Through the vista of years, stretching dimly away, we but look, and a vision behold

Like some magical picture the sunset reveals with its colors of crimson and gold

All suffused with the glow of the hearth's ruddy blaze, from beneath the gay "mistletoe bough," There are faces that break into smiles as divinely as any that beam on us now.

While the Old Year departing strides ghost-like along o'er the hills that are dark with the storm,

To the New the brave beaker is filled to the brim, and the play of affection is warm:

Look once more—as the garlanded Spring re-appears, in her footsteps we welcome a train

Of fair women, whose eyes are as bright as the gem that has cut their dear names on the pane.

From the canvas of Vandyke and Kneller that hangs on the old-fashioned wainscoted wall, Stately ladies, the favored of poets, look down on the guests and the revel and all;

But their beauty, though wedded to eloquent verse, and though rendered immortal by Art, Yet outshines not the beauty that breathing below, in a moment takes captive the heart.

Many winters have since frosted over these panes with the tracery-work of the rime, Many Aprils have brought back the birds to the lawn from some far-away tropical climeBut the guests of the season, alas! where are they? some the shores of the stranger have trod, And some names have been long ago carved on the stone, where they sweetly rest under the sod. How uncertain the record! the hand of a child, in its innocent sport, unawares,

May, at any time, lucklessly shatter the pane, and thus cancel the story it bears:

Still a portion, at least, shall uninjured remainunto trustier tablets consigned

The fond names that survive in the memory of friends who yet linger a season behind.

Recollect, oh young soul, with ambition inspired!— let the moral be read as we passRecollect the illusory tablets of fame have been ever as brittle as glass:

Oh then be not content with the name there inscribed, for as well may you trace it in dust,But resolve to record it where long it shall stand, in the hearts of the good and the just!

A PICTURE.

Across the narrow dusty street
I see at early dawn,

A little girl with glancing feet,
As agile as the fawn.

An hour or so and forth she goes,
The school she brightly seeks,
She carries in her hand a rose
And two upon her cheeks.
The sun mounts up the torrid sky-
The bell for dinner rings-
My little friend, with laughing eye,
Comes gaily back and sings.
The week wears off and Saturday,
A welcome day, I ween,
Gives time for girlish romp and play;
How glad my pet is seen!
But Sunday-in what satins great
Does she not then appear!
King Solomon in all his state
Wore no such pretty gear.

I fling her every day a kiss, And one she flings to me: I know not truly when it is She prettiest may be.

BENEDICITE.

I saw her move along the aisle-
The chancel lustres burned the while-
With bridal roses in her hair,

Oh! never seemed she half so fair.

A manly form stood by her side,
We knew him worthy such a bride;
And
prayers went up to God above
To bless them with immortal love.
The vow was said. I know not yet
But some were filled with fond regret:
So much a part of us she seemed
To lose her quite we had not dreamed.
Like the "fair Inez," loved, caressed,
She went into the distant west,

And while one heart with joy flowed o'er,
Like her she saddened many more.

Lady, though far from childhood's things Thy gentle spirit folds its wing,

We offer now for him and thee

A tearful Benedicite!

GEORGE H. BOKER.

In 1841

GEORGE HENRY BOKER is a native of Philadelphia, where he was born in the year 1824. he was graduated at Nassau Hall, Princeton, and after a tour in Europe returned to Philadelphia, where he has since resided.

In 1847 he published The Lesson of Life and other Poems; and in 1848, Calaynos, a tragedy. This was received with favor, and in April, of the following year, acted with success at Sadlers' Wells Theatre, London. The scene is laid in Spain, the interest turns upon the hostile feeling between the Spanish and Moorish races.

Gee. H. Broker

Mr. Boker's second tragedy, Anne Boleyn, was soon after published and produced upon the stage.

He has since written The Betrothal, Leonor de

Guzman, and a comedy, All the World a Mask, all of which have been produced with success.

He has also contributed several poetical compositions of merit to the periodicals of the day.

Mr. Boker has wisely avoided, in his dramatic composition, the stilted periods of the classic, and the vagueness of the "unacted" drama. His plays have the action befitting the stage, and the finish requisite for the closet. His blank verse is smooth, and his dialogue spirited and colloquial.

THE DEATH OF DONA ALDA-FEOM CALAYNOS.

Calaynos. What would'st thou, Alda?-Cheer thee, love, bear up!

Doña Alda. Thy face is dim, I cannot see thine

eyes:

Nay, hide them not; they are my guiding stare-
Have sorrow's drops thus blotted out their light!
Thou dost forgive me, love-thou'lt think of me?
Thou'lt not speak harshly, when I'm 'neath the
earth?

Thou'lt love my memory, for what once I was!
Calaynos. Yes, though I live till doom.
Doña Alda.
O happiness!
Come closer-this thy hand? Have mercy, heaven!
Yes, press me closer-close-I do not feel.-
Calaynos. O God of mercy, spare!

Doña Alda.

Oh!-(She faints.)

Calaynos.

ice.

A sunny day

Bear her in-I am as calm as

Come when she wakes-I cannot see her thus.

[Exeunt OLIVER and servants, bearing DoSA ALDA. "Tis better so;-but then the thoughts come back Of the young bride I welcomed at the gate.I kissed her, yes, I kissed her-was it there! Yes, yes, I kissed her there, and in the chapelThe dimly lighted chapel.--I see it all! Here was old Hubert, there stood OliverThe priest, the bridesmaids, groomsmen-every face;

All the retainers that around us thronged,
Smiling for joy, with ribands in their caps.-
And shall they all, all follow her black pall,
With weeping eyes and doleful, sullen weeds!
For they all love her:-Ch, she was so kind,
So kind and gentle, when they stood in need;
And never checked them, if they murmured at her,
But found excuses for their discontent.-
They'll miss her: for her path was like an angel's,
And every place seemed holier where she came,
Ah me, ah me! I would this life were past!
Stay, love, watch o'er me; I will join thee soon.

[A cry within.

So quickly gone! And ere I said farewell! [Rushes to the door.

(Re-enter OLIVER.) Oliver. My lordCalaynos. Yes, yes, she's dead-I will go in.

Oliver. O, dreadful ending to a fearful night! This shock has shattered to the very root The strength of his great spirit. Mournful night! And what will day bring forth?-but wo on wo. Ah, death may rest awhile, and hold his hand, Having destroyed this wondrous paragon, And sapped a mind, whose lightest thought was worth

The concentrated being of a herd,

Yet shall the villain live who wrought this wol

By heaven I swear, if my lord kill him not,

I, though a scholar and unused to arms,

Will hunt him down-ay, should he course the earth,

And slay him like a felon!

Calaynos.

Oliver,

I stole to see her; not a soul was there,
Save an old crone that hummed a doleful tune,
And winked her purblind eyes, o'errun with tears.
O, boy, I never knew I loved her so!

I held my breath, and gazed into her face-
Ah, she was wondrous fair. She seemed to me,
Just as I've often seen her, fast asleep.
When from my studies cautiously I've stole,
And bent above her, and drank up her breath,
Sweet as a sleeping infant's,-Then perchance,
Yet in her sleep, her starry eyes would ope,
To close again behind their fringy clouds,
Ere I caught half their glory. There's no breath,
There's not a perfume on her withered lips,
Her eyes ope not, nor ever will again.-

But tell me how she died.-She suffered not?

The bloody mist that floats before mine eyesTo horse, to horse! the Moor rides forth to slay! [Exeunt.

BAYARD TAYLOR.

BAYARD TAYLOR is the son of a Pennsylvania farmer, a descendant of the first emigration with Penn, and was born January 11, 1825, in the village of Kennett Square, Chester county, in that state. He received a country education, and at the age of seventeen became an apprentice in a printing-office in Westchester. He employed his limited leisure in learning Latin and French, and writing verses, which were cordially received by Willis and Griswold, then conducting the New York Mirror and Graham's Magazine. The success of these led him to collect the poems in a volume in 1844, entitled Ximena, with the object of gaining reputation enough to secure employment as a contributor to some of the leading newspa

here;

Or if she did, she gave no sign nor word.

Awhile she muttered, as if lost in prayer;

Some who stood close thought once they caught thy name;

But grief had dulled my sense, I could not hear.
Then she slid gently to a lethargy;

And so she died-we knew not when she went.
Here is the paper which contains her

Calaynos.

[OLIVER reads.

He called me Moor.-True, true, I did her wrong:
The sin is mine; I should have told her that.
I only kept it back to save her pain;
I feared to lose respect by telling her.

I see how he could heighten that grave wrong,
And spur her nigh to madness with his taunts.
She fell, was senseless, without life or reason—
Why tigers spare inanimated forms-

So bore her off. Then lie on lie-O base!
The guilt all mine. Why did I hide my birth?
Ah, who can tell how soon one seed of sin,
Which we short-sighted mortals think destroyed,
May sprout and bear, and shake its noxious fruit
Upon our heads, when we ne'er dream of ill;
For nought that is can ever pass away!
Oliver. And shall this villain live?
Calaynos.
No, no, by heaven!
Those fellows on the wall would haunt me then.-
I hear your voices, men of crime and blood,
Ring in mine ears, and I obey the call.
[natches a sword from the wall.
How precious is the bla which justice wields,
To chasten wrong, or set a wrong to right!

[Dranos.

Come forth, thou minister of bloody deeds,
That blazed a comet in the van of war,
Presaging death to man, and tears to earth.-
Pale, gleaming tempter, when I clutch thee thus,
Thou, of thyself, dost plead that murder's right,
And mak'st me half believe it luxury.
Thy horrid edge is thirsting for man's gore,
And thou shalt drink it from the point to hilt.-
To horse, to horse! the warrior blood is up;
The tiger spirit of my warlike race

Burns in my heart, and floods my kindling veins.-
Mount, Oliver, ere pity's hand can hide

he projected. He succeeded in his object, procuring from Mr. Chandler of the Philadelphia United States Gazette, and from Mr. Patterson of the Saturday Evening Post, an advance of a hundred dollars for letters to be written abroad, and with this, in addition to forty dollars for some poems in Graham's Magazine, he started on his European tour. With some further remittances from home he was enabled to make the tour of England, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France, during a journey of two years, his expenses for the time being but five hundred dollars. How this was accomplished by the frugal pedestrian was told in his account of the tour on his return in 1846, when he published his Views-a-Foot. He next engaged in the editing and publication of a newspaper at Phoenixville, Pa., to which he gave his labors for a year with an unprofitable pecuniary result. At the close of 1847 he came to New York to prosecute his career of authorship, wrote for the Literary World, and in February, 1848, secured a position as a permanent writer for the Tribune, shortly after publishing his volume of poems, Rhymes of Travel. The next year he became proprietor of a share of the paper and one of its associate editors. His literary labors have been since connected with that journal. He visited California in 1849, and returned by way of Mexico in 1850, writing letters for the Tribune, which he revised and collected in the volumes, El Dorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire. In the summer of 1851 he set out on a protracted tour in the East, leaving a third volume of poems with his publisher, A Book of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs.

In this new journey he proceeded to Egypt by way of England, the Rhine, Vienna, and Trieste, reaching Cairo early in November. He immediately proceeded to Central Africa, and after passing through Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, and Soudan, to the kingdom of the Shillook negroes on the White Nile, reached Cairo again in April, 1852, having made a journey of about four thousand miles in the interior of Africa. He then made the tour of Palestine and Syria, extending his journey northwards to Antioch and Aleppo, and thence by way of Tarsus, the defiles of the Taurus, Konieh (Iconium), the forests of Phrygia, and the Bithynian Olympus to Constantinople, where he arrived

Bayara Tayur

about the middle of July. After a month's stay he sailed for Malta and Sicily, reaching the foot of Mount Etna in time to witness the first outbreak of the eruption of 1852. Thence he passed to Italy, the Tyrol, Germany, and England. In October he took a new departure from England for Gibraltar, spent a month in the south of Spain, and proceeded by the overland route to Bombay. He set out on the 4th of January, 1853, and after a tour of twenty-two hundred miles in the interior of India, reached Calcutta on the 22d of February. He there embarked for Hong Kong, by way of Penang and Singapore. Soon after his arrival in China he was attached to the American legation, and accompanied the minister, Colonel Marshall, to Shanghai, where he remained two months. On the arrival of Commodore Perry's squadron he entered the naval service for the purpose of accompanying it to Japan. He left on the 17th of May, and after visiting and exploring the Loo Choo and Bonin Islands, arrived in the bay of Yedo on the 8th of July. The expedition to which he was attached, remained there nine days, engaged with the ceremonials of delivering the President's letter, and then returned to Loo Choo and China. Taylor then spent a month in Macao and Canton, and sailed for New York on the 9th of September. After a voyage of one hundred and one days, during which the vessel touched at Angier in Java, and St. Helena, he reached New York on the 20th of December, 1853, after an absence of two years and four months, having accomplished upwards of fifty thousand miles of travel. His letters, describing the journey, were all this while published in the Tribune. In their enlarged and improved form they furnish material for several series of volumes. The characteristics of Mr. Taylor's writings are, in his poems, ease of expression, with a careful selection of poetic capabilities, a full, animated style, with a growing attention to art and condensation. His prose is equable and clear, in the flowing style; the narrative of a genial, healthy

observer of the many manners of the world which he has seen in the most remarkable portions of its four quarters.

In person he is above the ordinary height, manly and robust, with a quick, resolute way of carrying out his plans with courage and independence; and with great energy and perseverance, he combines a happy natural temperament and benevolence.

BEDOUIN SONG.

From the Desert I come to thee

On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. Under thy window I stand,

And the midnight hears my cry:

I love thee, I love but thee,

With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

Look from thy window and see
My passion and my pain;
I lie on the sands below,

And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,
And melt thee to hear the vow
Of a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

My steps are nightly driven,

By the fever in my breast,
To hear from thy lattice breathed
The word that shall give me rest.
Open the door of thy heart,

And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no more

Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

KILIMANDJARO.

Hail to thee, monarch of African mountains,
Remote, inaccessible, silent, and lone-
Who, from the heart of the tropical fervors,
Liftest to heaven thine alien snows,
Feeding for ever the fountains that make thee
Father of Nile and Creator of Egypt!

The years of the world are engraved on thy forehead;
Time's morning blushed red on thy first-fallen suows;
Yet lost in the wilderness, nameless, unnoted,
Of man unbeholden, thou wert not till now.
Knowledge alone is the being of Nature,
Giving a soul to her manifold features,
Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness
Knowledge has born thee anew to Creation,
The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song.
And long-baffled Time at thy baptism rejoices.
Take, then, a name, and be filled with existence,
Yea, be exultant in sovereign glory,
While from the hand of the wandering poet
Drops the first garland of song at thy fect.
Floating alone, on the flood of thy making,
Through Africa's mystery, silence, and fire,
Lo! in my palm, like the Eastern enchanter,
I dip from the waters a magical mirror,

And thou art revealed to my purified vision.
I see thee, supreme in the midst of thy co-mates,
Standing alone 'twixt the Earth and the Heavens,
Heir of the Sunset and Herald of Morn.

Zone above zone, to thy shoulders of granite,
The climates of Earth are displayed, as an index,
Giving the scope of the Book of Creation.
There, in the gorges that widen, descending
From cloud and from cold into summer eternal,
Gather the threads of the ice-gendered fountains-
Gather to riotous torrents of crystal,

And, giving each shelvy recess where they dally
The blooms of the North and its evergreen turfage,
Leap to the land of the lion and lotus!
There, in the wondering airs of the Tropics
Shivers the Aspen, still dreaming of cold:

There stretches the Oak, from the loftiest ledges,
His arms to the far-away lands of his brothers,
And the Pine-tree looks down on his rival, the Palm.

Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance,
Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air,

Thy battlements hang o'er the slopes and the forests,
Seats of the Gods in the limitless ether,
Looming sublinely aloft and afar.

Above them, like folds of imperial ermine,
Sparkle the snow-fields that furrow thy forehead-
Desolate realms, inaccessible, silent,

Chasms and caverns where Day is a stranger,
Garners where storeth his treasures the Thunder,
The Lightning his falchion, his arrows the Hail!

Sovereign Mountain, thy brothers give welcome:
They, the baptized and the crowned of ages,
Watch-towers of Continents, altars of Earth,
Welcome thee now to their mighty assembly.
Mont Blanc, in the roar of his mad avalanches,
Hails thy accession; superb Orizaba,

Belted with beech and ensandalled with palm;
Chimborazo, the lord of the regions of noonday;-
Mingle their sounds in magnificent chorus
With greeting august from the Pillars of Heaven
Who, in the urns of the Indian Ganges
Filters the snows of their sacred dominions,
Unmarked with a footprint, unseen but of God.

Lo. unto each is the seal of his lordship,
Nor questioned the right that his majesty giveth:
Each in his awful supremacy forces
Worship and reverence, wonder and joy.
Absolute all, yet in dignity varied,
None has a claim to the honors of story,
Or the superior splendors of song,
Greater than thou, in thy mystery mantled-
Thou, the sole monarch of African mountains,
Father of Nile and Creator of Egypt!

In

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD WAS born at Hingham, Massachusetts. He has latterly resided in New York, where, having previously been a contributor to the Knickerbocker and other magazines, he published in 1849 a first collection of poems, entitled Foot Prints. 1852 a collection of the author's maturer Poems appeared from the press of Ticknor and Co. The verses of Mr. Stoddard are composed with skill in a poetic school of which Keats may be placed at the head. He has a fondness for poetic luxuries, and his reader frequently participates in his enjoyment. He has achieved some success in the difficult province of the Ode, and has an equally rare accomplishment-touched several delicate themes in song with graceful simplicity.

R.H. Stoddard.

AUTUMN.

Divinest Autumn! who may sketch thee best,
For ever changeful o'er the changeful globe?
Who guess thy certain crown, thy favorite crest,
The fashion of thy many-colored robe?
Sometimes we see thee stretched upon the ground,
In fading woods where acorns patter fast.
Dropping to feed thy tusky boars around,

Crunching among the leaves the ripened mast; Sometimes at work where ancient granary-floors Are open wide, a thresher stout and hale, Whitened with chaff upwafted from thy fiail, While south winds sweep along the dusty floors; And sometimes fast asleep at noontide hours,

Pillowed on sheaves, and shaded from the heat, With Plenty at thy feet, Braiding a coronet of oaten straw and flowers! What time, emerging from a low hung cloud, The shining chariot of the Sun was driven Slope to its goal, and Day in reverence bowed

His burning forehead at the gate of Heaven;Then I beheld thy presence full revealed, Slow trudging homeward o'er a stubble-field; Around thy brow, to shade it from the west,

A wisp of straw entwisted in a crown;
A golden wheat-sheaf, slipping slowly down,
Hugged tight against thy waist, and on thy breast,
Linked to a belt, an earthen flagon swung;
And o'er thy shoulder flung,

Tied by their stems, a bundle of great pears,
Bell shaped and streaky, some rich orchard's pride;
A heavy bunch of grapes on either side,

Across each arm, tugged downward by the load,
Their glossy leaves blown off by wandering airs;
A yellow-rinded lemon in thy right,
In thy left hand a sickle caught the light,
Keen as the moon which glowed

Along the fields of night: One moment seen, the shadowy masque was flown, And I was left, as now, to meditate alone. Hark! hark!-I hear the reapers in a row,

Shouting their harvest carols blithe and loud, Cutting the rustled maize whose crests are bowed With ears o'ertasselled, soon to be laid low;