A POEM. The gourd that swells beneath her toss ing plume; DEDICATION OF THE PITTSFIELD CEME- The coarser wheat that rolls in lakes of TERY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1850. bloom, ANGEL of Death! extend thy silent reign! Its coral stems and milk-white flowers Where the pale slumberer folds his arms of morning painted on its southern below; cheek; No marble gleams to bid his memory live The pear's long necklace strung with Here crept the growths that paid the laborer's care With the cheap luxuries wealth consents to spare; Fair is the scene; its sweetness oft be- Here sprang the healing herbs which I could not save guiled From their dim paths the children of The hand that reared them from the the wild; The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells, neighboring grave. Yet all its varied charms, forever free The feathered warrior claimed its wooded From task and tribute, Labor yields to Still on its slopes the ploughman's ridges No more, when April sheds her fitful The pointed flints that left his fatal bow, The sower's hand shall cast its flying Chipped with rough art and slow bar For thee alike the circling seasons flow Till the brown arms of Labor held no Till the first blossoms heave the latest The scythe's broad meadow with its In the stiff clod below the whirling dusky blush; drifts, The sickle's harvest with its velvet flush; In the loose soil the springing herbage The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid, In soft luxuriance, on her harsh brocade; lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its Their softened gaze shall reach our disshrivelled seeds; tant plain; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes sleep Till what thou sowest mightier angels On the blue mounds that print the bluer Dressed in bright hues, the loving sun- To the chill winds that waft us on to shine's dower; death, For tranquil Nature owns no mourning But ruling calmly every pulse it warms, And tempering gently every word it flower. Come from the forest where the beech's Through the wide waste of ether, not in FATHER of all! in Death's relentless vain, claim We read thy mercy by its sterner name; | Their sleepless light around the slumIn the bright flower that decks the sol emn bier, We see thy glory in its narrowed sphere; In the long sigh that sets our spirits free, Through the hushed street, along the silent plain, bering dead! Take them, O Father, in immortal trust! Ashes to ashes, dust to kindred dust, TO GOVERNOR SWAIN. DEAR GOVERNOR, if my skiff might brave The spectral future leads its mourning The winds that lift the ocean wave, train, Dark with the shadows of uncounted bands, Where man's white lips and woman's wringing hands The mountain stream that loops and swerves Through my broad meadow's channelled curves Should waft me on from bound to bound Track the still burden, rolling slow be- To where the River weds the Sound, fore, The Sound should give me to the Sea, That love and kindness can protect no That to the Bay, the Bay to Thee. more; The smiling babe that, called to mortal It may not be; too long the track life; The drooping child who prays in vain to The ocean disk is rolling dark live, In shadows round your swinging bark, And pleads for help its parent cannot While yet the yellow sunset fills Age in its weakness, bowed by toil and Your mists are soaring in the blue care, Traced in sad lines beneath its silvered hair. While mine are sparks of glittering dew. It may not be; O would it might, The sun shall set, and heaven's re- What golden hours would come to life, What goodly feats of peaceful strife, splendent spheres Gild the smooth turf unhallowed yet by Such jests, that, drained of every joke, The very bank of language broke, tears, But ah! how soon the evening stars will Such deeds, that Laughter nearly died With stitches in his belted side; shed While Time, caught fast in pleasure's | Its living germ has never lost. chain, His double goblet snapped in twain, To break my slender household chain, - They raise along my threatened path; - TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND. THE seed that wasteful autumn cast Dropped by the weary tempest's wing, It feels the kindling ray of spring, And, starting from its dream of death, Pours on the air its perfumed breath. So, parted by the rolling flood, The love that springs from common blood Needs but a single sunlit hour Of mingling smiles to bud and flower; Where summer's falling roses stain Though fiery sun and stiffening cold Still bearing wheresoe'er it flows time, From age to age, from clime to clime! 1852. Up to the clouds the lark has sprung, Hark! from their sides a thousand rills The linnet sings as there he sung; The unseen cuckoo cries, And daisies strew the banks along, And yellow kingcups shine, Ah foolish dream! when Nature nursed On the young planet's orient shore Take what she gives, her pine's tall stem, Look on the forests' ancient kings, |