Death and terror circled him about

But he stood and perish'd-not in vain! Not in vain the youthful martyr fell!

Then and there he crush'd a bloody creed! And his high example shall impel

Future heroes to as great a deed! Stony answers yet remain for those

Who would question and precede the time! In their season, may they meet their foes, Like TELEMACHUS, with front sublime!

SUMMER IN THE HEART.

THE cold blast at the casement beats,
The window-panes are white,

The snow whirls through the empty streets-
It is a dreary night!

Sit down, old friend! the wine-cups wait;
Fill to o'erflowing! fill!
Though Winter howleth at the gate,

In our hearts 'tis summer stil!!

For we full many summer joys

And greenwood sports have shared, When, free and ever-roving boys,

The rocks, the streams we dared! And, as I look upon thy face

Back, back o'er years of ill, My heart flies to that happy place, Where it is summer still!

Yes, though, like sere leaves on the ground,

Our early hopes are strown,

And cherish'd flowers lie dead around,
And singing birds are flown,-

The verdure is not faded quite,

Not mute all tones that thrill; For, seeing, hearing thee to-night,

In my heart 'tis summer still! Fill up the olden times come back! With light and life once more

We scan the future's sunny track,

From youth's enchanted shore!
The lost return. Through fields of bloom
We wander at our will;

Gone is the winter's angry gloom-
In our hearts 'tis summer still!

THE FUGITIVE FROM LOVE.

Is there but a single theme
For the youthful poet's dream?
Is there but a single wire
To the youthful poet's lyre?
Earth below and heaven above-
Can he sing of naught but love?

Nay! the battle's dust I see!
God of war! I follow thee!
And, in martial numbers, raise
Worthy peans to thy praise.
Ah! she meets me on the field-
If I fly not, I must yield.
Jolly patron of the grape!
To thy arms I will escape!

Quick, the rosy nectar bring;

Io BACCHE" I will sing.
Ha! Confusion! every sip
But reminds me of her lip.
PALLAS! give me wisdom's page,
And awake my lyric rage;
Love is fleeting; love is vain;

I will try a nobler strain.

O, perplexity! my books
But reflect her haunting looks!
JUPITER! on thee I cry!

Take me and my lyre on high!
Lo! the stars beneath me gleam!
Here, O, poet! is a theme.
Madness! She has come above!
Every chord is whispering "Love!"

THE NIGHT-STORM AT SEA. "Tis a dreary thing to be Tossing on the wide, wide sea, When the sun has set in clouds,

And the wind sighs through the shrouds,
With a voice and with a tone

Like a living creature's moan!
Look! how wildly swells the surge
Round the black horizon's verge!
See the giant billows rise

From the ocean to the skies!
While the sea-bird wheels his flight
O'er their streaming crests of white.
List! the wind is wakening fast!
All the sky is overcast!
Lurid vapours, hurrying, trail
In the pathway of the gale,
As it strikes us with a shock
That might rend the deep-set rock!
Falls the strain'd and shiver'd mast!
Spars are scatter'd by the blast!
And the sails are split asunder,
As a cloud is rent by thunder;
And the struggling vessel shakes,
As the wild sea o'er her breaks.

Ah! what sudden light is this,
Blazing o'er the dark abyss?
Lo! the full moon rears her form
Mid the cloud-rifts of the storm,
And, athwart the troubled air,
Shines, like hope upon despair!
Every leaping billow gleams
With the lustre of her beams,
And lifts high its fiery plume
Through the midnight's parting gloom:
While its scatter'd flakes of gold
O'er the sinking deck are roll'd.
Father! low on bended knee,
Humbled, weak, we turn to thee!
Spare us, mid the fearful fight
Of the raging winds to-night!
Guide us o'er the threatening wave:
Save us!-thou alone canst save!

DR. PARSONS is a native of Boston. After the completion of his academical and professional education, he went abroad and passed several years of study and observation in Italy and other parts of Europe. He is known as a poet by an admirable translation of DANTE'S "Inferno," in the terza rima, of

which the first ten cantos only have been published; by the "Mail Robber," a series of exceedingly clever poetical epistles printed in the "Knickerbocker," and other contributions to the literary magazines. He has a fine eye for the picturesque, and a lively fancy; and his poems are nearly all in a very chaste style of art.

THE SHADOW OF THE OBELISK. HOME returning from the music which had so entranced my brain,

That the road I scarce remember'd to the Pincian Hill again,

Nay, was willing to forget it underneath a moon so fair,

In a solitude so sacred, and so summer-like in airCame I to the side of Tiber, hardly conscious where I stood,

Till I mark'd the sullen murmur of the venerable flood.

Rome lay doubly dead around me, sunk in silence calm and deep;

'Twas the death of desolation-and the nightly

one of sleep.

Yet no monumental fragment, storied arch or temple vast,

Mid the mean, plebeian buildings loudly whisper'd of the Past.

Tether'd by the shore, some barges hid the wave's august repose;

Petty sheds of merchants merely, nigh the Campus Martius rose;

Hardly could the dingy Thamis, when his tide is ebbing low,

Life's dull scene in colder colours to the homesick exile show.

Winding from the vulgar prospect, through a labyrinth of lanes,

Where for centuries, every morning saw it creeping, long and dun,

O'er the stones perchance of Memphis, or the City of the Sun.

Kingly turrets look'd upon it-pyramids and sculptured fanes :

Towers and pyramid have moulder'd-but the shadow still remains.

Tired of that lone tomb of Egypt, o'er the seas the trophy flew;

Here the eternal apparition met the millions' daily

view.

Virgil's foot has touch'd it often-it has kiss'd Octavia's face

Royal chariots have rolled o'er it, in the frenzy of the race,

When the strong, the swift, the valiant, mid the throng'd arena strove,

Jove.

Out alas! if mightiest empires leave so little mark behind,

How much less must heroes hope for, in the wreck of humankind!

Less than ev'n this darksome picture, which I tread beneath my feet,

Copied by a lifeless moonbeam on the pebbles of the street;

Since if Cæsar's best ambition, living, was to be renown'd,

What shall Cæsar leave behind him, save the shadow of a sound?

HUDSON RIVER.

RIVERS that roll most musical in song
Are often lovely to the mind alone;
The wanderer muses, as he moves along
Their barren banks, on glories not their own.
When, to give substance to his boyish dreams,
He flies abroad far countries to survey,
Oft must he whisper, greeting foreign streams,
"Their names alone are beautiful, not they."
And oft, remembering rivulets more fair,

Whose praise no poet yet has dared to sound, He marvels much that deserts dull and bare, Soak'd by scant brooks, should be so wide renown'd.

If chance he mark the shrunken Danube pour
A tide more meager than his native Charles;
Or views the Rhone when summer's heat is o'er,
Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Arles;

Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling

His sullen tribute at the feet of Rome, Oft to his partial thought must memory bring More noble waves that sleep unhymn'd at home; Then will he mourn that not in nature dwell

The charms which fired him in harmonious verse, For numbers veil mean objects with a spell Whose mist the reasoning senses must disperse. But bid him climb the Catskill to behold

Thy flood, O Hudson! marching to the deep, And tell what strain of any bard of old

Might paint thy grace and imitate thy sweep. In distant lands, ambitious walls and towers Declare what robbers once the realm possess'd, But here heaven's handiwork surpasses ours, And man has hardly more than built his nest. No storied castle overawes thy heights,

Nor antique arches curb thy current's play,
Nor crumbling architrave the mind invites
To dream of deities long pass'd away.

No Gothic buttress, nor decaying shaft

Of marble yellow'd by a thousand years, Rears a proud landmark to the cloudlike craft That grows in sight, then melts and disappears. But cliffs, unalter'd from their primal form Since the subsiding of the deluge, rise And lift their savins to the upper storm,

To screen the skiff that underneath it plies.

Farms, rich not more in harvests, than in men

Of Saxon mould, and strong for every toil, Gem the green mead or scatter through the glen Boeotian plenty in a Spartan soil.

Then, where the reign of cultivation ends,

Again the beauteous wilderness begins; From steep to steep one solemn wild extends, Till some new hamlet's growth the boscage thing. And there deep groves for ever have remain'd

Touch'd by no axe-by no proud owner nursed; As now they bloom, they bloom'd when Pharaoh Lineal descendants of creation's first. [reign'd Thou Scottish Tweed, whose course is holier now, Since thy last minstrel laid him down to die, Where through the casement of his chamber thou Didst mix thy moan with his departing sigh; A single one of Hudson's lesser hills

Might furnish forests for the whole of thine,
Hide in thick shade all Humber's feeding rills
And blacken all the children of the Tyne.
Whatever waters rush from Albion's heart,
To float the citadels that crowd her sea,
In nothing save the meaner pomp of Art,

Sublimer Hudson! can be named with thee.
Could bloated Thames with all his riches buy
To deck the strand which London loads with gold,
Sunshine so fresh-such purity of sky

As bless thy sultry season and thy cold?
No deeds we know, are chronicled of thee
In sacred scrolls; no tales of doubtful claim
Have hung a history on every tree,

And given each rock its fable and a fame.
But neither here hath any conqueror trod,

Nor grim invaders from barbarian climes; No horrors feign'd of giant or of god

Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes. Here never yet have happy fields laid waste,

And butcher'd flocks and heaps of burning fruit, The cottage ruin'd-and the shrine defaced, Track'd the foul passage of the feudal brute. "Alas, Antiquity!" the stranger sighs

"Scenes wanting thee soon pall upon the view; The soul's indifference dulls the sated eyes,

Where all is fair indeed-but all is new." False thought! is age to musty books confined!

To Grecian fragments and Egyptian bones? Hath Time no monuments to raise the mind, More than old fortresses and sculptured stones! Call not this new which is the only land

That wears unchanged the same primeval face Which, when just budding from its Maker's hand, Gladden'd the first great grandsire of our race. Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth Glide past green Eden towards the unknown Than Hudson flash'd upon the infant earth,

[south,

And kiss'd the ocean with its nameless, mouth. Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges, and the Nile! Thebes and the pyramids to thee are young; Oh! had thy fountain burst from Britain's isle, Till now perchance it had not flow'd unsung.

ELEGY IN A NEW ENGLAND CHURCH

YARD.

O THо that in the beautiful repose

Of the deep waters, down below the storms, Art calmly waiting where the coral grows, With many wonderful and lovely forms. If thou wert happy in the life above,

Thou art thrice happier bleaching there below, Where no sad pilgrim led by lingering love, Can vex thy ghost with his presumptuous wo. Or if misfortune dogg'd thee from the womb To the last unction, thou art overpaid By the majestic silence of thy tomb

For all the pangs that life a penance made. Such rest kings have not in the marble caves Before whose doors perpetual tapers burn; Nor saints that sleep in consecrated graves, Nor bards whose ashes grace the loftiest urn. Nor even those humbler tenants of a mound, Under some elm that thrives upon the dead, In quiet corners of neglected ground,

Scarce twice a year disturb'd by living tread. For even there the impious throng may stream, Startling the silent people of the sod; Fierce wheels may clash, the fiery engine scream, And mortal clamours drown the voice of Gon. Such fancies held me as I stray'd at noon

By the old churchyard, known to few but me, Where oft my childhood by the wintry moon Saw the pale spectres glide, or fear'd to see. Head-stone or mound had never mark'd the spot Within man's memory; weeds had strewn it o'er; Yet had no swain profaned it with his cot,

And the plough spared it for the name it bore. Out on this busy age! that noonday walk

Show'd strange mutations to my dreaming eye; No phantom pass'd me with sepulchral stalk

The rush and thunder of the world went by. Men, breathing men, no spirits faint and wan, But proud and noisy children of to-day, Flash'd on my sight an instant and were gone, Swift as the shades they seem'd to scare away. Curl'd o'er my head a momentary cloud

From the light vapour that they left behind; Then, fitting emblem of that flying crowd, It sway'd and melted in the April wind. O thou that slumberest underneath the sea, Down fathoms deep below all living things, Who seeks for perfect rest must follow thee, And sleep till GABRIEL wake him with his wings.

"AVE MARIA!"

AVE MARIA! 'tis the evening hymn

Of many pilgrims on the land and sea; Soon as the day withdraws, and two or three Faint stars are burning, ali whose eyes are dim With tears or watching, all of weary limb,

Or troubled spirit, yield the bended knee, And find, O Virgin! life's repose in thee. I, too, at nightfall, when the newborn rim

Of the young moon is first beheld above, Tune my fond thoughts to their devoutest key, And from all bondage-save remembrance-free, Glad of my liberty as NOAH's dove, Seek the Madonna most adored by me, And say mine" Ave Marias" to my love.

THE BURIAL OF A FRIEND. THE bier is ready and the mourners wait, The funeral car stands open at the gate. Bring down our brother; bear him gently, too; So, friends, he always bore himself with you. Down the sad staircase, from the darken'd room, For the first time, he comes in silent gloom. Who ever left this hospitable door Without his smile and warm "good-by," before? Now we for him the parting word must say To the mute threshold whence we bear his clay! The slow procession lags upon the road"Tis heavy hearts that make the heavy load; And all too brightly glares the burning noon On the dark pageant-be it ended soon! The quail is piping and the locust sings; Oh grief, thy contrast with these joyous things! What pain to see, amid our task of wo, The laughing river keep its wonted flow! His hawthorns there-his proudly waving cornAnd all so flourishing and so forlorn! His new-built cottage, too, so fairly plann'd, Whose chimney ne'er shall smoke at his command. Two sounds were heard, that on the spirit fell With sternest moral: one the passing bell! The other told the history of the hour, Life's fleeting triumphs, mortal pride and power. Two trains there met-the iron-sinew'd horse And the black hearse-the engine and the corse! Haste on your track, you fiery-winged steed, I hate your presence and approve your speed; Fly with your eager freight of breathing men, And leave these mourners to their march again. Swift as my wish they broke their slight delay, And life and death pursued their separate way.

The solemn service in the church was held, Bringing strange comfort as the anthem swell'd, And back we bore him to his long repose, Where his great elm its evening shadow throwsA sacred spot! There often he hath stood, Show'd us his harvests, and pronounced them good; And we may come, with eyes no longer dim, To watch new harvests and remember him.

Peace to thee, STEUART, and to us! th' All-Wise Would ne'er have found thee readier for the skies. In His large love he kindly waits the best, The fittest mood, to summon every guest; So, in his prime, our dear companion went, When the young soul is easy to repent. No long purgation shall he now require In black remorse-in penitential fire; From what few frailties might have stain'd his morn Our tears may wash him pure as he was born.

ON A BUST OF DANTE.

SEE, from this counterfeit of him

Whom Arno shall remember long, How stern of lineament, how grim

The father was of Tuscan song. There but the burning sense of wrong, Perpetual care and scorn abide; Small friendship for the lordly throng; Distrust of all the world beside.

Faithful if this wan image be,

No dream his life was-but a fight; Could any Beatrice see

A lover in that anchorite? To that cold Ghibeline's gloomy sight Who could have guess'd the visions came Of beauty, veil'd with heavenly light, In circles of eternal flame?

The lips, as Cumae's cavern close,

The cheeks, with fast and sorrow thin, The rigid front, almost morose,

But for the patient hope within,
Declare a life whose course hath been
Unsullied still, though still severe,
Which, through the wavering days of sin,
Keep itself icy-chaste and clear.

Not wholly such his haggard look
When wandering once, forlorn, he stray'd,
With no companion save his book,

To Corvo's hush'd monastic shade;
Where, as the Benedictine laid

His palm upon the pilgrim guest, The single boon for which he pray'd

The convent's charity was rest.

Peace dwells not here-this rugged face
Betrays no spirit of repose;

The sullen warrior sole we trace,
The marble man of many woes.
Such was his mien when first arose

The thought of that strange tale divine,
When hell he peopled with his foes,

The scourge of many a guilty line.

War to the last he waged with all

The tyrant canker-worms of earth; Baron and duke, in hold and hall,

Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth;

It is told of DANTE that when he was roaming over Italy, he came to a certain monastery, where he was met by one of the friars, who blessed him, and asked what was his desire-to which the weary stranger simply answered "Puce."

He used Rome's harlot for his mirth;
Pluck'd bare hypocrisy and crime;
But valiant souls of knightly worth
Transmitted to the rolls of Time.

O Time! whose verdicts mock our own,
The only righteous judge art thou;
That poor, old exile, sad and lone,
Is Latium's other Virgil now:
Before his name the nations bow:

His words are parcel of mankind, Deep in whose hearts, as on his brow, The marks have sunk of Dante's mind.

ON A MAGDALEN, BY GUIDO.

MARY, when thou wert a virgin,

Ere the first, the fatal sin
Stole into thy bosom's chamber,
Leading six companions in;
Ere those eyes had wept an error,

What thy beauty must have been! Ere those lips had paled their crimson, Quivering with the soul's despair, Ere with pain they oft had parted

In thine agony of prayer,
Or, instead of pearls, the tear-drops
Glisten'd in thy streaming hair.
While in ignorance of sorrow

Still thy heart serenely dream'd,
And the morning light of girlhood

On thy cheek's young garden beam'd, Where th' abundant rose was blushing, Not of earth couldst thou have seem'd. When thy frailty fell upon thee,

Lovely wert thou, even then;
Shame itself could not disarm thee
Of the charms that vanquish'd men;
Which of Salem's purest daughters
Match'd the sullied Magdalen!

But thy Master's eye beheld thee
Foul and all unworthy heaven;
Pitied, pardon'd, purged thy spirit

Of its black, pernicious leaven;
Drove the devils from out the temple,
All the dark and guilty seven.

Oh the beauty of repentance!
Mary, tenfold fairer now
Art thou with those dewy eyelids,
And that anguish on thy brow;
Ah, might every sinful sister
Grow in beauty ev'n as thou'