mercy from the warrior-and proclaims
A morn of bright and universal love
To those who journey with us through the vale;
It points to moral greatness-deeds of mind,
And the high struggles, worthy of a man.
Have we no minstrels in our echoing halls,
No wild CADWALLON, with his wilder strain,
Pouring his war-songs upon helmed ears?
We have sounds stealing from the far retreats
Of the bright company of gifted men,
Who pour their mellow music round our age,
And point us to our duties and our hearts;
The poet's constellation beams around-
A pensive CoWPER lives in all his lines,
And MILTON hymns us on to hope and heaven!"
After spending five or six years in Boston, Mr.
MELLEN removed to New York, where he resided
nearly all the remainder of his life. He wrote much for the literary magazines, and edited several works for his friend, Mr. COLMAN, the publisher. In 1839, he established a Monthly Miscellany, but it was abandoned after the publication of a few numbers. His health had been declining for several years; his disease finally assumed the form of consumption, and he made a voyage to Cuba, in the summer of 1840, in the hope that he
would derive advantage from a change of climate,
and the sea air. He was disappointed; and learn
ing of the death of his father, in the following spring, he returned to New York, where he died,
on the fifth of September, 1841.
Mr. MELLEN was a gentle-hearted, amiable man, social in his feelings, and patient and resigned in the long period of physical suffering which preceded his death. As a poet, he enjoyed a higher reputation in his lifetime than his works will preserve. They are without vigour of thought or language, and are often dreamy, mystic, and unintelligible. In his writings there is no evidence of creative genius; no original, clear, and manly thought; no spirited and natural descriptions of life or nature; no humour, no pathos, no passion; nothing that appeals to the common sympathies of mankind. The little poem entitled "The Bu gle," although it whispers whence it stole its spoils," is probably superior to any thing else he wrote. It is free from the affectations and unmeaning epithets which distinguish nearly all his works.
THE Woods and vales of England!-is there not
A magic and a marvel in their names?
Is there not music in the memory
Of their old glory?—is there not a sound,
As of some watchword, that recalls at night
All that gave light and wonder to the day?
In these soft words, that breathe of loveliness,
And summon to the spirit scenes that rose
Rich on its raptured vision, as the eye
Hung like a tranced thing above the page
That genius had made golden with its glow-
The page of noble story-of high towers,
And castled halls, envista'd like the line
Of heroes and great hearts, that centuries
Had led before their hearths in dim array-
Of lake and lawn, and gray and cloudy tree,
That rock'd with banner'd foliage to the storm
Above the walls it shadow'd, and whose leaves,
Rustling in gather'd music to the winds,
Seem'd voiced as with the sound of many seas!
The woods and vales of England! O, the founts,
The living founts of memory! how they break
And gush upon my stirr'd heart as I gaze!
I hear the shout of reapers, the far low
Of herds upon the banks, the distant bark
Of the tired dog, stretch'd at some cottage door,
The echo of the axe, mid forest swung,
And the loud laugh, drowning the faint halloo.
Land of our fathers! though 'tis ours to roam
A land upon whose bosom thou mightst lie,
Like infant on its mother's-though 'tis ours
To gaze upon a nobler heritage
Than thou couldst e'er unshadow to thy sons,——
Though ours to linger upon fount and sky,
Wilder, and peopled with great spirits, who
Walk with a deeper majesty than thine,—
Yet, as our father-land, O, who shall tell
The lone, mysterious energy which calls
Upon our sinking spirits to walk forth
Amid thy wood and mount, where every hill
Is eloquent with beauty, and the tale
And song of centuries, the cloudless years
When fairies walk'd thy valleys, and the turf
Rung to their tiny footsteps, and quick flowers
Sprang with the lifting grass on which they trod-
When all the landscape murmur'd to its rills,
And joy with hope slept in its leafy bowers!
MOUNT WASHINGTON.
MOUNT of the clouds, on whose Olympian height
The tall rocks brighten in the ether air,
And spirits from the skies come down at night,
To chant immortal songs to Freedom there!
Thine is the rock of other regions, where
The world of life, which blooms so far below,
Sweeps a wide waste: no gladdening scenes appear,
Save where, with silvery flash, the waters flow
Beneath the far-off mountain, distant, calm, and slow.
Thine is the summit where the clouds repose,
Or, eddying wildly, round thy cliffs are borne;
When Tempest mounts his rushing car, and throws His billowy mist amid the thunder's home! Far down the deep ravine the whirlwinds come, And bow the forests as they sweep along; While, roaring deeply from their rocky womb, The storms come forth, and, hurrying darkly on Amid the echoing peaks the revelry prolong!
And when the tumult of the air is fled,
And quench'd in silence all the tempest flame,
There come the dim forms of the mighty dead,
Around the steep which bears the hero's name:
The stars look down upon them; and the same
Pale orb that glistens o'er his distant grave
Gleams on the summit that enshrines his fame,
And lights the cold tear of the glorious brave,
The richest, purest tear that memory ever gave!
Mount of the clouds! when winter round thee
The hoary mantle of the dying year, [throws
Sublime amid thy canopy of snows,
Thy towers in bright magnificence appear!
"Tis then we view thee with a chilling fear,
Till summer robes thee in her tints of blue;
When, lo! in soften'd grandeur, far, yet clear,
Thy battlements stand clothed in heaven's own hue,
To swell as Freedom's home on man's unbounded
view!
O! WILD, enchanting horn!
Whose music up the deep and dewy air
Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there,
Till a new melody is born-
Wake, wake again, the night
Is bending from her throne of beauty down,
With still stars burning on her azure crown,
Intense and eloquently bright.
Night, at its pulseless noon!
When the far voice of waters mourns in song,
And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long
Barks at the melancholy moon.
Hark! how it sweeps away,
Soaring and dying on the silent sky,
As if some sprite of sound went wandering by,
With lone halloo and roundelay!
Swell, swell in glory out!
Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart,
And my stirr'd spirit hears thee with a start
As boyhood's old remember'd shout.
O! have ye heard that peal,
From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements,
Or from the guarded field and warrior tents,
Like some near breath around you steal?
Or have ye in the roar
Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle's clamour, to the skies,
Where wings and tempests never suar?
Go, go-no other sound,
No music that of air or earth is born,
Can match the mighty music of that horn,
On midnight's fathomless profound!
ON SEEING AN EAGLE PASS NEAR ME IN AUTUMN TWILIGHT.
SAIL on, thou lone, imperial bird,
Of quenchless eye and tireless wing;
How is thy distant coming heard,
As the night's breezes round thee ring!
Thy course was 'gainst the burning sun
In his extremest glory. How!
Is thy unequall'd daring done,
Thou stoop'st to earth so lowly now?
Or hast thou left thy rocking dome,
Thy roaring crag, thy lightning pine,
To find some secret, meaner home,
Less stormy and unsafe than thine?
Else why thy dusky pinions bend
So closely to this shadowy world,
And round thy searching glances send,
As wishing thy broad pens were furl'd?
Yet lonely is thy shatter'd nest,
Thy evry desolate, though high;
And lonely thou, alike at rest,
Or soaring in the upper sky.
The golden light that bathes thy plumes
On thine interminable flight,
Falls cheerless on earth's desert tombs,
And makes the north's ice-mountains bright.
So come the eagle-hearted down,
So come the high and proud to earth,
When life's night-gathering tempests frown
Over their glory and their mirth:
So quails the mind's undying eye,
That bore, unveil'd, fame's noontide sun;
So man seeks solitude, to die,
His high place left, his triumphs done.
So, round the residence of power,
A cold and joyless lustre shines,
And on life's pinnacles will lower
Clouds, dark as bathe the eagle's pines.
But, O, the mellow light that pours
From God's pure throne-the light that saves! It warms the spirit as it soars,
And sheds deep radiance round our graves.
THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA.
ITALIA'S vales and fountains,
Though beautiful ye be,
I love my soaring mountains
And forests more than ye;
And though a dreamy greatness rise
From out your cloudy years,
Like hills on distant stormy skies,
Seem dim through Nature's tears,
Still, tell me not of years of old,
Or ancient heart and clime;
Ours is the land and age of gold,
And ours the hallow'd time!
The jewell'd crown and sceptre
Of Greece have pass'd away;
And none, of all who wept her,
Could bid her splendour stay.
The world has shaken with the tread
Of iron-sandall'd crime-
And, lo! o'ershadowing all the dead,
The conqueror stalks sublime!
Then ask I not for crown and plume
To nod above my land;
The victor's footsteps point to doom,
Graves open
round his hand!
Rome! with thy pillar'd palaces,
And sculptured heroes all,
Snatch'd, in their warm, triumphal days,
To Art's high festival;
Rome! with thy giant sons of power,
Whose pathway was on thrones,
Who built their kingdoms of an hour
On yet unburied bones,-
I would not have my land like thee,
So lofty-yet so cold!
Be hers a lowlier majesty,
In yet a nobler mould.
Thy marbles-works of wonder!
In thy victorious days,
Whose lips did seem to sunder
Before the astonish'd gaze;
When statue glared on statue there,
The living on the dead,-
And men as silent pilgrims were
Before some sainted head!
O, not for faultless marbles yet
Would I the light forego
That beams when other lights have set,
And Art herself lies low!
O, ours a holier hope shall be
Than consecrated bust,
Some loftier mean of memory
To snatch us from the dust.
And ours a sterner art than this,
Shall fix our image here,-
The spirit's mould of loveliness-
A nobler BELVIDERE!
Then let them bind with bloomless flowers The busts and urns of old,
A fairer heritage be ours,
A sacrifice less cold!
Give honour to the great and good,
And wreathe the living brow,
Kindling with Virtue's mantling blood,
And pay the tribute now!
So, when the good and great go down,
Their statues shall arise,
To crowd those temples of our own,
Our fadeless memories!
And when the sculptured marble falls,
And Art goes in to die,
Our forms shall live in holier halls,
The Pantheon of the sky!
Bishop DOANE's "Songs by the Way," a colle tion of poems, chiefly devotional, were published in 1824, and appear to have been mostly produced during his college life. He has since, from time to time, written poetry for festival-days and other o casions, but has published no second volume. His published sermons, charges, conventional address es, literary and historical discourses, and other pe
THE Right Reverend GEORGE W. DOANE, D.D., LL.D., was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1799. He was graduated at Union College, Schenectady, when nineteen years of age, and immediately after commenced the study of theology. He was ordained deacon by Bishop HOBART, in 1821, and priest by the same prelate in 1823. He officiated in Trinity Church, New York, three years, and, in 1824, was appointed professor of belles let-lications in prose, amount to more than one hun tres and Oratory in Washington College, Connecticut. He resigned that office in 1828, and soon after was elected rector of Trinity Church, in Boston. He was consecrated Bishop of the Diocese of New Jersey, on the thirty-first of October, 1832.
ON A VERY OLD WEDDING-RING.
THE DEVICE -Two hearts united.
THE MOTTO "Dear love of mine, my heart is thine.”
I LIKE that ring-that ancient ring,
Of massive form, and virgin gold,
As firm, as free from base alloy,
As were the sterling hearts of old.
I like it-for it wafts me back,
Far, far along the stream of time,
To other men, and other days,
The men and days of deeds sublime.
But most I like it, as it tells
The tale of well-requited love;
How youthful fondness persevered,
And youthful faith disdain'd to rove-
How warmly he his suit preferr'd,
Though she, unpitying, long denied,
Till, soften'd and subdued, at last,
He won his "fair and blooming bride.”—
How, till the appointed day arrived,
They blamed the lazy-footed hours→→→→
How, then, the white-robed maiden train
Strew'd their glad way with freshest flowers-
And how, before the holy man,
They stood, in all their youthful pride,
And spoke those words, and vow'd those vows,
Which bind the husband to his bride:
All this it tells; the plighted troth-
The gift of every earthly thing-
The hand in hand-the heart in heart-
For this I like that ancient ring.
I like its old and quaint device;
"Two blended hearts"-though time may wear them,
No mortal change, no mortal chance,
"Till death," shall e'er in sunder tear them.
dred, and fill more than three thousand octave pages. His writings generally are marked by refinement and elegance, and evince a profound devotion to the interests of the Protestant Episco pal Church.
Year after year, 'neath sun and storm,
Their hopes in heaven, their trust in GoD,
In changeless, heartfelt, holy love,
These two the world's rough pathway trod.
Age might impair their youthful fires,
Their strength might fail, mid life's bleak weather,
Still, hand in hand, they travell'd on-
Kind souls! they slumber now together.
I like its simple poesy too:
"Mine own dear love, this heart is thine!" Thine, when the dark storm howls along,
As when the cloudless sunbeams shine. «This heart is thine, mine own dear love!"
Thine, and thine only, and forever;
Thine, till the springs of life shall fail,
Thine, till the cords of life shall sever.
Remnant of days departed long,
Emblem of plighted troth unbroken,
Pledge of devoted faithfulness,
Of heartfelt, holy love the token:
What varied feelings round it cling!-
For these I like that ancient ring.
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