Mr. COLTON is a native of Rutland, in Vermont. After obtaining a degree at Yale College, he was three years in the theological seminary at Andover. In 1820 he entered the navy as a chaplain, and after a short service in the West India squadron, was ordered to that of the Mediterranean, during his connection with which he travelled through Southern Europe and Asia Minor, and visited Paris and London. Among the fruits of his tours are two works

THE SAILOR.

A SAILOR ever loves to be in motion,
Roaming about he scarce knows where or why;
He looks upon the dim and shadowy ocean

As home, abhors the land; and e'en the sky, Boundless and beautiful, has naught to please, Except some clouds, which promise him a breeze. He is a child of mere impulse and passion,

Loving his friends, and generous to his foes,
And fickle as the most ephemeral fashion,

Save in the cut and colour of his clothes,
And in a set of phrases which, on land,
The wisest head could never understand.
He thinks his dialect the very best

That ever flow'd from any human lip,
And whether in his prayers, or at a jest,

Uses the terms for managing a ship; And even in death would order up the helm, In hope to clear the " undiscover'd realm." He makes a friend where'er he meets a shore, One whom he cherishes with some affection; But leaving port, he thinks of her no more,

Unless it be, perchance, in some reflection Upon his wicked ways, then, with a sigh, Resolves on reformation-ere he die.

In calms, he gazes at the sleeping sea,

Or seeks his lines, and sets himself to angling, Or takes to politics, and, being free

Of facts and full of feeling, falls to wrangling: Then recollects a distant eye and lip, And rues the day on which he saw a ship: Then looks up to the sky to watch each cloud, As it displays its faint and flecting form; Then o'er the calm begins to mutter loud, And swears he would exchange it for a storm, Tornado, any thing-to put a close To this most dead, monotonous repose. An order given, and he obeys, of course, Though 'twere to run his ship upon the rocksCapture a squadron with a boat's-crew force

Or batter down the massive granite blocks Of some huge fortress with a swivel, pike, l'isto', aught that will throw a ball, or strike.

entitled "Ship and Shore," and "Athens and Constantinople." He was appointed historiographer to the South Sea Exploring Expedition, but the ultimate reduction of the exploring squadron, and the resignation of his associates, induced him to forego the advantages of this office, and he was subsequently attached several years to the naval stations at Philadelphia, where he died on the 21st of January, 1851, soon after returning from the Pacific.

He never shrinks, whatever may betide;

His weapon may be shiver'd in his hand, His last companion shot down at his side,

Still he maintains his firm and desperate stand— Bleeding and battling-with his colours fast As nail can bind them to his shatter'd mast.... I love the sailor-his eventful life

His generous spirit-his contempt of danger— His firmness in the gale, the wreck, and strife; And though a wild and reckless ocean-ranger, Gon grant he make that port, when life is o'er, Where storms are hush'd, and billows break no more.

MY FIRST LOVE, AND MY LAST. CATHARA, when the many silent tears

Of beauty, bending o'er thy bed,
Bespoke the change familiar to our fears,

I could not think thy spirit yet had fled—
So like to life the slumber death had cast
On thy sweet face, my first love and my last.
I watch'd to see those lids their light unfold,
For still thy forehead rose serene and fair,
As when those raven ringlets richly roll'd

O'er life, which dwelt in thought and beauty there
Thy cheek the while was rosy with the theme
That flush'd along the spirit's mystic dream.
Thy lips were circled with that silent smile

Which oft around their dewy freshness woke, When some more happy thought or harmless wile Upon thy warm and wandering fancy broke: For thou wert Nature's child, and took the tone Of every pulse, as if it were thine own.

I watch'd, and still believed that thou wouldst wake,
When others came to place thee in the shroud:
I thought to see this seeming slumber break,
As I have seen a light, transparent cloud
Disperse, which o'er a star's sweet face had thrown
A shadow like to that which veil'd thine own.
But, no: there was no token, look, or breath:

The tears of those around, the toiling bell
And hearse told us at last that this was death!
I know not if I breathed a last farewell;
But since that day my sweetest hours have pass'd
In thought of thee, my first love and my last.

and was educated at Yale College, where he was graduated in the summer of 1824. He was subsequently, for two years, associated with Doctor DOANE, now Bishop of New Jersey, in the editorship of the Episcopal Watchman," at Hartford, after which he removed to Boston, and was for

city. He is now rector of St. Peter's, in the beau tiful village of Auburn, in the western part of the state of New York. His poems are nearly all religious. Bishop DOANE, in a note to his edition of KEBLE'S "Christian Year," remarks that he has more unwritten poetry in him" than any man he knows.

THE SYNAGOGUE.

"But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away."-ST. PAUL.

I SAW them in their synagogue,
As in their ancient day,
And never from my memory
The scene will fade away,
For, dazzling on my vision, still
The latticed galleries shine
With Israel's loveliest daughters,
In their beauty half-divine!
It is the holy Sabbath eve,-
The solitary light

Sheds, mingled with the hues of day,
A lustre nothing bright;

On swarthy brow and piercing glance
It falls with saddening tinge,
And dimly gilds the Pharisee's
Phylacteries and fringe.

The two-leaved doors slide slow apart
Before the eastern screen,

As rise the Hebrew harmonies,

With chanted prayers between,
And mid the tissued vails disclosed,
Of many a gorgeous dye,
Enveloped in their jewell'd scarfs,
The sacred records lie.

Robed in his sacerdotal vest,
A silvery-headed man
With voice of solemn cadence o'er

The backward letters ran,
And often yet methinks I see

The glow and power that sate
Upon his face, as forth he spread
The roll immaculate.

And fervently that hour I pray'd,
That from the mighty scroll
Its light, in burning characters,

Might break on every soul,

That on their harden'd hearts the veil

Might be no longer dark,

But be forever rent in twain

Like that before the ark.

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For yet the tenfold film shall fall,
O, Judah! from thy sight,
And every eye be purged to read
Thy testimonies right,

When thou, with all MESSIAH's signs
In CHRIST distinctly seen,

Shall, by JEHOVAH's nameless name, Invoke the Nazarene.

THE CLOUDS.

"Cloud land! Gorgeous land!"-COLERIDGE.

I CANNOT look above and see
Yon high-piled, pillowy mass

Of evening clouds, so swimmingly

In gold and purple pass,

And think not, LORD, how thou wast seen On Israel's desert way,

Before them, in thy shadowy screen,

Pavilion'd all the day!

Or, of those robes of gorgeous hue
Which the Redeemer wore,

When, ravish'd from his followers' view,
Aloft his flight he bore,

When lifted, as on mighty wing,

He curtained his ascent,

And, wrapt in clouds, went triumphing
Above the firmament.

Is it a trail of that same pall
Of many-colour'd dyes,
That high above, o'ermantling all,
Hangs midway down the skies-
Or borders of those sweeping folds
Which shall be all unfurl'd
About the Saviour, when he holds
His judgment on the world?
For in like manner as he went,-
My soul, hast thou forgot?-
Shall be his terrible descent,

When man expecteth not!
Strength, Son of man, against that hour,
Be to our spirits given,

When thou shalt come again with power, Upon the clouds of heaven'

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THE ORDINAL.

ALAS for me if I forget The memory of that day

Which fills my waking thoughts, nor yet

E'en sleep can take away!

In dreams I still renew the rites
Whose strong but mystic chain
The spirit to its God unites,

And none can part again.
How oft the bishop's form I see,
And hear that thrilling tone
Demanding with authority

The heart for GoD alone; Again I kneel as then I knelt,

While he above me stands, And seem to feel, as then I felt, The pressure of his hands.

Again the priests in meet array,

As my weak spirit fails,
Beside me bend them down to pray
Before the chancel-rails;

As then, the sacramental host

Of Gon's elect are by,

When many a voice its utterance lost,
And tears dimm'd many an eye.

As then they on my vision rose,
The vaulted aisles I see,

And desk and cushion'd book repose

In solemn sanctity,

The mitre o'er the marble niche,

The broken crook and key,
That from a bishop's tomb shone rich
With polished tracery;

The hangings, the baptismal font,
All, all, save me unchanged,
The holy table, as was wont,

With decency arranged;
The linen cloth, the plate, the cup,

Beneath their covering shine,
Ere priestly hands are lifted up
To bless the bread and wine.

The solemn ceremonial past,

And I am set apart

To serve the LORD, from first to last,
With undivided heart;

And I have sworn, with pledges dire,

Which God and man have heard,
To speak the holy truth entire,
In action and in word.

O Thou, who in thy holy place

Hast set thine orders three,

Grant me, thy meanest servant, grace
To win a good degree;

That so, replenish'd from above,

And in my office tried,

Thou mayst be honoured, and in love Thy church be edified!

CHRISTMAS EVE.

THE thickly-woven boughs they wreathe
Through every hallow'd fane

A soft, reviving odour breathe

Of summer's gentle reign;

And rich the ray of mild green light
Which, like an emerald's glow,
Comes struggling through the latticed height
Upon the crowds below.

O, let the streams of solemn thought
Which in those temples rise,
From deeper sources spring than aught
Dependent on the skies:

Then, though the summer's pride departs,
And winter's withering chill

Rests on the cheerless woods, our hearts
Shall be unchanging still.

THE DEATH OF STEPHEN.

WITH awful dread his murderers shook, As, radiant and serene,

The lustre of his dying look

Was like an angel's seen; Or Moses' face of paly light,

When down the mount he trod, All glowing from the glorious sight And presence of his God.

To us, with all his constancy,

Be his rapt vision given,
To look above by faith, and see

Revealments bright of heaven.
And power to speak our triumphs out,
As our last hour draws near,
While neither clouds of fear nor doubt
Before our view appear.

THE CHRISTMAS OFFERING.

WE come not with a costly store,
O LORD, like them of old,
The masters of the starry lore,

From Ophir's shore of gold:
No weepings of the incense tree
Are with the gifts we bring,
No odorous myrrh of Araby

Blends with our offering.

But still our love would bring its best,
A spirit keenly tried
By fierce affliction's fiery test,

And seven times purified:
The fragrant graces of the mind,

The virtues that delight To give their perfume out, will find Acceptance in thy sight.

MR. PALMER is descended from a Puritan ancestor who came to America in the next ship after the May Flower. His father was a youthful soldier in the Revolution, and one of the latest, if not the last, of the survivors of the Jersey prison ship. Having acquired a competency as the captain of a New York merchantman, he retired from the sea early in the present century, to Stockbridge, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, where he spent the remainder of his days, in that sunshine of love and respect which has gilded the declining years of so many men of our heroic age. There, on the twenty-second of February, 1805, our poet was born, and named in honour of the great orator whose claims to gratitude are recognised among us in a thousand living monuments which bear the name of WILLIAM PITT.

In his native county, Mr. PALMER has told me, the first and happiest half of his life was spent on the farm, in the desultory acquisition of such knowledge as could then be obtained from a New England common school, and a "college" with a single professor. The other half has been chiefly passed in New York, as a medical student, teacher, writer for the gazettes, and, for several years, clerk in a public office.

Mr. PALMER is a man of warm affections, whọ finds a heaven in a quiet home. He is a lover of nature, too, and like most inhabitants of the pent-up city, whose early days have been passed in the country, he delights in recollections of rural life. Some of his poems have much tenderness and delicacy, and they are generally very complete and polished.

LIGHT.

FROM the quicken'd womb of the primal gloom
The sun roll'd black and bare,

Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast,
Of the threads of my golden hair;
And when the broad tent of the firmament
Arose on its airy spars,

I pencill'd the hue of its matchless blue,
And spangled it round with stars.

I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers,
And their leaves of living green,
And mine were the dyes in the sinless eyes
Of Eden's virgin queen;

And when the fiend's art, on her trustful heart,
Had fasten'd its mortal spell,

In the silvery sphere of the first-born tear

To the trembling earth I fell.

When the waves that burst o'er a world accursed
Their work of wrath hath sped,

And the Ark's lone few, the tried and true,
Came forth among the dead;

With the wondrous gleams of my braided beams
I bade their terrors cease;

As I wrote on the roll of the storm's dark scroll GOD's covenant of peace.

Like a pall at rest on a pulseless breast,

Night's funeral shadow slept,

Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains Their lonely vigils kept;

When I flash'd on their sight the heralds bright
Of heaven's redeeming plan,

As they chanted the morn of a Saviour born-
Joy, joy to the outcast man!

Equal favour I show to the lofty and low,
On the just and unjust I descend;
E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness
and tears,

Feel my smile the best smile of a friend: Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced, As the rose in the garden of kings;

As the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear,
And lo! the gay butterfly's wings!

The desolate Morn, like a mourner forlorn,
Conceals all the pride of her charms,
Till I bid the bright Hours chase the Night from
her bowers,

And lead the young Day to her arms;
And when the gay rover seeks Eve for his lover,
And sinks to her balmy repose,

I wrap their soft rest by the zephyr-fann'd west,
In curtains of amber and rose.

From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep,
I gaze with unslumbering eye,
When the cynosure star of the mariner

Is blotted from the sky;

And guided by me through the merciless sea,
Though sped by the hurricane's wings,
His compassless bark, lone, weltering, dark,
To the haven-home safely he brings.

I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green,
And mountain and plain glow with beauty again,
As they bask in my matinal sheen.
O, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth,
Though fitful and fleeting the while,

What glories must rest on the home of the bless'd,
Ever bright with the DEITY's smile!

LINES TO A CHRYSALIS.

MUSING long I asked me this,
Chrysalis,

Lying helpless in my path,
Obvious to mortal scath
From a careless passer by,
What thy life may signify?
Why, from hope and joy apart,
Thus thou art?

Nature surely did amiss,
Chrysalis,

When she lavish'd fins and wings
Nerved with nicest moving-springs,
On the mote and madripore,
Wherewithal to swim or soar;
And dispensed so niggardly
Unto thee.

E'en the very worm may kiss,
Chrysalis,

Roses on their topmost stems
Blazon'd with their dewy gems,
And may rock him to and fro
As the zephyrs softly blow;
Whilst thou lyest dark and cold
On the mould.

Quoth the Chrysalis, Sir Bard,
Not so hard

Is my rounded destiny
In the great Economy:
Nay, by humble reason view'd,
There is much for gratitude
In the shaping and upshot
Of my lot.

Though I seem of all things born
Most forlorn,

Most obtuse of soul and sense,
Next of kin to Impotence,
Nay, to Death himself; yet ne'er
Priest or prophet, sage or seer,
May sublimer wisdom teach

Than I preach.

From my pulpit of the sod,

Like a god,

I proclaim this wondrous truth, Farthest age is nearest youth, Nearest glory's natal porch, Where with pale, inverted torch, Death lights downward to the rest Of the blest.

Mark yon airy butterfly's

Rainbow-dyes! Yesterday that shape divine Was as darkly hearsed as mine; But to-morrow I shall be Free and beautiful as she, And sweep forth on wings of light, Like a sprite.

Soul of man in crypt of clay!
Bide the day

When thy latent wings shall be
Plumed for immortality,

And with transport marvellous Cleave their dark sarcophagus, O'er Elysian fields to soar Evermore!

THE HOME VALENTINE.

STILL fond and true, though wedded long
The bard, at eve retired,
Sat smiling o'er the annual song

His home's dear Muse inspired:
And as he traced her virtues now

With all love's vernal glow,
A gray hair from his bended brow,
Like faded leaf from autumn bough,
Fell to the page below.

He paused, and with a mournful mien
The sad memento raised,
And long upon its silvery sheen

In pensive silence gazed:
And if a sigh escaped him then,
It were not strange to say;
For fancy's favourites are but men;
And who e'er felt the stoic when
First conscious of decay?

Just then a soft cheek press'd his own
With beauty's fondest tear,

And sweet words breathed in sweeter tone
Thus murmur'd in his ear:

Ah, sigh not, love to mark the trace

Of time's unsparing wand!

It was not manhood's outward grace,
No charm of faultless form or face,
That won my heart and hand.

Lo! dearest, mid these matron locks,
Twin-fated with thine own,

A dawn of silvery lustre mocks

The midnight they have known:
But time to blighted cheek and tress
May all his snows impart;
Yet shalt thou feel in my caress
No chill of waning tenderness,
No winter of the heart!

Forgive me, dearest Beatrice!
The grateful bard replied,
As nearer and with tenderer kiss
He pressed her to his side:
Forgive the momentary tear

To manhood's faded prime;

I should have felt, hadst thou been near, Our hearts indeed have nought to fear From all the frosts of time!