By turns from each to each I roved, "O blessed band, of birth divine, And further had I spoke, When, lo! there pour'd a flood of light And with the pain awoke. AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.* ALL hail! thou noble land, Our fathers' native soil! O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore; The genius of our clime, From his pine-embattled steep, Shall hail the great sublime; While the Tritons of the deep With their conchs the kindred league shall proclaim, Then let the world combine O'er the main our naval line, Though ages long have pass'd Since our fathers left their home, Their pilot in the blast, O'er untravell'd seas to roam, Yet lives the blood of England in our veins! And shall we not proclaim That blood of honest fame, Which no tyranny can tame While the language free and bold How the vault of heaven rung, While this, with reverence meet, From rock to rock repeat Round our coast; THE SPANISH MAID. FIVE weary months sweet Inez number'd That never to her heart has slumber'd; She hears it now, and sees, far bending And hears the drum and screaming fife Thus Inez thought, and pluck'd the flower But now the sun is westward sinking; Then hope, with all its crowd of fancies, And, deck'd in victory's glorious gear, Then how her heart mid sadness dances! Yet little thought she, thus forestalling The foe is slain. His sable charger All fleck'd with foam comes bounding on; And on its brow the gallant Don, And now he nears the mountain-hollow; But no he surely is not dreaming. ON GREENOUGH'S GROUP OF THE I STOOD alone; nor word, nor other sound, That was not mine; and feelings undefined, And mingling life with life, seem there to live. To beam for ever in coequal youth. And thus I learn'd-as in the mind they moved- That bound them all. Thus sure, as passionless, E'en to the world of sense; bidding its cell, A being of the skies-with man to dwell. Rays from within, and clothe it all in light. SONNETS. ON A FALLING GROUP IN THE LAST JUDG- How vast, how dread, o'erwhelming is the thought ON REMBRANT: OCCASIONED BY HIS PICTURE As in that twilight, superstitious age, ON THE PICTURES BY RUBENS, IN THE LUX THERE is a charm no vulgar mind can reach, High o'er the rocks of reason's lofty verge TO MY VENERABLE FRIEND THE PRESIDENT FROM one unused in pomp of words to raise Of selfishness, has been the manly race E'en for itself to love thy soul-ennobling art. ON SEEING THE PICTURE OF ÆOLUS, BY FULL Well, TIBALDI, did thy kindred mind Like one who, reading magic words, receives Of gales and whirlwinds, hurricanes and storms. On Hecla's top to stretch, and give the word ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE. AND thou art gone,most loved, most honour'dFriend! THE TUSCAN MAID. How pleasant and how sad the turning tide The Along the vale of years; pure twin-being for a little space, This turning tide is URSULINA'S now; The things that once she loved are still the same; She cannot call it gladness or delight; She sees the mottled moth come twinkling by, And sees it sip the flowret nigh; Yet not, as once, with eager cry She grasps the pretty thing; Her thoughts now mingle with its tranquil mood- She hears the bird without a wish to snare, To mount, and with it wander there As if it told her in its happy song Now the young soul her mighty power shall prove, And make the heart her home; Or to the meaner senses sink a slave, But, URSULINA, thine the better choice; And all its beauty love; But no, not all this fair, enchanting earth, ROSALIE. O, POUR upon my soul again That sad, unearthly strain, That seems from other worlds to plain; As if some melancholy star And dropped them from the skies. That makes my heart to overflow For all I see around me wears So, at that dreamy hour of day, First fell the strain of him who stole In music to her soul. LEVI FRISBIE. [Born 1784. Died 1822] PROFESSOR FRISBIE was the son of a respectable clergyman at Ipswich, Massachusetts. He entered Harvard University in 1798, and was graduated in 1802. His father, like most of the clergymen of New England, was a poor man, and unable fully to defray the costs of his son's education; and Mr. FRISBIE, while an under-graduate, provided in part for his support by teaching a school during vacations, and by writing as a clerk. His friend and biographer, Professor ANDREWS NORTON, alludes to this fact as a proof of the falsity of the opinion that wealth constitutes the only aristocracy in our country. Talents, united with correct morals, and good manners, pass unquestioned all the artificial barriers of society, and their claim to distinction is recognised more wil lingly than any other. Soon after leaving the university, Mr. FRISBIE commenced the study of the law; but an affection of the eyes depriving him of their use for the purposes of study, he abandoned his professional pursuits, and accepted the place of Latin tutor in fessor of the Latin Language, and in 1817, Profes Harvard University. In 1811, he was made Prosor of Moral Philosophy. The last office he held until he died, on the 19th of July, 1822. He was an excellent scholar, an original thinker, and a pure-minded man. An octavo volume, containing a memoir, some of his philosophical lectures, and a few poems, was published in 1823. A CASTLE IN THE AIR. I'LL tell you, friend, what sort of wife, Whene'er I scan this scene of life, Inspires my waking schemes, And when I sleep, with form so light, Dances before my ravish'd sight, In sweet aerial dreams. The rose its blushes need not lend, To captivate my eyes. Features, where, pensive, more than gay, A form, though not of finest mould, But still her air, her face, each charm And mind inform the whole; With mind her mantling cheek must glow, Ah! could I such a being find, And were her fate to mine but join'd 96 To her myself, my all I'd give, Whene'er by anxious care oppress'd, My aching head I'd lay; At her sweet smile each care should cease, Her kiss infuse a balmy peace, And drive my griefs away. In turn, I'd soften all her care, Each thought, each wish, each feeling share; Should sickness e'er invade, My voice should soothe each rising sigh, My hand the cordial should supply; I'd watch beside her bed. Should gathering clouds our sky deform, Together should our prayers ascend; To praise the Almighty name; My soul should catch the flame. Thus nothing should our hearts divide, And all to love be given; JOHN PIERPONT. [Born 1785.] THE author of the "Airs of Palestine," is a native of Litchfield, Connecticut, and was born on the sixth of April, 1785. His great-grandfather, the Reverend JAMES PIERPONT, was the second minister of New Haven, and one of the founders of Yale College; his grandfather and his father were men of intelligence and integrity; and his mother, whose maiden name was ELIZABETH COLLINS, had a mind thoroughly imbued with the religious sentiment, and was distinguished for her devotion to maternal duties. In the following lines, from one of his recent poems, he acknowledges the influence of her example and teachings on his own character: "She led me first to God; Her words and prayers were my young spirit's dew. For, when she used to leave The fireside, every eve, I knew it was for prayer that she withdrew. "That dew, that bless'd my youth,Her holy love, her truth, Her spirit of devotion, and the tears That she could not suppress,- My soul, nor will it, through eternal years. "How often has the thought Of my mourn'd mother brought Peace to my troubled spirit, and new power Mother, thou knowest well That thou hast blessed me since thy mortal hour!" Mr. PIERPONT entered Yale College when fifteen years old, and was graduated in the summer of 1804. During a part of 1805, he assisted the Reverend Doctor BACKUS, in an academy of which he was principal previous to his election to the presidency of Hamilton College; and in the autumn of the same year, following the example of many young men of New England, he went to the southern states, and was for nearly four years a private tutor in the family of Colonel WILLIAM ALLSTON, of South Carolina, spending a portion of his time in Charleston, and the remainder on the estate of Colonel ALLSTON, on the Waccamaw, near Georgetown. Here he commenced his legal studies, which he continued after his return to his native state in 1809, in the school of Justices REEVE and GOULD; and in 1812, he was admitted to the bar, in Essex county, Massachusetts. Soon after the commencement of the second war with Great Britain, being appointed to address the Washington Benevolent Society of Newburyport, his place of residence, he delivered and afterward published "The Portrait," the earliest of the poems in the recent edition of his works. In consequence of the general prostration of business in New England during the war, and of his health, which at this time demanded a more active life, he abandoned the profession of law, and became interested in mercantile transactions, first in Boston, and afterward in Baltimore; but these resulting disastrously, in 1816, he sought a solace in literary pursuits, and in the same year published "The Airs of Palestine." The first edition appeared in an octavo volume, at Baltimore; and two other editions were published in Boston, in the following year. The "Airs of Palestine" is a poem of about eight hundred lines, in the heroic measure, in which the influence of music is shown by examples, principally from sacred history. The religious sublimity of the sentiments, the beauty of the language, and the finish of the versification, placed it at once, in the judgment of all competent to form an opinion on the subject, before any poem at that time produced in America. As a work of art, it would be nearly faultless, but for the occasional introduction of double rhymes, a violation of the simple dignity of the ten-syllable verse, induced by the intention of the author to recite it in a public assembly. He says in the preface to the third edition, that he was "aware how difficult even a good speaker finds it to rehearse heroic poetry, for any length of time, without perceiving in his hearers the somniferous effects of a regular cadence," and the double rhyme was, therefore, occasionally thrown in, like a ledge of rocks in a smoothly gliding river, to break the current, which, without it, might appear sluggish, and to vary the melody, which might otherwise become monotonous." The following passage, descriptive of a moonlight scene in Italy, will give the reader an idea of its manner: "On Arno's bosom, as he calmly flows, And his cool arms round Vallombrosa throws, Rolling his crystal tide through classic vales, Alone, at night,-the Italian boatman sails. High o'er Mont' Alto walks, in maiden pride, Night's queen;-he sees her image on that tide, Now, ride the wave that curls its infant crest Around his prow, then rippling sinks to rest; Now, glittering dance around his eddying oar, Whose every sweep is echo'd from the shore; Now, far before him, on a liquid bed Of waveless water, rest her radiant head. How mild the empire of that virgin queen! How dark the mountain's shade! how still the scene! Hush'd by her silver sceptre, zephyrs sleep On dewy leaves, that overhang the deep, Nor dare to whisper through the boughs, nor stir The valley's willow, nor the mountain's fir, Nor make the pale and breathless aspen quiver, Nor brush, with ruffling wind, that glassy river. "Hark! 't is a convent's bell: its midnight chime; For music measures even the march of time :O'er bending trees, that fringe the distant shore, Gray turrets rise :-the eye can catch no more. The boatman, listening to the tolling bell, Suspends his oar :-a low and solemn swell, 97 |