THE MURDERED TRAVELLER.

WHEN spring, to woods and wastes around, Brought bloom and joy again,

The murdered traveller's bones were found, Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch, above him, hung

Her tassels in the sky;

And many a vernal blossom sprung,

And nodded careless by.

The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
His hanging nest o'erhead,

And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away,

And gentle eyes, for him,

With watching many an anxious day,

Were sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,

The fearful death he met,

When shouting o'er the desert snow,
Unarmed, and hard beset ;-

Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,

The mountain wolf and wild-cat stole

To banquet on the dead;

Nor how, when strangers found his bones, They dressed the hasty bier,

And marked his grave with nameless stones, Unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept, Within his distant home;

And dreamed, and started as they slept,

For joy that he was come.

Long, long they looked-but never spied

His welcome step again,

Nor knew the fearful death he died

Far down that narrow glen.

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

THE sad and solemn night

Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;

The glorious host of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;

All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.

Το

Day, too, hath many a star

grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they :
Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,

Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.

Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,

Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,

And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;

There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls

The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun-
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud-

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,

Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

THE LAPSE OF TIME.

LAMENT who will, in fruitless tears,

The speed with which our moments fly; I sigh not over vanished years,

But watch the years that hasten by.

Look, how they come,-a mingled crowd
Of bright and dark, but rapid days;
Beneath them, like a summer cloud,
The wide world changes as I gaze.

What! grieve that time has brought so soon The sober age of manhood on!

As idly might I weep, at noon,

To see the blush of morning gone.

Could I give up the hopes that glow
In prospect like Elysian isles;
And let the cheerful future go,

With all her promises and smiles?