The glories of the ample fare,
With thanks sincere.

Now tiny snow-birds venture nigh
From copse and spray,

(Sweet strangers! with the winter's sky To pass away;)

And gather crumbs in full supply,
For all the day.

Let now the busy hours begin:

Out rolls the churn;

Forth hastes the farm-boy, and brings in The brush to burn;

Sweep, shovel, scour, sew, knit, and spin, 'Till night's return.

To delve his threshing John must hie;
His sturdy shoe

Can all the subtle damp defy;

How wades he through!

While dainty milkmaids slow and shy,
His track pursue.

Each to the hour's allotted care;

To shell the corn;

The broken harness to repair;
The sleigh t' adorn;

As cheerful, tranquil, frosty, fair,
Speeds on the morn.

While mounts the eddying smoke amain
From many a hearth,

And all the landscape rings again
With rustic mirth;

So gladsome seems to every swain
The snowy earth.

THE WORLD-SALE.

There wandered from some mystic sphere,
A youth, celestial, down to earth;
So strangely fair seemed all things here,
He e'en would crave a mortal birth;
And soon, a rosy boy, he woke,

A dweller in some stately dome;
Soft sunbeams on his vision broke,

And this low world became his home. Ah, cheated child! Could he but know Sad soul of mine, what thou and I! The bud would never wish to blow, The nestling never long to fly; Perfuming the regardless air,

High soaring into empty space; A blossom ripening to despair,

A flight-without a resting place!

How bright to him life's opening morn!
No cloud to intercept a ray;
The rose had then no hidden thorn,
The tree of life knew no decay.
How greeted oft his wondering soul
The fairy shapes of childish joy,
As gaily on the moments stole

And still grew up the blooming boy.

How gently played the odorous air
Among his wavy locks of gold,

His eye how bright, his cheek how fair,
As still youth's summer days were told.
Seemed each succeeding hour to tell

Of some more rare unfolding grace;
Some swifter breeze his sail to swell,
And press the voyager apace!

He roved a swain of some sweet vale,
Or climbed, a daring mountaineer;
And oft, upon the passing gale,

His merry song we used to hear;
Might none e'er mount a fleeter steed,
His glittering chariot none outvie,
Or village mart, or rural mead,

The hero he of heart and eye.

Anon a wishful glance he cast

Where storied thrones their empire hold, And soon beyond the billowy Vast He leaped upon the shores of old! He sojourned long in classic halls, At learning's feast a favored guest, And oft within imperial walls,

He tasted all delights, save-rest !
It was a restless soul he bore,

And all unquenchable its fire;
Nor banquet, pomp, nor golden store,
Could e'er appease its high desire.
And yet would he the phantom band
So oft deceiving still pursue,
Delicious sweets in every land,

But ah, not lasting, pure, or true!

He knelt at many a gorgeous shrine;
Reclined in love's voluptuous bowers;
Yet did his weary soul repine,

Were listless still the lingering hours.
Then sped an argosie to bear

The sated truant to his home,
But sorrow's sombre cloud was there,
"Twas dark in all that stately dome.
Was rent at last life's fair disguise,

And that Immortal taught to know
He had been wandering from the skies,
Alas, how long-alas, how low.
Deluded, but the dream was done;
A conqueror,-but his banner furled;
The race was over.-he had won,-

But found his prize-a worthless World!
Oh Earth, he sighed, and gazed afar,
How thou encumberest my wing!
My home is yonder radiant star,

But thither thee I cannot bring.
How have I tried thee long and well,
But never found thy joys sincere,
Now, now my soul resolves to sell
Thy treasures strewn around me here!
The flatteries I so long have stored
In memory's casket one by one,
Must now be stricken from the hoard;
The day of tinselled joy is done!
Here go the useless jewels! see
The golden lustre they impart!
But vain the smiles of earth for me,
They cannot gild a broken heart!

THE WORLD FOR SALE!-Hang out the sign;
Call every traveller here to me;
Who'll buy this brave estate of mine,

And set me from earth's bondage free! 'Tis going!-yes, I mean to fling

The bauble from my soul away; I'll sell it, whatsoe'er it bring;

The World at Auction here to-day! It is a glorious thing to see;

Ah, it has cheated me so sore! It is not what it seems to be:

For sale! It shall be mine no more: Come, turn it o'er and view it well;

I would not have you purchase dear; 'Tis going-going! I must sell!

Who bids! Who'll buy the Splendid Tear! Here's Wealth in glittering heaps of gold, Who bids! but let me tell you fair, A baser lot was never sold;

Who'll buy the heavy heaps of care!
And here, spread out in broad domain,
A goodly landscape all may trace;
Hall, cottage, tree, field, hill and plain ;
Who'll buy himself a Burial Place!
Here's Love, the dreamy potent spell
That beauty flings around the heart!
I know its power, alas, too well!

"Tis going! Love and I must part!
Must part! What can I more with Love!
All over the enchanter's reign!
Who'll buy the plumeless, dying dove,

An hour of bliss,-an age of Pain!
And Friendship,-rarest gem of earth,
(Who e'er hath found the jewel his?)
Frail, fickle, false and little worth,

Who bids for Friendship-as it is! 'Tis going-going!-Hear the call; Once, twice, and thrice!-Tis very low! "Twas once my hope, my stay, my all,

But now the broken staff must go! Fame! hold the brilliant meteor high; How dazzling every gilded name! Ye millions, now's the time to buy!

How much for Fame! How much for Fame! Hear how it thunders! would you stand On high Olympus, far renowned, Now purchase, and a world command!And be with a world's curses crowned! Sweet star of Hope! with ray to shine In every sad foreboding breast, Save this desponding one of mine,

Who bids for man's last friend and best!
Ah, were not mine a bankrupt life,

This treasure should my soul sustain;
But Hope and I are now at strife,
Nor ever may unite again.

And Song!-For sale my tuneless lute;
Sweet solace, mine no more to hold;

The chords that charmed my soul are mute,
I cannot wake the notes of old!
Or e'en were mine a wizard shell,

Could chain a world in raptures high;
Yet now a sad farewell!-farewell!
Must on its last faint echoes die.
Ambition, fashion, show, and pride,
I part from all for ever now;
Grief is an overwhelming tide,

Has taught my haughty heart to bow.
Poor heart! distracted, ah, so long,

And still its aching throb to bear; How broken, that was once so strong; How heavy, once so free from care.

Ah, cheating earth!—could man but know,
Sad soul of mine, what thou and I,—
The bud would never wish to blow,

The nestling never long to fly!
Perfuming the regardless air;
High soaring into empty space;
A blossom ripening to despair,

A flight-without a resting place!
No more for me life's fitful dream;
Bright vision, vanishing away!
My bark requires a deeper stream;
My sinking soul a surer stay.
By death, stern sheriff! all bereft,

I weep, yet humbly kiss the rod;
The best of all I still have left,-

My Faith, my Bible, and my God.

STRIKE!

I've a liking for this "striking,"
If we only do it well;
Firm, defiant, like a giant,

Strike!-and make the effort tell!
One another, working brother,
Let us freely now advise:
For reflection and correction
Help to make us great and wise.
Work and wages, say the sages,

Go for ever hand in hand;
As the motion of an ocean,

The supply and the demand. My advice is, strike for prices Nobler far than sordid coin; Strike with terror, sin and error, And let man and master join. Every failing, now prevailing,

In the heart or in the head,-
Make no clamor-take the hammer-
Drive it down,-and strike it dead!
Much the chopping, lopping, propping,
Carpenter, we have to do,

Ere the plummet, from the summit,
Mark our moral fabric true.
Take the measure of false pleasure;
Try each action by the square;
Strike a chalk-line for your walk-line:
Strike, to keep your footsteps there!
The foundation of creation

Lies in Truth's unerring laws;
Man of mortar, there's no shorter
Way to base a righteous cause.
Every builder, painter, gilder,
Man of leather, man of clothes,
Each mechanic in a panic

With the way his labor goes.
Let him reason thus in season;
Strike the root of all his wrong,
Cease his quarrels, mend his morals,
And be happy, rich, and strong.

WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK.-LEWIS GAYLORD

CLARK.

THE twin brothers Clark were born at Otisco, Onondaga county, New York, in the year 1810. Their father had served in the Revolutionary war, and was a man of reading and observation. Willis, on the completion of his education, under the care of this parent and the Rev. George Colton, a relative on his mother's side, went to Philadelphia, where he commenced a weekly periodical similar in plan to the New York Mir

ror. It was unsuccessful and soon discontinued. He next became an assistant of the Rev. Dr. Brantley, a Baptist clergyman (afterwards President of the College of South Carolina), in the editorship of the Columbian Star, a religious newspaper. He retired from this position to take charge of the Philadelphia Gazette, the oldest daily journal of that city. He became its proprietor, and continued his connexion with it until his death.

One of the most successful of Clark's literary productions was the Ollapodiana, a series of brief essays, anecdotes, and observations, continued from month to month in the Knickerbocker Magazine, of which his brother Lewis had become the editor.

Mr. Clark was married in 1836 to Anne P. Caldeleugh, the daughter of a gentleman of Philadelphia. She was attacked by consumption, and died not long after her marriage. Her husband soon followed her, falling a victim to a lingering disease in June, 1841.

Clark's poems, with the exception of The Spirit of Life-pronounced before the Franklin Society of Brown University in 1833-are brief, and were written for and published in his own journals and the magazines and annuals of the day. A portion were collected in a volume during his lifetime, and a complete edition appeared in New York in 1847. His Ollapodiana have also been collected, with a number of other prose sketches and his poems, in a volume of his Literary Remains, published in 1844.

The humors and sensibility of the essayist and poet, alike witness to his warm, amiable sympathies. His mirth was rollicking, exuberant in anima. spirits, but always innocent, while his muse dwelt fondly on the various moods of nature, and portrayed domestic tenderness in the consolations of its darker hours of suffering and death.

Mr. LEWIS GAYLORD CLARK is the editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, having conducted that periodical since its third volume in 1832. He has become widely known by his monthly Editor's Table and Gossip with Readers and Correspondents, embracing a collection of the jests and on dits of the day, connected by a light running

comment. A selection from the Gossip was published in one volume in 1852, with the title Knick-Knacks from an Editor's Table,* and a compliment has recently been paid to its author in the shape of a volume containing original contributions by many of the leading writers of the day, accompanied by their portraits, entitled The Knickerbocker Memorial.

A SONG OF MAY.

The spring scented buds all around me are swelling,

There are songs in the stream, there is health in the gale;

A sense of delight in each bosom is dwelling, As float the pure day-beams o'er mountain and vale,

The desolate reign of Old Winter is broken,

Mr Clark had previously published a volume of articles rom the Knickerbocker, by Washington Irving, Mr. Cary, Mr Shelton, and others, entitled The Knickerbocker SketchBook.

The verdure is fresh upon every tree;

Of Nature's revival the charm-and a token Of love, oh thou Spirit of Beauty! to thee.

The sun looketh forth from the halls of the morning,
And flushes the clouds that begirt his career;
He welcomes the gladness and glory, returning
To rest on the promise and hope of the year.
He fills with rich light all the balm-breathing
flowers,

He mounts to the zenith, and laughs on the wave;

He wakes into music the green forest-bowers,
And gilds the gay plains which the broad rivers
lave.

The young bird is out on his delicate pinion—
He timidly sails in the infinite sky;
A greeting to May, and her fairy dominion,

He pours, on the west wind's fragrant sigh:
Around, above, there are peace and pleasure,
The woodlands are singing, the heaven is bright;
The fields are unfolding their emerald treasure,
And man's genial spirit is soaring in light.

Alas! for my weary and care-haunted bosom!

The spells of the spring-time arouse it no more; The song in the wild-wood, the sheen of the bios

som,

The fresh-welling fountain, their magic is o'er! When I list to the streams, when I look on the flowers,

They tell of the Past with so mournful a tone, That I call up the throngs of my long-vanished hours,

And sigh that their transports are over and gone. From the wide-spreading earth, from the limitless heaven,

There have vanished an eloquent glory and gleam;

To my veiled mind no more is the influence given,
Which coloreth life with the hues of a dream:
The bloom-purpled landscape its loveliness keepeth-
I deem that a light as of old gilds the wave;
But the eye of my spirit in heaviness sleepeth,
Or sees but my youth, and the visions it gave.
Yet it is not that age on my years hath descended,
'Tis not that its snow-wreaths encircle my brow;
But the newness and sweetness of Being are ended,
I feel not their love-kindling witchery now:
The shadows of death o'er my path have been
sweeping;

There are those who have loved me debarred from the day;

The green turf is bright where in peace they are sleeping,

And on wings of remembrance my soul is

away.

It is shut to the glow of this present existence,
It hears, from the Past, a funeral strain;
And it eagerly turns to the high-seeming distance,
Where the last blooms of earth will be garnered
again;

Where no mildew the soft damask-rose cheek shall nourish,

Where Grief bears no longer the poisonous sting; Where pitiless Death no dark sceptre can flourish, Or stain with his blight the luxuriant spring.

It is thus that the hopes which to others are given, Fall cold on my heart in this rich month of May;

I hear the clear anthems that ring through the heaven,

I drink the bland airs that enliven the day; And if gentle Nature, her festival keeping, Delights not my bosom, ah! do not condemn;

O'er the lost and the lovely my spirit is weeping, For my heart's fondest raptures are buried with them.

Thou hast

TO MY BOY.

fair unsullied cheek,

A clear and dreaming eye,

Whose bright and winning glances speak

Of life's first revelry;

And on thy brow no look of care

Comes like a cloud, to cast a shadow there.

In feeling's early freshness blest,

Thy wants and wishes few:

Rich hopes are garnered in thy breast,
As summer's morning dew

Is found, like diamonds, in the rose,

Nestling, 'mid folded leaves, in sweet repose.

Keep thus, in love, the heritage

Of thy ephemeral spring;

Keep its pure thoughts, till after-age

Weigh down thy spirit's wing;

Keep the warm heart, the hate of sin,

And heavenly peace will on thy soul break in. And when the even-song of years

Brings in its shadowy train The record of life's hopes and fears, Let it not be in vain,

That backward on existence thou canst look, As on a pictured page or pleasant book.

LINES

Written at Laurel Hill Cemetery, near Philadelphia.

Here the lamented dead in dust shall lie,

Life's lingering languors o'er-its labors done; Where waving boughs, betwixt the earth and sky, Admit the farewell radiance of the sun.

Here the long concourse from the murmuring town,
With funeral pace and slow, shall enter in;
To lay the loved in tranquil silence down,
No more to suffer, and no more to sin.

And here the impressive stone, engraved with words
Which Grief sententious gives to marble pale,
Shall teach the heart, while waters, leaves, and
birds

Make cheerful music in the passing gale.

Say, wherefore should we weep, and wherefore

pour

On scented airs the unavailing sigh

While sun-bright waves are quivering to the shore, And landscapes blooming-that the loved should die?

There is an emblem in this peaceful scene:

Soon, rainbow colors on the woods will fall; And autumn gusts bereave the hills of green, As sinks the year to meet its cloudy pall.

Then, cold and pale, in distant vistas round,

Disrobed and tuneless, all the woods will stand! While the chained streams are silent as the ground, As Death had numbed them with his icy hand. Yet, when the warm soft winds shall rise in spring, Like struggling day-beams o'er a blasted heath, The bird returned shall poise her golden wing, And liberal Nature break the spell of Death. So, when the tomb's dull silence finds an end, The blessed Dead to endless youth shall rise; And hear the archangel's thrilling summons blend Its tones with anthems from the upper skies. There shall the good of earth be found at last,

Where dazzling streams and vernal fields expand;

Where Love her crown attains-her trials pastAnd, filled with rapture, hails the better la!

OLD SONGS.

Give me the songs I loved to hear,
In sweet and sunny days of yore;
Which came in gushes to my ear

From lips that breathe them now no more;
From lips, alas! on which the worm,
In coiled and dusty silence lies,
Where many a loved, lamented form
Is hid from Sorrow's filling eyes!
Yes! when those unforgotten lays
Come trembling with a spirit-voice,
I mind me of those early days,
When to respire was to rejoice:
When gladsome flowers and fruitage shone
Where'er my willing footsteps fell;
When Hope's bright realm was all mine own,
And Fancy whispered, "All is well."
Give me old songs! They stir my heart
As with some glorious trumpet-tone:
Beyond the reach of modern art,

They rule its thrilling cords alone,
Till, on the wings of thought, I fly
Back to that boundary of bliss,
Which once beneath my childhood's sky
Embraced a scene of loveliness!

Thus, when the portals of mine ear

Those long-remembered lays receive, They seem like guests, whose voices cheer My breast, and bid it not to grieve: They ring in cadences of love,

They tell of dreams now vanished all:
Dreams, that descended from above-
Visions, 'tis rapture to recall!

Give me old songs! I know not why,
But every tone they breathe to me
Is fraught with pleasures pure and high,
With honest love or honest glee:
They move me, when by chance I hear,
They rouse each slumbering pulse anew;
Till every scene to memory dear

Is pictured brightly to my view.

I do not ask those sickly lays

O'er which affected maidens bend; Which scented fops are bound to praise, To which dull crowds their homage lend Give me come simple Scottish song, Or lays from Erin's distant isle: Lays that to love and truth belong, And cause the saddest lip to smile!

EDGAR A. POE.

THE family of Edgar A. Poe was of ancient respectability in Maryland. His grandfather, David Poe, served in the Revolution, and was the personal friend of Lafayette. His father, David Poe, jr., was a law student at Baltimore, when, in his youth, he fell in love with an English actress on the stage, Elizabeth Arnold, married her, and took to the boards himself. Their son Edgar was born in Baltimore in January, 1811. After a career of several years of theatrical life, passed in the chief cities of the Union, the parents both died within a short period at Richmond, leaving three orphan children.

Edgar was a boy of beauty and vivacity, and attracted the attention of a friend of his parents, John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Virginia, by whom he was adopted, and his education liberally

provided for. In 1816 he was taken by Mr. and Mrs. Allan to England, and deposited for a stay of four or five years at a school near London; a passage of his youth which he has recurred to in almost the only instance in his writings in which he has any personal allusion to his own affairs. It was a trait, too, in his conversation that he seldom spoke of his own history. In his tale of William Wilson he has touched these early school-days with a poetical hand, as he recalls the awe of their formal discipline, and the admiration with which he saw the dingy head-master of the week ascend the village pulpit in clerical silk and dignity on Sunday. He returned home in his eleventh year, passed a short time at a Richmond academy, and entered the University at Charlottesville, where he might have attained the highest honors from the celerity of his wit as a student, had he not thrown himself upon a reckless course of dissipation which led to his expulsion from the college. His biographer, Griswold, tells us that he was at this time celebrated for his feats of personal hardihood: "On one occasion, in a hot day of June, swimming from Richmond to Warwick, seven miles and a half, against a tide running probably from two to three miles an hour." He left Charlottesville in debt, though he had been generously provided for by his friend Allan, whose benevolence, however, could not sustain the drafts freely drawn upon him for obligations incurred in gambling. Poe quarrelled with his benefactor, and abandoned his home with the Byronic motive, it is said, of assisting the Greeks in their struggle for liberty. He went abroad and passed a year in Europe, the history of which would be a matter of singular curiosity, if it could be recovered. It is known that he did not reach Greece, and that he was one day involved in some difficulty at St. Petersburgh, from which he was relieved by the American Minister, Mr. Henry Middleton, who provided him with the means of returning home. He was afterwards received into favor by Mr. Allan, who procured him an entrance as a cadet at West Point, an institution with which his wayward and reckless habits, and impracticable mind, were so much at war, that he was compelled to retire from it within the year. Mr. Allan having lost his first wife, married again, and Poe, still received with favor at the house, was soon compelled to leave it for ever, doubtless from gross misconduct on his part, for Mr. Allan had proved himself a much-enduring benefactor.

Poe was now thrown upon his own resources. He had already written a number of verses, said to have been produced between his sixteenth and nineteenth years, which were published in Baltiinore in 1829, with the title Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems.t Taking the standards of the country, and the life of the young author in Virginia into consideration, they were singular productions. A certain vague poetic luxury and sensuousness of mere sound, distinct from definite meaning, peculiarities which the author refined upon in his latest and best poems, characterize these juvenile effusions. Al Aaraaf is an oriental poetic mystification, with some fine chanting in

Griswold's Memoirs, x.

+ Baltimore: Hatch & Dunning, 1829. 8vo. pp. 71.

Edgare 43

it, particularly a melodious dithyrambic on one of the poet's airy maidens, Ligeia.

A certain longing of passion, without hearty animality, marked thus early the ill-regulated disposition of a man of genius uncontrolled by the restraint of sound principle and profound literary motives. Other young writers have copied this strain, and have written verses quite as nonsensical without any corruption of heart; but with Poe the vein was original. His whole life was cast in that mould; his sensitive, spiritual organization, deriving no support from healthy moral powers, became ghostly and unreal. His rude contact with the world, which might have set up a novelist for life with materials of adventure, seems scarcely to have impinged upon his perceptions. His mind, walking in a vain show, was taught nothing by experience or suffering. Altogether wanting in the higher faculty of humor, he could extract nothing from the rough usages of the world but a cold, frivolous mockery of its plans and pursuits. His intellectual enjoyment was in the power of his mind over literature as an art; his skill, in forcing the mere letters of the alphabet, the dry elements of the dictionary, to take forms of beauty and apparent life which would command the admiration of the world. This may account for his sensitiveness as to the recep

A lady of this city wittily mentioned her first impressions of his unhappy, distant air, in the opening lines of Goldsmith's Traveller:

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,

Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po.

A gentleman, who was a fellow-cadet with him at West Point, has described to us his utter inefficiency and state of abstractedness at that place. He could not or would not follow its mathematical requirements. His mind was off from the matter-of-fact routine of the drill, which in such a case as his seemed practical joking, on some etherial, visionary expedition. He was marked, says our informant, for an early death, if only from the incompatibility of soul and body. They had not the usual relations to each other, and were on such distant terms of acquaintance that a separation seemed inevitable!