ENGLISH SCENERY. THE woods and vales of England!—is there not Of their old glory?—is there not a sound, Land of our fathers! though 'tis ours to roam Than thou couldst e'er unshadow to thy sons,- MOUNT WASHINGTON. MOUNT of the clouds, on whose Olympian height The tall rocks brighten in the ether air, And spirits from the skies come down at night, To chant immortal songs to Freedom there! Thine is the rock of other regions, where The world of life, which blooms so far below, Sweeps a wide waste: no gladdening scenes appear, Save where, with silvery flash, the waters flow Beneath the far-off mountain, distant, calm, and slow. Thine is the summit where the clouds repose, Or, eddying wildly, round thy cliffs are borne; When Tempest mounts his rushing car, and throws His billowy mist amid the thunder's home! Far down the deep ravine the whirlwinds come, And bow the forests as they sweep along; While, roaring deeply from their rocky womb, The storms come forth, and, hurrying darkly on, Amid the echoing peaks the revelry prolong! And when the tumult of the air is fled, And quench'd in silence all the tempest flame, There come the dim forms of the mighty dead, Around the steep which bears the hero's name: The stars look down upon them; and the same Pale orb that glistens o'er his distant grave Gleams on the summit that enshrines his fame, And lights the cold tear of the glorious brave, The richest, purest tear that memory ever gave! Mount of the clouds! when winter round thee The hoary mantle of the dying year, [throws Sublime amid thy canopy of snows, Thy towers in bright magnificence appear! "Tis then we view thee with a chilling fear, Till summer robes thee in her tints of blue; When, lo! in soften'd grandeur, far, yet clear, Thy battlements stand clothed in heaven's own hue, To swell as Freedom's home on man's unbounded view! THE BUGLE. O! WILD, enchanting horn! Whose music up the deep and dewy air Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there, Till a new melody is born Wake, wake again, the night Is bending from her throne of beauty down, Night, at its pulseless noon! When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long Barks at the melancholy moon. Hark! how it sweeps away, Soaring and dying on the silent sky, As if some sprite of sound went wandering by, With lone halloo and roundelay! Swell, swell in glory out! Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, And my stirr'd spirit hears thee with a start As boyhood's old remember'd shout. O! have ye heard that peal, From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements, Or from the guarded field and warrior tents, Like some near breath around you steal? Or have ye in the roar Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise, ON SEEING AN EAGLE PASS NEAR ME IN AUTUMN TWILIGHT. SAIL on, thou lone, imperial bird, Of quenchless eye and tireless wing; As the night's breezes round thee ring! Thou stoop'st to earth so lowly now? Less stormy and unsafe than thine? So closely to this shadowy world, Yet lonely is thy shatter'd nest, Thy eyry desolate, though high; And lonely thou, alike at rest, Or soaring in the upper sky. The golden light that bathes thy plumes On thine interminable flight, Falls cheerless on earth's desert tombs, And makes the north's ice-mountains bright. So come the eagle-hearted down, So come the high and proud to earth, That bore, unveil'd, fame's noontide sun; His high place left, his triumphs done. So, round the residence of power, A cold and joyless lustre shines, And on life's pinnacles will lower Clouds, dark as bathe the eagle's pines. But, O, the mellow light that pours From God's pure throne-the light that saves! It warms the spirit as it soars, And sheds deep radiance round our graves. The jewell'd crown and sceptre Could bid her splendour stay. The victor's footsteps point to doom, Rome! with thy giant sons of power, I would not have my land like thee, Thy marbles-works of wonder! Before the astonish'd gaze; The living on the dead,- O, ours a holier hope shall be To snatch us from the dust. Shall fix our image here,- A nobler BELVIDERE! Then let them bind with bloomless flowers A fairer heritage be ours, A sacrifice less cold! Give honour to the great and good, So, when the good and great go down, To crowd those temples of our own, And when the sculptured marble falls, Our forms shall live in holier halls, ༢༽ GEORGE HILL. (Born, 1800.] GEORGE HILL is known to the public, only through his writings. From native diffidence, or some eccentricity of character, he appears to have shunned all contact with society. He was once married; "but how his marriage was brought about," writes one of his friends to me, "is an unravelled mystery; for he never spoke to a dozen ladies in his life." He is a native of Guilford, on Long Island Sound, near New Haven. He was admitted to Yale College in his fifteenth year, and, when he graduated, took the Berkleian prize, as the best classic. He was subsequently attached to the navy, as Professor of Mathematics; and visited in this capacity the Mediterranean, its storied islands, and classic shores. After his return, he was appointed librarian to the State Department, at Washington: a situation which he at length resigned on account of ill health, and was appointed Consul of the United States for the south-western portion of Asia Minor. The climate disagreeing with him, he returned to Washington; and is now attached again to one of the bureaus in the Department of State. The style of his poetry is severe, and sometimes so elliptical as to embarrass his meaning; this is especially true of his more elaborate production, "The Ruins of Athens," written in the Spenserian stanza. He is most successful in his lyrics, where he has more freedom, without a loss of energy. His "Titania," a dramatic piece, is perhaps the' most original of his productions. It is wild and fanciful, and graced with images of much beauty and freshness. FROM "THE RUINS OF ATHENS." THE daylight fades o'er old Cyllene's hill, And broad and dun the mountain shadows fall; The stars are up and sparkling, as if still Smiling upon their altars; but the tall, Dark cypress, gently, as a mourner, bendsWet with the drops of evening as with tearsAlike o'er shrine and worshipper, and blends, All dim and lonely, with the wrecks of years, As of a world gone by no coming morning cheers. There sits the queen of temples-gray and lone. She, like the last of an imperial line, Has seen her sister structures, one by one, To Time their gods and worshippers resign; And the stars twinkle through the weeds that twine Their roofless capitals; and, through the night, Heard the hoarse drum and the exploding mine, The clash of arms and hymns of uncouth rite, From their dismantled shrines the guardian powers affright. Go! thou from whose forsaken heart are reft Is it not better with the Eremite, To sit and watch their shadows slowly wave While oft some fragment, sapp'd by dull decay, Or, where the palm, at twilight's holy hour, weeps Vainly the Spring her quickening dews away, And Love as vainly mourns, and mourns, alas! for aye. Or, more remote, on Nature's haunts intrude, Where, since creation, she has slept on flowers, Wet with the noonday forest-dew, and woo'd By untamed choristers in unpruned bowers: By pathless thicket, rock that time-worn towers O'er dells untrodden by the hunter, piled Ere by its shadow measured were the hours To human eye, the rampart of the wild, Whose banner is the cloud, by carnage undefiled. The weary spirit that forsaken plods The world's wide wilderness, a home may find Here, mid the dwellings of long-banish'd gods, And thoughts they bring, the mourners of the mind; The spectres that no spell has power to bind, The loved, but lost, whose soul's life is in ours, As incense in sepulchral urns, enshrined, The sense of blighted or of wasted powers, The hopes whose promised fruits have perish'd with their flowers. There is a small, low cape-there, where the moon Upon it, and the wind's and wave's low moan, A what? a name-perchance ne'er graven there; At whom the urchin, with his mimic eye, Sits peering through a skull, and laughs continually. THE MOUNTAIN-GIRL. THE clouds, that upward curling from Melt into air: gone are the showers, All hearts are by the spirit that Breathes in the sunshine stirr'd; A thing all lightness, life, and glee; She stops, looks up-what does she see? Upon a balcony: High, leaning from a window forth, Nor flower, nor lady fair she sees That mountain-girl-but dumb That flower to her is as a tone Of some forgotten song, One of a slumbering thousand, struck She sees beside the mountain-brook, And toppling crag, a vine-thatch'd shed, The home of liberty; The rivulet, the olive shade, The grassy plot, the flock; That springs beneath the rock. Sister and mate, they may not from Her dreaming eye depart; And one, the source of gentler fears, THE FALL OF THE OAK. A GLORIOUS tree is the old gray oak: He has stood for a thousand years, Has stood and frown'd On the trees around, Like a king among his peers; He has stood like a tower As from plates of mail, From his own limbs shaken, rattle; He has toss'd them about, and shorn the tops The autumn sun looks kindly down, And sprinkles the horn Of the owl at morn, As she hies to the old oak tree. Not a leaf is stirr'd; Not a sound is heard But the thump of the thresher's flail, Or the distant cry Of the hound on the fox's trail. The forester he has whistling plunged With his axe, in the deep wood's gloom, That shrouds the hill, LIBERTY. THERE is a spirit working in the world, The dungeon'd nations now once more respire The keen and stirring air of Liberty. The struggling giant wakes, and feels he's free. By Delphi's fountain-cave, that ancient choir Resume their song; the Greek astonish'd hears, And the old altar of his worship rears. Sound on, fair sisters! sound your boldest lyre,Peal your old harmonies as from the spheres. Unto strange gods too long we've bent the knee, The trembling mind, too long and patiently. TO A YOUNG MOTHER. WHAT things of thee may yield a semblance meet, They once have bloom'd, a fragrance leave behind; And suns continue to light up the air, When set; and music from the broken shrine Breathes, it is said, around whose altar-stone His flower the votary has ceased to twine : Types of the beauty that, when youth is gone, Beams from the soul whose brightness mocks decline. SPRING. Now Heaven seems one bright, rejoicing eye, Puts forth, as does thy cheek, a lovelier dye, And each new morning some new songster brings. And, hark! the brooks their rocky prisons break, And echo calls on echo to awake, Like nymph to nymph. The air is rife with wings, Rustling through wood or dripping over lake. Herb, bud, and bird return-but not to me With song or beauty, since they bring not thee. NOBILITY. Go, then, to heroes, sages if allied, Go! trace the scroll, but not with eye of pride, Where Truth depicts their glories as they shone, And leaves a blank where should have been your own. Mark the pure beam on yon dark wave impress'd; So shines the star on that degenerate breast-Each twinkling orb, that burns with borrow'd fires,So ye reflect the glory of your sires. |