THE CLOSING SCENE.

Within this sober realm of leafless trees,
The russet year inhaled the dreamy air,
Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.
The gray barns, looking from their hazy hills
O'er the dim waters widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills,
On the dull thunder of alternate flails.

All sights were mellowed, and all sounds subdued, The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low;

As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed

His winter log with many a muffled blow. Th' embattled forests, erewhile armed in gold, Their banners bright with every martial hue, Now stood, like some sad beaten host of old, Withdrawn afar in Time's remotest blue.

On slumb'rous wings the vulture tried his flight; The dove scarce heard his sighing mate's complaint;

And like a star slow drowning in the light,

The village church-vane seemed to pale and faint. The sentinel cock upon the hill-side crew;

Crew thrice, and all was stiller than beforeSilent till some replying wanderer blew

His alien horn, and then was heard no more.

Where erst the jay within the elm's tall crest Made garrulous trouble round the unfledged young;

And where the oriole hung her swaying nest

By every light wind like a censer swung; Where sang the noisy masons of the eves, The busy swallows circling ever near, Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,

An early harvest and a plenteous year; Where every bird which charmed the vernal feast Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,

To warn the reapers of the rosy east,

All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.

Alone, from out the stubble piped the quail,
And croaked the crow through all the dreary
gloom;

Alone the pheasant, drumming in the vale,
Made echo to the distant cottage loom.

There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;
The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by
night;

The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers,
Sailed slowly by-passed noiseless out of sight.
Amid all this-in this most cheerless air,

And where the woodbine sheds upon the porch
Its crimson leaves, as if the year stood there,
Firing the floor with his inverted torch-

Amid all this, the centre of the scene,

The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread Plied her swift wheel, and with her joyless mien Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread. She had known sorrow. He had walked with her, Oft supped, and broke with her the ashen crust, And in the dead leaves still she heard the stir Of his black mantle trailing in the dust. While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom,

Her country summoned, and she gave her all, And twice war bowed to her his sable plume;

He gave the swords to rest upon the wall. Re-gave the swor lsbut not the hand that drew, And struck for liberty the dying blow; Nor him, who to his sire and country true Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe. Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on, Like the low murmurs of a hive at noon; Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous

tune.

At last the thread was snapped, her head was bowed:

Life drooped the distaff through his hands serene; And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud, While Death and Winter closed the autumn scene.

PENNSYLVANIA-FROM THE NEW PASTORAL.

Fair Pennsylvania! than thy midland vales,
Lying 'twixt hills of green, and bound afar
By billowy mountains rolling in the blue,
No lovelier landscape meets the traveller's eye.
There Labour sows and reaps his sure reward,
And Peace and Plenty walk amid the glow
And perfume of full garners. I have seen
In lands less free, less fair, but far more known,
The streams which flow through history and wash
The legendary shores-and cleave in twain'
Old capitols and towns, dividing oft
Great empires and estates of petty kings
And princes, whose domains full many a field,
Rustling with maize along our native West,
Out-measures and might put to shame! and yet
Nor Rhine, like Bacchus crowned, and reeling
through

His hills-nor Danube, marred with tyranny,
His dull waves moaning on Hungarian shores
Nor rapid Po, his opaque waters pouring
Athwart the fairest, fruitfulest, and worst
Enslaved of European lands-nor Seine,
Winding uncertain through inconstant Francé
Are half so fair as thy broad stream whose breast

Is gemmed with many isles, and whose proud name
Shall yet become among the names of rivers
A synonym of beauty-Susquehanna!

THE VILLAGE CHURCH-FROM THE NEW PASTORAL

About the chapel door, in easy groups,
The rustic people wait. Some trim the switch,
While some prognosticate of harvests full,
Or shake the dubious head with arguments
Based on the winter's frequent snow and thaw,
The heavy rains, and sudden frosts severe.
Some, happily but few, deal scandal out,
With look askance pointing their victim. These
Are the rank tares in every field of grain-
These are the nettles stinging unaware-
The briars which wound and trip unheeding feet-
The noxious vines, growing in every grove!
Their touch is deadly, and their passing breath
Poison most venomous! Such have I known--
As who has not?-and suffered by the contact.
Of these the husbandman takes certain note,
And in the proper season disinters

Their baneful roots; and to the sun exposed,
The killing light of truth, leaves them to pine
And perish in the noonday! 'Gainst a tree,
With strong arms folded o'er a giant chest,
Stands Barton, to the neighbourhood chief smith;
His coat, unused to aught save Sunday wear,
Grown too oppressive by the morning walk,
Hangs on the drooping branch: so stands he oft
Beside the open door, what time the share
Is whitening at the roaring bellows' mouth.
There, too, the wheelwright-he, the magistrate-
In small communities a man of mark-
Stands with the smith, and holds such argument
As the unlettered but observing can;

Their theme some knot of scripture hard to solve.
And 'gainst the neighbouring bars two others fan,
Less fit the sacred hour, discussion hot
Of politics; a topic, which inflamed,
Knows no propriety of time or place.

There Oakes, the cooper, with rough brawny hand,
Descants at large, and, with a noisy ardour,
Rattles around his theme as round a cask;
While Hanson, heavy-browed, with shoulders bent,
Bent with great lifting of huge stones-for he
A mason and famed builder is-replies
With tongue as sharp and dexterous as his trowel,
And sentences which like his hammer fall,
Bringing the flinty fire at every blow!

But soon the approaching parson ends in peace
The wordy combat, and all turn within.
Awhile rough shoes, some with discordant creak,
And voices clearing for the psalm, disturb
The sacred quiet, till, at last, the veil

Of silence wavers, settles, falls; and then
The hymn is given, and all arise and sing.
Then follows prayer, which from the pastor's heart
Flows unpretending, with few words devout
Of humble thanks and askings; not, with lungs
Stentorian, assaulting heaven's high wall,
Compelling grace by virtue of a siege!
This done, with loving care he scans his flock,
And opes the sacred volume at the text.
Wide is his brow, and full of honest thought-
Love his vocation, truth is all his stock.
With these he strives to guide, and not perplex
With words sublime and empty, ringing oft
Most musically hollow. All his facts
Are simple, broad, sufficient for a world!

He knows them well, teaching but what he knows.
He never strides through metaphysie mists,

Or takes false greatness because seen through fogs;
Nor leads 'mid brambles of thick argument
Till all admire the wit which brings them through:
Nor e'er essays, in sermon or in prayer,

To share the hearer's thought; nor strives to make
The smallest of his congregation lose

One glimpse of heaven, to cast it on the priest.

Such simple course, in these ambitious times.
Were worthy imitation; in these days,
When brazen tinsel bears the palm from worth,
And trick and pertness take the sacred desk;
Or some coarse thunderer, armed with doctrines

new,

Aims at our faith a blow to fell an oxSwinging his sledge, regardless where it strikes, Or what demolishes--well pleased to win By either blows or noise!-A modern seer, Crying destruction! and, to prove it true, Walking abroad, for demolition armed, And boldly levelling where he cannot build! The service done, the congregation rise, And with a freshness glowing in their hearts, And quiet strength, the benison of prayer, And wholesome admonition, hence depart. Some, loath to go, within the graveyard loiter, Walking among the mounds, or on the tombs, Hanging, like pictured grief beneath a willow, Bathing the inscriptions with their tears; or here. Finding the earliest violet, like a drop Of heaven's anointing blue upon the dead, Bless it with mournful pleasure; or, perchance, With careful hands, recall the wandering vine, And teach it where to creep, and where to bear Its future epitaph of flowers. And there, Each with a separate grief, and some with tears, Ponder the sculptured lines of consolation.

The chrysalis is here-the soul is flown, And waits thee in the gardens of the blest!" "The nest is cold and empty, but the bird Sings with its loving mates in Paradise!"

"Our hope was planted here-it blooms in heaven!" 'She walks the azure field, 'mid dews of bliss, While 'mong the thorns our feet still bleed in this!" "This was the fountain, but the sands are dryThe waters have exhaled into the sky!"

46

The listening Shepherd heard a voice forlorn, And found the lamb, by thorns and brambles torn, And placed it in his breast! Then wherefore mourn?"

Such are the various lines; and, while they read,
Methinks I hear sweet voices in the air,
And winnowing of soft, invisible wings,
The whisperings of angels breathing peace!

FREDERICK L. COZZENS,

い

much information on the important topic of the native culture of the grape, it is enlivened by many clever essays and sketches in the range of practical æsthetics.

BUNKER HILL; AN OLD-TIME BALLAD.

It was a starry night in June; the air was soft and still,

When the "minute-men" from Cambridge came, and gathered on the hill:

Beneath us lay the sleeping town, around us frowned the fleet,

But the pulse of freemen, not of slaves, within our bosoms beat;

And every heart rose high with hope, as fearlessly we said,

"We will be numbered with the free, or numbered

with the dead!"

"Bring out the line to mark the trench, and stretch it on the sward!"

The trench is marked-the tools are brought-we utter not a word,

But stack our guns, then fall to work, with mattock and with spade,

A thousand men with sinewy arms, and not a sound is made:

So still were we, the stars beneath, that scarce a whisper fell;

We heard the red-coat's musket click, and heard him cry, "All's well!"

And here and there a twinkling port, reflected on the deep,

In many a wavy shadow showed their sullen guns asleep.

Sleep on, thon bloody hireling crew! in careless slumber lie;

The trench is growing broad and deep, the breastwork broad and high:

No striplings we, but bear the arms that held the French in check,

The drum that beat at Louisburg, and thundered in Quebec!

And thou, whose promise is deceit, no more thy word we'll trust,

Thou butcher GAGE! thy power and thee we'll humble in the dust;

Thou and thy tory minister have boasted to thy brood,

"The lintels of the faithful shall be sprinkled with our blood!"

But though these walls those lintels be, thy zeal is all in vain:

A thousand freemen shall rise up for every freeman slain;

And when o'er trampled crowns and thrones they raise the mighty shout,

This soil their Palestine shall be; their altar this redoubt:

See how the morn is breaking! the red is in the sky;

The mist is creeping from the stream that floats in silence by;

The Lively's hull looms through the fog, and they our works have spied,

For the ruddy flash and roundshot part in thunder from her side;

And the Falcon and the Cerberus make every bosom thrill,

With gun and shell, and drum and bell, and boatswain's whistle shrill;

But deep and wider grows the trench, as spade and mattock ply,

For we have to cope with fearful odds, and the time is drawing nigh!

VOL. II.-45

Amid the plunging shells and shot, and plants it with his hands;

Up with the shout! for PUTNAM comes upon his reeking bay,

With bloody spur and foamy bit, in haste to join the fray;

And POMEROY, with his snow-white hairs, and face all flush and sweat,

Unscathed by French and Indian, wears a youthful glory yet.

But thou, whose soul is glowing in the summer of thy years,

Unvanquishable WARREN, thou (the youngest of thy peers)

Wert born, and bred, and shaped, and made to act a patriot's part,

And dear to us thy presence is as heart's blood to the heart!

Well may ye bark, ye British wolves! with leaders such as they,

Not one will fail to follow where they choose to lead the way

As once before, scarce two months since, we followed on your track,

And with our rifles marked the road ye took in going back.

Ye slew a sick man in his bed; ye slew with hands accursed,

A mother nursing, and her blood fell on the babe she nursed;

By their own doors our kinsmen fell and perished in the strife;

But as we hold a hireling's cheap, and dear a freeman's life,

By Tanner brook, and Lincoln bridge, before the shut

of sun,

We took the recompense we claimed-a score for every one!

Hark! from the town a trumpet! The barges at the wharf

Are crowded with the living freight-and now they're pushing off;

With clash and glitter, trump and drum, in all its

bright array,

Behold the splendid sacrifice move slowly o'er the bay!

And still and still the barges fill, and still across the deep,

Like thunder-clouds along the sky, the hostile transports sweep;

And now they're forming at the Point-and now the lines advance:

We see beneath the sultry sun their polished bayonets glance;

We hear a-near the throbbing drum, the bugle challenge ring;

Quick bursts, and loud, the flashing cloud, and rolls from wing to wing;

But on the height our bulwark stands, tremendous in its gloom,

As sullen as a tropic sky, and silent as a tomb.
And so we waited till we saw, at scarce ten rifles'

And every man hath dropped his gun to clutch a neighbor's hand,

As his heart kept praying all the while for Home and Native Land.

Thrice on that day we stood the shock of thrice a thousand foes,

And thrice that day within our lines the shout of victory rose!

And though our swift fire slackened then, and reddening in the skies,

We saw, from Charlestown's roofs and walls, the flamy columns rise;

Yet while we had a cartridge left, we still maintained the fight,

Nor gained the foe one foot of ground upon that blood-stained height.

What tnough for us no laurels bloom, nor o'er the nameless brave

No sculptured trophy, scroll, nor hatch, records a warrior-grave!

What though the day to us was lost! Upon that deathless page

The everlasting charter stands, for every land and age!

For man hath broke his felon bonds, and cast them in the dust,

And claimed his heritage divine, and justified the trust;

While through his rifted prison-bars the hues of freedom pour

O'er every nation, race, and clime, on every sea and shore,

Such glories as the patriarch viewed, when 'mid the darkest skies,

He saw above a ruined world the Bow of Promise rise.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

His

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS is a native of Providence, R. I., where he was born in 1824. grandfather, on the mother's side, was James Barrill, remembered as an eminent Rhode Islander, and for his Senator's speech in Congress on the Missouri Compromise Bill. He died at Washington, and is buried there in the Congressional cemetery.

At six years of age young Curtis was placed at school near Boston, and there remained until he was eleven. He returned to Providence, pursuing his studies till he was fifteen, when his father, George Curtis, removed with his family to New York. In a pleasant article in Putnam's Magazine, with the title Sea from Shore, our author has given an imaginative reminiscence of his early impressions of Providence, then in the decay of its large India trade.* Of late years manufactories and machine shops have supplanted the quaint old stores upon many of the docks; but the town, at the head of the Narraghansett bay, is fortunate in its situation, upon a hill at the confluence of two rivers, sloping to the east, west, and south; and the stately houses of its

• Putnam's Magazine, July, 1851. The passage is in the author's best fanciful vein.

earlier merchants upon the ascent towards the south, form as fine a cluster of residences as are seen in any of our cities.

In New York our author was smitten with the love of trade, and deserted his books for a year to serve in a large foreign importing house. Though not without its advantages, the pursuit was abandoned at the end of that time, and the clerk became again a student, continuing with tutors until he was eighteen, when, in a spirit of idyllic enthusiasm, he took part in the Brook Farm Association in West Roxbury, Mass. He remained there a year and a half, enjoying the novel experiences of nature and the friendship of his cultivated associates, and still looks back upon the period as a pleasurable pastoral episode of his life.*

From Brook Farm and its agricultural occupa tions, after a winter in New York, being still enamored of the country, he went to Concord, in Massachusetts, and lived in a farmer's family, working hard upon the farm and taking his share of the usual fortunes of farmers' boys-with a very unusual private accompaniment of his own, in the sense of poetic enjoyment, unless the poet Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy be taken as the standard. At Concord he saw something of Emerson, much of Hawthorne, who had taken up his residence there after the Brook Farm adventure, and a little of Henry Thoreau, and of the poet William Ellery Channing. It was at this time that Emerson tried the formation of a club out of the individual "unclubable" elements of the philosophic personages in the neighborhood, which Mr. Curtis has pleasantly described in the Homes of American Authors.t

During these years, Mr. Curtis was constantly studying and perfecting himself in the various accomplishments of literature, and after two summers and a winter passed in Concord, he sailed for Europe in August, 1846. He landed at Marseilles, and proceeding along the coast to Genoa, Leghorn. and Florence, passed the winter in Rome in the society of the American artists then resident there, Crawford, Hicks, Kensett, Cranch, Terry, and Freeman. In the spring he travelled through southern Italy and reached Venice in August. At Milan he met Mr. George S. Hillard and the Rev. Frederic H. Hedge, and crossed the Stelvio with them in the autumn into Germany. There he matriculated at the University of Berlin, and spent a portion of his time in travel, visiting every part of Germany and making the tour of the Danube into Hungary as far as Pesth. Ile was in Berlin during the revolutionary scenes of March, 1848. The next winter he passed in Paris, was in Switzerland in the summer, and in the following autumn crossed into Italy, and went to Sicily from Naples. He made the tour of the island, and visited Malta and the East, returning to America in the summer of 1850.

* Some further mention of this peculiar affair will be found in the notice of Hawthorne. In the preface to the Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne calls upon Curtis to become the his torian of the settlement-"Even the brilliant Howadji might find as rich a theme in his youthful reminiscences of Breek Farm, and a more novel one-close at hand as it lies-than those which he has since made so distant a pilgrimage to seck, in Syria and along the current of the Nile."

The papers of Mr. Curtis in this volume, published by Putnam in 158 are the sketches of Emerson, Longfellow. Hawthorne and Bancroft.

heap smentis

In the autumn of that year he prepared the Nile Notes of an Howadji, much of which was written, as it stands, upon the Nile. During the winter he was connected with the Tribune newspaper, and the following season the Notes were published by the Harpers and by Bentley in London. In the summer of 1851 a travelling tour furnished letters from the fashionable wateringplaces to the Tribune, and the autumn and winter were spent in Providence, where a second series of Eastern reminiscences and sketches-The Iowadji in Syria-was written, which was published by the Harpers the next spring, and the same publishing season the Tribune letters were rewritten and printed, with illustrations by Kensett, in the volume entitled Lotus Eating.

Returning to New York in the autumn of 1852, he became one of the original editors of Putnam's Monthly, and wrote the series of satiric sketches of society, the Potiphar Papers, which were collected in a volume in 1853. Besides the Potiphar Papers, he has written numerous articles for Putnam's Magazine, including several poetical essays, in the character of a simpleminded merchant's clerk, with his amiable, common-sense wife Prue for a heroine. Dinner

Time, My Chateaux, and Sea from Shore, belong

to this series.

He has also written for Harpers' Magazine a picturesque historical paper on Newport,* some tales of fashionable society by Smythe, Jr., and other papers.

In the winter of 1853 he took the field as a popular lecturer with success in different parts of the country.

In 1854 he delivered a poem before a literary society at Brown University, at Providence.

It is understood that Mr. Curtis is at present (1855) engaged upon a life of Mehemet Ali: a topic which will test his diligence and powers in a new department of composition.

In the number for August, 1854.

UNDER THE PALMS FROM THE NILE NOTES.

A motion from the river won,

Ridged the smooth level, bearing on

My shallop through the star-strown calm,
Until another night in night

entered, from the clearer light,
Imbowered vaults of pillar'd Palm.

Humboldt, the only cosmopolitan and a poet, divides the earth by beauties, and celebrates as dearest to him, and first fascinating him to travel, the climate of palms. The palm is the type of the tropics, and when the great Alexander marched triumphing through India, some Hindoo, suspecting the sweetest secret of Brama, distilled a wine from the palm, the glorious phantasy of whose intoxication no poet records.

I knew a palm-tree upon Capri. It stood in select society of shining fig-leaves and lustrous oleanders; it overhung the balcony, and so looked, far over-leaning, down upon the blue Mediterranean. Through the dream-mists of southern Italian noons, it looked up the broad bay of Naples and saw vague Vesuvius melting away; or at sunset the isles of the Syrens, whereon they singing sat, and wooed Ulysses as he went; or in the full May moonlight the oranges of Sorrento shone across it, great and golden, permanent planets of that delicious dark. And from the Sorrento where Tasso was born, it looked across to pleasant Posylippo, where Virgil is buried, and to stately Ischia. The palm of Capri saw all that was fairest and most famous in the bay of Naples.

A wandering poet, whom I knew-sang a sweet song to the palm, as he dreamed in the moonlight upon that balcony. But it was only the free-masonry of sympathy. It was only syllabled moonshine. For the palm was a poet too, and all palms are poets.

Yet when I asked the bard what the palm-tree sang in its melancholy measures of waving, he told me that not Vesuvius, nor the Syrens, nor Sorrento, nor Tasso, nor Virgil, nor stately Ischia, nor all the broad blue beauty of Naples bay, was the theme of that singing. But partly it sang of a river for ever flowing, and of cloudless skies, and green fields that never faded, and the mournful music of waterwheels, and the wild monotony of a tropical lifeand partly of the yellow silence of the Desert, and of drear solitudes inaccessible, and of wandering caravans, and lonely men. Then of gardens overhanging rivers, that roll gorgeous-shored through Western fancies-of gardens in Bagdad watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris, whereof it was the fringe and darling ornament-of oases in those sere sad deserts where it overfountained fountains, and every leaf was blessed. More than all, of the great Orient universally, where no tree was so abundant, so loved, and so beautiful.

May moonlight, my ears were opened, and I heard When I lay under that palm-tree in Capri in the all that the poet had told me of its song.

Perhaps it was because I came from Rome, where the holy week comes into the year as Christ entered Jerusalem, over palms. For in the magnificence of St. Peter's, all the pomp of the most pompous of human institutions is on one day charactered by the palm. The Pope borne upon his throne, as is no other monarch, with wide-waving Flabella attendant, moves, blessing the crowd through the great All the red-legged cardinals follow, each of whose dresses would build a chapel, so costly are they, and the crimson-crowned Greek patriarch with long silken black beard, and the crew of motley which the Roman clergy is, crowded after in shining splendor.

nave.

No ceremony of imperial Rome had been more imposing, and never witnessed in a temple more im