But on the Tigris' winding banks, though night Still lingers round, two early mortals greet The first faint gleam with prayer; and bathed and dight As travellers came forth. The morn rose sweet. And rushing by them as the spirits past, In tinted vapours while the pale star sets; The younger asked, "Whence are these odours cast, The breeze has waked from beds of violets!" SONG.* DAY, in melting purple dying, Thou, to whom I love to hearken, Veil, if ill, thy soul's intent, Save thy toiling, spare thy treasure: Tell to thee the high-wrought feeling, Paint to thee the deep sensation, Yet but torture, if comprest Absent still! Ah! come and bless me! In a look if death there be, THE MOON OF FLOWERS. O, MOON of flowers! sweet moon of flowers!† O, moon of flowers! thou moon of flowers! O, moon of flowers! O, moon of flowers! *From "Zophiel." see, The savages of the northern part of America sometimes count by moons. May is called by them the moon of flowers, and October the moon of falling leaves. MORNING. How beauteous art thou, O thou morning sun!- The rays that glance about his silken hair; And Luxury hangs her amber lamps, to match Thy face, when turn'd away from bower and palace fair. Sweet to the lip the draught, the blushing fruit; But comes to pay new homage to thy charms. How many lips have sung thy praise, how long! Yet, when his slumbering harp he feels thee woo, The pleasured bard pours forth another song, And finds in thee, like love, a theme forever new. The bright-hair'd youths and maidens of the north breath, Turns his hot brow, and sickens at thy light; But Nature, ever kind, soon heals or gives him death. MARRIAGE. THE bard has sung, God never form'd a soul But thousand evil things there are that hate To look on happiness; these hurt, impede, [fate, And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine and pant and bleed. And as the dove to far Palmyra flying, From where her native founts of Antioch beam, Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream; So many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, Love's pure,congenial spring unfound, unquaff'd, Suffers, recoils, then, thirsty and despairing Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught. JAMES G. PERCIVAL. [Born, 1795.] JAMES GATES PERCIVAL, the most prolife and fanciful of our poets, was born in Berlin, Connecticut, on the fifteenth of September, 1795. His father, an intelligent physician, superintended his early education, and saw in his correct taste, and manly character, and the remarkable facility with which he acquired knowledge, the promise of a brilliant life. He died in 1807, and the young stu. dent was intrusted to other guardians; but his mental culture was carefully attended to, and he entered Yale College in 1811, far advanced in classical and general learning. In his early devotion to study originated the love of seclusion which forms one of the distinguishing features in his character. From his youth he has been more fond of his own fancies than of society, and has therefore enjoyed few of the opportunities of observation which are found by mingling with the world. To his early habits of day-dreaming he has himself alluded in a poem on the Pleasures of Childhood: "Along the stream, That flowed in summer's mildness o'er its bed He began to write at a very early age; but I believe he published very little before he went to reside at New Haven, when he became a frequent contributor to the periodicals. He devoted his leisure hours, for several weeks before he was graduated, to the composition of "Zamor," a tragedy, which was performed by the students at the annual commencement in the summer of 1815, and afterward printed. I have not read this, but a competent critic speaks of it as a poor imitation of Doctor YOUNG's "Revenge," and far below any of our author's other productions. The first volume of his poems was published at New Haven, in 1820; and in the following year, at Charleston, where he had gone on account of his health, which had been impaired by too constant study, appeared the first number of "Clio." On his return to Connecticut he published the second number of "Clio," and his longest work, "Prometheus," a poem of more than three thousand lines, in the stanza of SPENSER. An edition of his select writings was published, in a large octavo volume, in New York, in 1823, and soon after reprinted in London. He had now reached the highest point in his reputation as a poet. After passing the customary period in preparatory study, PERCIVAL received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, in 1823; but his devotion to literature and the sciences prevented his engaging in the practice of his profession. In 1824, he was appointed a professor in the United States Military Academy at West Point. Ill health compelled him to relinquish this office, and he removed to Boston, where he was for a considerable time connected with the army, as a surgeon. In this period he contributed several poems to the United States Literary Gazette, a magazine published at Cambridge, in which appeared some of the earliest effusions of BRYANT, LONGFELLOW and DAWES. In 1825, he delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, and in 1827, the third number of "Clio" was published in New York. The Greek revolution was still in progress, and the poet shared in the general enthusiasm which pervaded this country in behalf of the oppressed descendants of the fathers of civilization. Several of the poems embraced in that collection are appeals to the Christian nations to give to the Greeks their ancient liberty. There are in America few more learned men than PERCIVAL. He is familiar with the natural sciences, and the literature of Greece, Rome, and the oriental nations, and writes with fluency in all the modern languages of Europe. Since the publication of his last volume of poetry, he has furnished valuable aid to the wellknown philologist, Doctor WEBSTER, in the preparation of his American Dictionary of the English Language; translated MALTE-BRUN'S Geography, and some other works; and edited several important publications for the booksellers. He has also been a frequent writer for the magazines. His latest productions are the beautiful Classic Melodies, in the Token for the present year. resides at New Haven, and his attention is almost exclusively devoted to scientific pursuits.* He He has all the natural qualities of a great poet, but he lacks the artistic skill, or declines the labour, without which few authors gain immortality. He has a brilliant imagination, remarkable *He was recently appointed by the Governor of Connecticut to make a geological survey of that state. command of language, and an exhaustless fountain of ideas. He writes with a facility but rarely equalled, and when his thoughts are once committed to the page, he shrinks from the labour of revising, correcting, and condensing. He remarks in one of his prefaces, that his verse is "very far from bearing the marks of the file and the burnisher," and that he likes to see "poetry in the full ebullition of feeling and fancy, foaming up with the spirit of life, and glowing with the rainbows of a glad inspiration." If by this he means that a poet should reject the slow and laborious process by which a polished excellence is attained, he errs. Nothing truly great was ever accomplished without long and patient toil. He possesses in an eminent degree the creative faculty, and his genius is versatile. He has been an admirer and a student of nature, and he describes the visible world, in its minutest details, with feeling and accuracy. The moral tendency of his writings is generally correct; but in one or two poems there is a strain of misanthropy, and in some of his earliest ones there were intimations of skepticism.-His later works are free from such blemish, and I believe he no longer entertains the doubts he once cherished in regard to religion, PERCIVAL has few associates. He lives apart from society, among his books, or in the fields. One who has been admitted to his friendship remarks, that with the simplicity he unites the purity of childhood. He resides at New Haven, and is still as diligent a student as when he was an under-graduate in the college of that beautiful city. LIBERTY TO ATHENS. THE flag of Freedom floats once more It waves, as waved the palm of yore, Pours down its light around those towers, And once again the Greeks arise, As in their country's noblest hours; While man shall live, and time shall be. The pride of all her shrines went down ; The Goth, the Frank, the Turk, had reft The laurel from her civic crown; Her helm by many a sword was cleft: She lay among her ruins low Where grew the palm, the cypress rose, And, crushed and bruised by many a blow, She cower'd beneath her savage foes; But now again she springs from earth, Her loud, awakening trumpet speaks; She rises in a brighter birth, And sounds redemption to the Greeks. It is the classic jubilee Their servile years have rolled away; The clouds that hover'd o'er them flee, They hail the dawn of Freedom's day; From heaven the golden light descends, The times of old are on the wing, And Glory there her pinion bends, And Beauty wakes a fairer spring; The hills of Greece, her rocks, her waves, Are all in triumph's pomp array'd; A light that points their tyrant's graves, Plays round each bold Athenian's blade. The Parthenon, the sacred shrine, Where Wisdom held her pure abode: The hill of Mars, where light divine To reach at truth's unfading crown: Where eloquence her torrents roll'd, In tones that seem'd the words of Heaven, The groves and gardens, where the fire To truth, has long in worship turned: In all the light of science reign'd: The simple, but majestic pile, Where marble threw its roughness by, To glow, to frown, to weep, to smile, Where colours made the canvass live, Where music roll'd her flood along, And all the charms that art can give, Were blent with beauty, love, and song: The port, from whose capacious womb Her navies took their conquering road, The heralds of an awful doom To all who would not kiss her rod: On these a dawn of glory springs, Her weeds, her shackles, and her shame; Again her ancient souls awake, HARMODIUS bares anew his sword; Her sons in wrath their fetters break, And Freedom is their only lord. THE SUN. CENTRE of light and energy! thy way Is through the unknown void; thou hast thy throne, Morning, and evening, and at noon of day, Far in the blue, untended and alone: Ere the first-waken'd airs of earth had blown, On thou didst march, triumphant in thy light; Then thou didst send thy glance, which still hath flown Wide through the never-ending worlds of night, And yet thy full orb burns with flash as keen and bright. We call thee Lord of Day, and thou dost give To him who looks to heaven, and on his bust Thy path is high in heaven; we cannot gaze Which bears thy pure divinity afar, One of the sparks of night that fire the air, I am no fond idolater to thee, One of the countless multitude, who burn, As lamps, around the one Eternity, In whose contending forces systems turn Their circles round that seat of life, the urn Where all must sleep, if matter ever dies: Sight fails me here, but fancy can discern And thou, too, hast thy world, and unto thee Glad as a conqueror resting on his throne grown With each revolving day, or thou, at night, On the dark face of earth in glory burst, And then came forth the land whereon we dwell, Rear'd, like a magic fane, above the watery swell. And there thy searching heat awoke the seeds On the rich mould, and then, in bearing, bends Their forms in motion, where the spirit tends, Instinctive, in their common good to share, Which lies in things that breathe, or late were living there. They live in thee: without thee, all were dead And dark; no beam had lighted on the waste, But one eternal night around had spread Funereal gloom, and coldly thus defaced This Eden, which thy fairy hand hath graced With such uncounted beauty; all that blows In the fresh air of spring, and, growing, braced Its form to manhood, when it stands and glows In the full-temper'd beam, that gladdens as it goes. Thou lookest on the earth, and then it smiles; Thy light is hid, and all things droop and mourn; Laughs the wide sea around her budding isles, When through their heaven thy changing car is borne ; Thou wheel'st away thy flight, the woods are shorn Of all their waving locks, and storms awake; The earth lies buried in a shroud of snow; Life lingers, and would die, but thy return Gives to their gladden'd hearts an overflow Of all the power that brooded in the urn Of their chill'd frames, and then they proudly spurn All bands that would confine, and give to air Hues, fragrance, shapes of beauty, till they burn, When, on a dewy morn, thou dartest there Rich waves of gold to wreathe with fairer light the fair. The vales are thine; and when the touch of spring Thrills them, and gives them gladness, in thy light They glitter, as the glancing swallow's wing Dashes the water in his winding flight, And leaves behind a wave that crinkles bright, And widens outward to the pebbled shore,— The vales are thine; and when they wake from night, The dews that bend the grass-tips, twinkling o'er Their soft and oozy beds, look upward, and adore. The hills are thine: they catch thy newest beam, And gladden in thy parting, where the wood Flames out in every leaf, and drinks the stream, That flows from out thy fulness, as a flood Bursts from an unknown land, and rolls the food Of nations in its waters: so thy rays Flow and give brighter tints than ever bud, When a clear sheet of ice reflects a blaze Of many twinkling gems, as every gloss'd bough plays. Thine are the mountains, where they purely lift Hung round the verge of heaven, that as a bow The ocean is thy vassal; thou dost sway His waves to thy dominion, and they go Where thou, in heaven, dost guide them on their way, Rising and falling in eternal flow; Thou lookest on the waters, and they glow; They take them wings, and spring aloft in air, And change to clouds, and then, dissolving, throw Their treasures back to earth, and, rushing, tear The mountain and the vale, as proudly on they bear. I, too, have been upon thy rolling breast, Widest of waters; I have seen thee lie Calm, as an infant pillow'd in its rest On a fond mother's bosom, when the sky, As in the cheek of youth the living roses grow. Thy white arms high in heaven, as if in wrath, Threatening the angry sky; thy waves did lash In thee, first light, the bounding ocean smiles, That rolls, in glittering green, around the isles, Where ever-springing fruits and blossoms dwell; O! with a joy no gifted tongue can tell, I hurry o'er the waters, when the sail Swells tensely, and the light keel glances well Over the curling billow, and the gale Comes off the spicy groves to tell its winning tale. The soul is thine: of old thou wert the power Who gave the poet life; and I in thee Feel my heart gladden at the holy hour When thou art sinking in the silent sea; Or when I climb the height, and wander free In thy meridian glory, for the air Sparkles and burns in thy intensity, I feel thy light within me, and I share CONSUMPTION. THERE is a sweetness in woman's decay, O! there is a sweetness in beauty's close, Has mantled her cheek with its heavenly dye, In the flush of youth, and the spring of feeling, Biferique rosaria Pæsti.-Virg. |