Its borders, and its palms that threw Aloft their waving coronal, Were blistered by a poison dew. The truth Saint John and Plato saw, The aureola of the Ghost. I hailed its faint auroral beam In many a Poet's delphic dream, On many a shrine where faith's pure flame That shriek that made the orient pale: The mystic burden of a woe Whose dark enigma none may know; † Nature shuddered at the cry Still the fabled Python bound me- * Wearied with man's discordant creed, I turned from dull alchemic lore Where mingling stars, like drifting foam, "The priestesses of Dodona assert that two black pigeons flew from Thebes in Egypt; one of which settled in Lybia, the other among themselves: which latter, resting on a beechtree, declared with a human voice that here was to be the oracle of Jove."-Herodotus. Book II. ch. 52. "The Mænads, in their wild incantations, carried serpents in their hands, and with frantic gestures, cried out Eva! Eva! Epiphanius thinks that this invocation related to the mother of mankind; but I am inclined to believe that it was the word Epha or Opha, rendered by the Greeks, Ophis, a serpent. I take Abaddon to have been the name of the same ophite God whose worship has so long infected the world. The learned Heinsius makes Abaddon the same as the serpent Python."Jacob Bryant's Analysis of Ancient Mythology. While Mænads cry aloud Evoe, Evoe! Melt on the solemn shores of night; Long gloating on that hollow gloom, Pale sparks of mystic fire, that fall Is there, I asked, a living woe Our own fair earth-shall she too drift, Of stormy clouds, that surge and swirl Its dark cone stretching, ghast and grey, From the sad, unsated quest Of knowledge, how I longed to rest I languished for the dews of death I left my fruitless lore apart, I learned her temperate laws to scan, Still I languished for the word * A holy light began to stream Athwart the cloud-rifts, like a dream "Pluck thou the Life-tree's golden fruit, SARAH HELEN WHITMAN. Believe, and every sweet accord Doth the wild-fowl need a chart There the Morning Star shall find thee, Sin and sorrow cannot hide thee- From the love of God." In the mystic agony The Saviour with his dying eyes Then weep not by the charnel stone Nor veil thine eyelids from the sun. Upward, through the death-dark glides, The spirit on resurgent tides Of light and glory on its way: Wilt thou by the cerements stay?Thou the risen Christ shalt see In redeemed Humanity. Though mourners at the portal wept, And angels lingered where it slept, The soul but tarried for a night, Then plumed its wings for loftier flight." "Is thy heart so lonely?-Lo, Ready to share thy joy and woe, Poor wanderers tarry at thy gate, The way-worn and the desolate, And angels at thy threshold wait: Would'st thou love's holiest guerdon win-Arise, and let the stranger in." "The friend whom not thy fickle will, Shall seek thee through the realms of space. Her sweet betrothals shall endure." "Then pluck the Life-tree's golden fruit, E'en though every blossom fell Love is deeper far than Hell- The blind shall see-the dead shall live; The Dragon, from his empire driven, No more shall find his place in Heaven, "Till e'en the Serpent power approve The divine potency of love." "Guard thy faith with holy care,— Mystic virtues slumber there; "Tis the lamp within the soul Holding genii in control: Faith shall walk the stormy water- THE TRAILING ARBUTUS. There's a flower that grows by the greenwood tree, stream. Like a pure hope, nursed beneath sorrow's wing, It is not found by the garden wall, It wreathes no brow in the festal hall, In the dewy morn of an April day, And the budding leaves of the birch-trees throw As they scent its breath on the passing breeze, And the tangled mosses beside the way, Till they catch the glance of its quiet eye, For me, sweet blossom, thy tendrils cling I roved all day through the wood-walks wild, A ETILL DAY IN AUTUMN. I love to wander through the woodlands hoary, To light the gloom of Autumn's mouldering halls, With hoary plumes the clematis entwining, Where, o'er the rock, her withered garland falls. Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled, Till the slant sunbeams through their fringes raining, Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold. The moist winds breathe of crispèd leaves and flow ers, In the damp hollows of the woodland sown, Mingling the freshness of autumnal showers With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown. Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow, Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground, With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow, The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound. Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brooding Like a fond lover loth to say farewell; Or, with shut wings, through silken folds intruding, Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell. The little birds upon the hillside lonely, Flit noiselessly along from spray to spray, Silent as a sweet, wandering thought, that only Shows its bright wings and softly glides away. The scentless flowers, in the warm sunlight dreaming, Forget to breathe their fulness of delight,And through the tranced woods soft airs are streaming, Still as the dew-fall of the summer night. BLOOMS NO MORE. Oh primavera, gioventù dell' anno, Bella madre di fiori, Tu torni ben, ma teco Non tornano i sereni E fortunati di delle mie gloie. GUARINI, I dread to see the summer sun Come glowing up the sky, And early pansies, one by one, Opening the violet eye. Again the fair azalia bows Beneath her snowy crest; The tulips lift their proud tiàrs, But she can bloom on earth no more, Our lily of the vale. HENRY REED. HENRY REED, the late Professor of Literature and Moral Philosophy in the University of Pennsylva nia, whose sudden death among the passengers of the steamer Arctic cast a shade over the intelligent circle in which he moved, belonged to an old and honored family in the state. His grandfather was Joseph Reed, the President of Pennsylvania, the secretary and confidant of Washington, and the incorruptible patriot, whose memorable answer to a munificent proposal of bribery and corruption from the British commissioners in 1778, is among the oft-repeated anecdotes of the Revolution :-"I am not worth purchasing, but, such as I am, the king of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it." * The wife of this honored lawyer and civilian also holds a place in the memoirs of the Revolution. Esther de Berdt, as she appears from the correspondence and numerous anecdotes in the biography prepared by her grandson, the subject of this notice, was a lady of marked strength of character and refined disposition. She was the daughter of Dennis de Berdt, a London merchant much connected with American affairs, and the predecessor of Dr. Franklin as agent for the Province of Massachusetts. Having become acquainted with Mr. Reed in the society of Americans in which her father moved, she became his wife under circumstances of mournful interest, after the death of her parent, when removing to America she encountered the struggle of the Revolution, sustaining her family with great fortitude during the necessary absence of her husband on public duties. After acting well her part of a mother in America in those troublous times, and receiving the congratulations of Washington, she died in Philadelphia before the contest was closed, in 1780. The memoir by her grandson is a touching and delicate tribute to her memory, The Life of Esther De Berdt, afterwards Esther Reed, of Pennsylvania. Privately printed. Philadelphia: C. Sherinan, Printer, 1858. and a valuable contribution to the historical literature of the country. Henry Reed Henry Reed was born in Philadelphia, July 11, 1808. He received his early education in the classical school of James Ross, a highly esteemed teacher of his day in Philadelphia. Passing to the University of Pennsylvania, he attained his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1825. He then pursued the study of the law in the office of John Sargent, and was admitted to the bar in 1829. After a short interval, he was, in the year 1831, elected Assistant Professor of English Literature in his University, and shortly after Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy. In 1835 he was elected Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. It was on a leave of absence from these college duties, that, in the spring of 1854, he left America for a summer visit to Europe, a pilgrimage which he had long meditated; and it was on his return in the ill-fated Arctic that he perished in the wreck of that vessel, September 27 of the same year. He had thus passed onehalf of his entire period of life in the literary duties of his college, as professor. When we add to these few dates, Professor Reed's marriage in 1834 to Elizabeth White Bronson, a grand-daughter of Bishop White, we have completed the external record of his life, save in the few publications which he gave to the world. A diligent scholar, and of a thoroughbred cultivation in the best schools of English literature and criticism, of unwearied habits of industry, he would probably, as life advanced, have further served his country by new offerings of the fruits of his mental discipline and studies. The chief compositions of Professor Reed were several courses of lectures which he delivered to the public at the University of Pennsylvania, and of which a collection has been published since his death, by his brother, Mr. William B. Reed, with the title, Lectures on English Literature, from Chaucer to Tennyson. The tastes, mental habits, and associations of the writer, are fully exhibited in these productions, which cover many topics of moral and social philosophy, besides the criticism of particular authors. As a scholar and thinker, Mr. Reed belonged to a school of English writers who received their first impulses from the genius of Wordsworth and Coleridge. It is characterized by its sound conservatism, reverential spirit, and patient philosophical investigation. He was early brought into communication with Wordsworth, whom he assisted by the supervision and arrangement of an American edition of his poems. The preface to this work, and an elaborate article in the New York Review, of January, 1839, which appeared from his pen, show his devotion to this master of modern poetry. After the death of the poet, he superintended the publication of the American edition of the memoirs by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth. With the Coleridge family, he maintained a similar correspondence and intimate relation. A memoir which he prepared of Sara Coleridge for the Literary World,* though brief, was so carefully and characteristically executed, that it appeared not long after reprinted entire among the obituaries of the Gentleman's Magazine. A passage, referring to his foreign tour, from the personal introductory notice prefixed to the Lectures, will exhibit this relation to his English friends. No American, visiting the Old World as a private citizen, ever received a kinder or more discriminating welcome. The last months of his life were pure sunshine. Before he landed in England, his friends, the family of Dr. Arnold, whom he had only known by correspondence, came on board the ship to receive him; and his earliest and latest hours of European sojourn were passed under the roof of the great poet whose memory he most revered, and whose writings had interwoven themselves with his intellectual and moral being. "I do not know," he said in one of his letters to his family," what I have ever done to deserve all this kindness." And so it was throughout. In England he was at home in every sense; and scenes, which to the eye were strange, seemed familiar by association and study. His letters to America were expressions of grateful delight at what he saw and heard in the land of his forefathers, and at the respectful kindness with which he was everywhere greeted: and yet of earnest and loyal yearning to the land of his birth his home, his family, and friends. It is no violation of good taste here to enumerate some of the friends for whose kind welcome Mr. Reed was so much indebted; I may mention the Wordsworths, Southeys, Coleridges, and Arnolds, Lord Mahon, Mr. Baring, Mr. Aubrey De Vere, Mr. Babbage, Mr. Henry Taylor, and Mr. Thackeray-names, one and all, associated with the highest literary or political distinction. He visited the Continent, and went, by the ordinary route, through France and Switzerland, as far south as Milan and Venice, returning by the Tyrol to Inspruck and Munich, and thence down the Rhine to Holland. But his last associations were with the cloisters of Canterbury (that spot, to my eye, of matchless beauty), the garden vales of Devonshire, the valley of the Wye, and the glades of Rydal. His latest memory of this earth was of beautiful England in her summer garb of verdure. The last words he ever wrote were in a letter of the 20th September to his venerable friend, Mrs. Wordsworth, thanking her and his English friends generally for all she and they had done for him. Professor Reed edited several books in con No. 290, Aug. 21, 1852. nexion with his courses of instruction. In 1845 he prepared an edition of Alexander Reid's Dictionary of the English Language, and in 1847 edited "with an introduction and illustrative authorities," G. F. Graham's English Synonymes -the series of poetical citations added by him, being confined to Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. He also edited American reprints of Thomas Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, and Lord Mahon's History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Paris. In 1851 he edited the Poetical Works of Thomas Gray, for which he prepared a new memoir, written with his accustomed judgment and precision. An Oration on a True Education was delivered by him before the Zelosophic Society of the University of Pennsylvania in 1848. To this enumeration is to be added a life of his grandfather, Joseph Reed, published in Mr. Sparks's series of American biography.* The life and correspondence of Joseph Reed have been given to the public at length by Mr. William B. Reed, who is also the author of several published addresses and pamphlets, chiefly on historical subjects. Among them are A Letter on American History in 1847, originally written for circulation among a few friends interested in the organization of a department of that study in Girard College; an Address before the Historical Society in Pennsylvania in 1848; an Address before the Alumni of the University of Pennsylvania in 1849; and a Reprint of the original Letters from Washington to Joseph Reed, in connexion with the Sparks and Lord Mahon controversy.t POETICAL AND prose readinG. It is a good practical rule to keep one's reading well proportioned in the two great divisions, prose and poetry. This is very apt to be neglected, and the consequence is a great loss of power, moral and intellectual, and a loss of some of the highest enjoyments of literature. It sometimes happens that some readers devote themselves too much to poetry; this is a great mistake, and betrays an ignorance of the true use of poetical studies. When this happens, it is generally with those whose reading lies chiefly in the lower and merely sentimental region of poetry, for it is hardly possible for the imagination to enter truly into the spirit of the great poets, without having the various faculties of the mind so awakened and invigorated, as to make a knowledge of the great prose writers also a necessity of one's nature. The disproportion lies usually in the other direction-prose reading to the exclusion of poetry. This is owing chiefly to the want of proper culture, for although there is certainly a great disparity of imaginative endowment, still the imagination is part of the universal mind of man, and it is a work of education to bring it into action in minds even the least imaginative. It is chiefly to the wilfully unimaginative mind that poetry, with all its wisdom and all its glory, is a sealed book. It sometimes happens, however, that a mind, well gifted with imaginative power, loses the capacity to relish poetry simply by the neglect of reading metrical literature. This is a I sad mistake, inasmuch as the mere reader of prose cuts himself off from the very highest literary enjoyments; for if the giving of power to the mind be a characteristic, the most essential literature is to be found in poetry, especially if it be such as English poetry is, the embodiment of the very highest wisdom and the deepest feeling of our English race. hope to show in my next lecture, in treating the subject of our language, how rich a source of enjoyment the study of English verse, considered simply as an organ of expression and harmony, may be made; but to readers who confine themselves to prose, the metrical form becomes repulsive instead of attractive. It has been well observed by a living writer, who has exercised his powers alike in prose and verse, that there are readers "to whom the poetical form merely and of itself acts as a sort of veil to every meaning, which is not habitually met with under that form, and who are puzzled by a passage occurring in a poem, which would be at once plain to them if divested of its cadence and rhythm; not because it is thereby put into language in any degree more perspicuous, but because prose is the vehicle they are accustomed to for this particular kind of matter, and they will apply their minds to it in prose, and they will refuse their minds to it in verse.' The neglect of poetical reading is increased by the very mistaken notion that poetry is a mere luxury of the mind, alien from the demands of prac tical life-a light and effortless amusement. This is the prejudice and error of ignorance. For look at many of the strong and largely cultivated minds, which we know by biography and their own works, and note how large and precious an element of strength is their studious love of poetry. Where could we find a man of more earnest, energetic, practical cast of character than Arnold?-eminent as an historian, and in other the gravest departments of thought and learning, active in the cause of edu cation, zealous in matters of ecclesiastical, political, or social reform; right or wrong, always intensely practical and single-hearted in his honest zeal; a champion for truth, whether in the history of ancient politics or present questions of modern society; and, with all, never suffering the love of poetry to be extinguished in his heart, or to be crowded out of it, but turning it perpetually to wise uses, bringing the poetic truths of Shakespeare and of Wordsworth to the help of the cause of truth; his enthusiasm for the poets breaking forth, when he exclaims, "What a treat it would be to teach Shakspeare to a good class of young Greeks in regenerate Athens; to dwell upon him line by line and word by word, and so to get all his pictures and thoughts leisurely into one's mind, till I verily think one would, after a time, almost give out light in the dark, after having been steeped, as it were, in such an atmosphere of brilliance!" This was the constitution not of one man alone, but of the greatest minds of the race; for if our Anglo-Saxon character could be analysed, a leading characteristic would be found to be the admirable combination of the practical and the poetical in it. This is reflected in all the best English literature, blending the ideal and the actual, never severing its highest spirituality from a steady basis of sober good sense-philosophy and poetry for ever dis dosing affinities with each other. It was no false boast when it was said that "Our great poets have been our best political philosophers;" nor would it be to add, that they have been our best moralists. The reader, then, who, on the one hand, gives himself wholly to visionary poetic dreamings, is false to his Saxon blood; and equally false is he who divor |