1834. Of morning clouds shrunk from the advancing sun, And vanish in the human heart; and then I revelled in such songs, and sorrowed, when, I would, sweet bird, that I might live with thee, I have to struggle with the stormy sea Of human life until existence fades Into death's darkness. Thou wilt sing and soar Through the thick woods and shadow-chequered glades, While pain and sorrow cast no dimness o'er The brilliance of thy heart; but I must wear, As now, my garments of regret and care, As penitents of old their galling sackcloth wore. Yet, why complain? What though fond hopes deferred There is a voice sweeter than thine, sweet bird, To welcome me, within my humble home; There is an eye, with love's devotion bright, The darkness of existence to illume. Then why complain? When Death shall cast his blight Beneath these trees; and from thy swelling breast THE WIDOWED HEART. LACHRYME PONDERA VOCIS HABENT. TRISTIS ERIS, SI SOLUS ERIS: DOMINÆQUE RELICTÆ THOU HOU art lost to me forever!-I have lost thee, Isadore! Nor thine arms around me lovingly and trustingly entwine,- Thou art lost to me forever, Isadore! Thou art dead and gone, dear loving wife, thy heart is still and cold, Of our whole world of love and joy thou wast the only light, The vines and flowers we planted, Love, I tend with anxious care, Our little ones inquire of me, where is their mother gone,— Our happy home has now become a lonely, silent place; Their merry laugh is heard no more, they neither run nor play, Restless I pace our lonely rooms, I play our songs no more, Alas! how changed is all, dear wife, from that sweet eve in Spring, When first my love for thee was told, and thou to me didst cling, Thy sweet eyes radiant through their tears, pressing thy lips to mine, In our old arbor, Dear, beneath the over-arching vine;— Those lips are cold forever, Isadore! The moonlight struggled through the leaves, and fell upon thy face, Thy love and faith so plighted then, with mingled smile and tear, Thou wast my nurse in sickness, and my comforter in health, 1844. Thy voice of music cheered me, Love, in each despondent hour, As Heaven's sweet honey-dew consoles the bruised and broken flower;- Thou art gone from me forever;-I have lost thee, Isadore! Our children hold me, Darling, or I to God should pray "You are growing old," they tell us, "You are more alone," they tell us, "You can win no new affection, Too true!-Life's shores are shifting And we are seaward drifting Old places, changing, fret us, There are fewer to regret us, But the truer life draws nigher And its Morning-star climbs higher, Earth's hold on us grows slighter, And the heavy burthen lighter, IN Brantz Mayer. BORN in Baltimore, Md., 1809. DIED there, 1879. INLAND AFRICAN SCENERY. [Captain Canot; or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver. 1854.] N the six hundred miles I traversed, whilst absent from the coast, my memory, after twenty-six years, leads me, from beginning to end, through an almost continuous forest-path. We struck a trail when we started, and we left it when we came home. It was rare, indeed, to encounter a cross-road, except when it led to neighboring villages, water, or cultivated fields. So dense was the forest foliage, that we often walked for hours in shade without a glimpse of the sun. The emerald light that penetrated the wood bathed everything it touched with mellow refreshment. But we were repaid for this partial bliss by intense suffering when we came forth from the sanctuary into the bare valleys, the arid barrancas, and marshy savannas of an open region. There, the red eye of the African sun glared with merciless fervor. Everything reflected its rays. They struck us like lances from above, from below, from the sides, from the rocks, from the fields, from the stunted herbage, from the bushes. All was glare! Our eyes seemed to simmer in their sockets. Whenever the path followed the channel of a brook, whose dried torrents left bare the scorched and broken rocks, our feet fled from the ravine as from heated iron. Frequently we entered extensive prairies, covered with blades of sword-grass, tall as our heads, whose jagged edges tore us like saws, though we protected our faces with masks of wattled willows. And yet, after all these discomforts, how often are my dreams haunted by charming pictures of natural scenery that have fastened themselves forever in my memory! As the traveller along the coast turns the prow of his canoe through the surf, and crosses the angry bar that guards the mouth of an African river, he suddenly finds himself moving calmly onward between sedgy shores, buried in mangroves. Presently, the scene expands in the unruffled mirror of a deep, majestic stream. Its lofty banks are covered by innumerable varieties of the tallest forest trees, from whose summits a trailing net-work of vines and flowers floats down and sweeps the passing current. A stranger who beholds this scenery for the first time is struck by the immense size, the prolific abundance, and gorgeous verdure of everything. Leaves, large enough for garments, lie piled and motionless in the lazy air. The bamboo and cane shake their slender spears and pennant leaves as the stream ripples among their roots. Beneath the massive trunks of forest trees, the country opens; and, in vistas through the wood, the traveller sees innumerable fields lying fallow in grass, or waving with harvests of rice and cassava, broken by golden clusters of Indian corn. Anon, groups of oranges, lemons, coffee-trees, plantains and bananas, are crossed by the tall stems of cocoas, and arched by the broad and drooping coronals of royal palm. Beyond this, capping the summit of a hill, may be seen the conical huts of natives, bordered by fresh pastures dotted with flocks of sheep and goats, or covered by numbers of the sleekest cattle. As you leave the coast, and shoot round the river-curves of this fragrant wilderness teeming with flowers, vocal with birds, and gay with their radiant plumage, you plunge into the interior, where the rising country slowly expands into hills and mountains. The forest is varied. Sometimes it is a matted pile of tree, vine, and bramble, obscuring everything, and impervious save with knife and hatchet. At others, it is a Gothic temple. The sward spreads openly for miles on every side, while, from its even surface, the trunks of straight and massive trees rise to a prodigious height, clear from every |