They look'd upon their Lord's calm. kingly face,
And bade Religion come and kiss each starry place.
At least, I must have peace, afar from strife-
No motion save enough to leave me life.
And I shall lay me gently in a nook
Where a small bay the sluggish tide receives,
And, reading, hear some bland old poet's book
Shake delicate music from its mystic leaves,
While under drowsy clouds the dull waves go,
And echo softly back the melody in their flow.
Will ye not also lend your souls to Song?
Ye! of the land where Nature's noblest rhyme,
Niagara, sounds the myth of Time;
And where the Mississippi darkly goes
Amid the trembling woods,

Gloomily murmuring legends of the floods
That troubled space before the worlds arose......
Or sleep. Why lose its wondrous world?
Look on its valleys, on its mountains look,
And cloudy streams;

Behold the arabesque land of dreams!

The golden mists are lazily curl'd;

And see in yonder glen,

Beside a little brook

Mid sleeping flocks, some sleeping men:

And one, who tries to watch, for danger's sake,
Nods and winks,

And vainly hums a tune to keep awake,
And now beside his brethren slowly sinks.

Ah, sleep like him! why lose its world?
Now when the banners of the day are furl'd
And safely put away:

Now when a languid glory binds

The long dim chambers of the darkling west,
While far below yon azure river winds
Like a blue vein on sleeping Beauty's breast.....
Then, millions, rest or dream with me:
Let not the strugle thus forever be.

Not from the gold that wounded Earth reveals;
Not from your iron wheels

That vex the valleys with their thunder-peals;
Not from the oceans pallid with your wings;
Not from the power that labour brings—
The enduring grandeur of a nation springs.
The wealth may perish as a fleeting breath-
The banner'd armament may find a death
Deep in the hungry waters-and the crown
Of empire from your tall brows topple down:
But that which rains true glory o'er
The low or lofty, and the rich or poor,
Shall never die-

Daughter of Truth and Ideality,

Large Virtue towering on the throne of will!
The nations drink the heroic from her eye,
And march triumphing over every ill.
Therefore with Silence sometimes sit apart
From rude Turmoil, and dignify the heart:
And in that noble hour

All hates shall be forgotten, and sweet Love
Shall gently win us like a mild-eyed dove
That shames the storm to silence; and a power,
Unknown before, shall lap us in delight,
As troubled waves are soothed by starry night.
Then manhood shall forget the vengeful thought
In action's fierce volcano wrought;

The poor old man shall bow his snow-white head
To bless the past, forgiving all his wrongs;
And feel the breathing of his childhood's songs
Once more around him shed.

The weary slave shall rest upon the chain,
And woo to his shut eyes

The ardent aspect of his native skies-
The forms of wife and children once again
Watching for his return along the palmy plain......

Nor in repose a tentless desert fear-
The gardenless wide waste of a blank heart :
Full many a rich oasis there shall start
Between horizons to illume and cheer:
Time's misty Nile shall slowly wander through
The slumberous plain that never knoweth storms;
Eternity's calm pyramidal forins

Shall meet our dreamy view,

Duskily towering mid the hazy b'ue,

And freezing contemplation in the giddy air.
Then all the weary myriads resting there-
Quiet beneath the hollow sky

As shapes that in a pictured landscape lie—
Shall know that bliss, that perfect, heavenly bliss
Which falls as moonlight music on a scene like this.

WORDSWORTH.

SUNSET is on the dial: and I know My hands are feeble and my head is white With many snows, and in my dim old eyes Light plays the miser with a frugal care, And soon the curtain drops. But still I know, The soul in sceptred majesty of will Leaves not the royal dais.

The ancient winds Still chant around me all the solemn themes I learn'd when young; and in the hollow flower I hear the murmur left there by the bee; And jubilant rivers laugh and clap their hands Amid the leaning hills that nurse them there; And far away I see the mountains lift Their silent tops to heaven, like thoughts Too vast for speech; and over all, the sun Stands by his flaming altar, and beholds, As he beheld through many centuries gone, The holocausts of light roll up to Heaven; And when the evening calls her starry flock, I know that Mazzaroth will sit and sing Within his azure house; and I shall hear The inmost melody of every star, And know the meaning of the mystic sea: And in the deep delight their presence gives I shall be calm, and nevermore complain That still the play-a venerable play, World-wide of this humanity goes on, Still dark the plot, the issues unperceived. So, with all things thus filling every sense, The soul in sceptred majesty of will, Sits on her royal dais.

Then why should I My office yield, and let the general hymn Unheeded harmonize the jangling space? By action only doth Creation hold

Her charter and, that gone, the worlds are dead:

THE MOUNDS OF AMERICA.*

COME to the mounds of death with me. They
stretch

From deep to deep, sad, venerable, vast,
Graves of gone empires-gone without a sigh,
Like clouds from heaven. They stretch'd from
deep to deep

Before the Roman smote his mail d hand
On the gold portals of the dreaming East;
Before the pleiad, in white trance of song,
Beyond her choir of stars went wandering.

The great old trees, rank'd on these hills of death,
Have melancholy hymns about all this;
And when the moon walks her inheritance
With slow, imperial pace, the trees look up
And chant in solemn cadence. Come and hear.
"O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud,
But listen to our words. We, too, are old,
Though not so old as thou. The ancient towns,
The cities throned far apart like queens,
The shadowy domes, the realms majestical,
Slept in thy younger beams. In every leaf
We ho'd their dust, a king in every trunk.
We, too, are very old: the wind that wails
In our broad branches, from swart Ethiop come
But now, wail'd in our branches long ago,
Then come from darken'd Calvary. The hills
Lean'd ghastly at the tale that wan wind told;
The streams crept shuddering through the dark;
The torrent of the North, from morn till eve,
On his steep ledge hung pausing; and o'er all
Such silence fell, we heard the conscious rills
Drip slowly in the caves of central earth.
So were the continents by His crowned grief
And glory bound together, ere the hand
Of Albion tamed the far Atlantic: so
Have we, whose aspect faced that time, the right
Of language unto all, while memory holds.

"O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud, But hear our words. We know that thou didst see The whole that we would utter-thou that wert A worship unto realms beyond the flood— But we are very lonesome on these mounds, And speech doth make the burden of sad thought Endurable; while these, the people new, That take our land, may haply learn from us What wonder went before them; for no word E'er came from thee, so beautiful, so lone, Throned in thy still domain, superbly calm And silent as a god.

Here empires rose and died; Their very dust, beyond the Atlantic borne In the pale navies of the charter'd wind, Stains the white Alp. Here the proud city ranged Spire after spire, like star ranged after star,

"The mounds" are scattered over the whole of North America. Some of them are of vast size. They are full of skeletons crumbling at the touch), that evidently were deposited there many centuries since. The Indians cannot give us any account of the origin of the mounds, and they must have been erected by a people that lived in America at a very ancient period-a people (as the ruins of large cities, still faintly visible in the forests, naturally suggest) far advanced in civilization.

Along the dim empyrean, till the air
Went mad with splendour, and the dwellers cried,
Our walls have married Time !'-Gone are the

marts,

The insolent citadels, the fearful gates,

The glorious domes that rose like summer clouds:
Gone are their very names! The royal ghost
Cannot discern the old imperial haunts,

But goes about perplexed like a mist
Between a ruin and the awful stars.
Nations are laid beneath our feet. The bard
Who stood in Song's prevailing light, as stands
The apocalyptic angel in the sun,

And rain'd melodious fire on all the realms;
The prophet pale, who shudder'd in his gloom,
As the white cataract shudders in its mist;
The hero shattering an old kingdom down
With one clear trumpet's peal; the boy, the sage,
Subject and lord, the beautiful, the wise—
Gone, gone to nothingness.

The years glide on, The pitiless years; and all alike shall fail, State after state rear'd by the solemn sea, Or where the Hudson goes unchallenged past The ancient warder of the Palisades, Or where, rejoicing o'er the enormous cloud, Beam the blue A leganies-all shall fail: The Ages chant their dirges on the peaks; The pal's are ready in the peopled vales; And nations fil one common sepulchre. Nor goes the Earth on her dark way alone. Each star in yonder vault doth hold the dead In its funereal deeps: Arcturus broods Over vast sepulchres that had grown old Before the Earth was made: the universe Is but one mighty cemetery,

Rolling around its central, solemn sun.

"O patient Moon! go not behind a cloud, But listen to our words. We, too, must dieAnd thou!-the vassal stars shall fail to hear Thy queenly voice over the azure fields Calling at sunset. They shall fade. The Earth Shall look, and miss their sweet, familiar eyes, And crouching die beneath the feet of Gov. Then come the glories, then the nobler times, For which the Orbs travail'd in sorrow; then The mystery shall be clear, the burden gone; And surely men shall know why nations came Transfigured for the pangs; why not a spot Of this wide world but hath a tale of wo; Why all this glorious universe is Death's.

"Go, Moon! and tell the stars, and tell the suns, Impatient of the wo, the strength of HIM Who doth consent to death; and tell the climes That meet thy mournful eyes, one after one, Through all the lapses of the lonesome night, The pathos of repose, the might of Death!"

The voice is hush'd; the great old wood is still: The moon, like one in meditation, walks Behind a cloud. We, too, have theme for thought, While, as a sun, Gon takes the west of Time And smites the pyramid of Eternity. The shadow lengthens over many worlds Doom'd to the dark mausoleum and mound.

GREENWOOD CEMETERY.

HERE are the houses of the dead. Here youth And age and manhood, stricken in his strength, Hold solemn state and awful silence keep, While Earth goes murmuring in her ancient path, And troubled Ocean tosses to and fro Upon his mountainous bed impatient'y, And many stars make worship musical In the din-aisled abyss, and over all The Lord of Life, in meditation sits Changeless, alone, beneath the large white dome Of Immortality. I pause and think

Among these walks lined by the frequent tombs;
For it is very wonderful. Afar

The populous city lifts its tall, bright spires,
And snowy sails are glancing on the bay,
As if in merriment-but here all sleep;
They sleep, these calm, pale people of the past:
Spring plants her rosy feet on their dim homes-
They sleep?-Sweet Summer comes and calls, and
With all her passionate poetry of flowers [calls
Wed to the music of the soft south wind-
They sleep!-The lonely Autumn sits and sobs
Between the cold white tombs, as if her heart
Would break-they sleep!-Wid Winter comes
and chants

Majestical the mournful sagas learn'd
Far in the melancholy North, where God
Walks forth alone upon the desolate seas-
They slumber still!-Sleep on, O passionless dead!
Ye make our world sublime: ye have a power
And majesty the living never hold.
Here Avarice shall forget his den of gold!
Here Lust his beautiful victim, and hot Hate
His crouching foe. Ambition here shall lean
Against Death's shaft, veiling the stern, bright eye
That, over-bold, would take the height of gods,
And know Fame's nothingness. The sire shall come,
The matron and the child, through many years,
To this fair spot, whether the plumed hearse
Moves slowly through the winding walks, or Death
For a brief moment pauses: all shall come
To feel the touching eloquence of
And therefore it was wel for us to clothe
The place with beauty. No dark terror here
Shall chill the generous tropic of the soul,
But Poetry and her starred comrade Art
Shall make the sacred country of the dead
Magnificent. The fragrant flowers shall smile
Over the low, green graves; the trees shall shake
Their soul-like cadences upon the tombs;

The little lake, set in a paradise

graves:

Of wood, shall be a mirror to the moon
What time she looks from her imperial tent
In long delight at all below; the sea
Shall lift some stately dirge he loves to breathe
Over dead nations, while calm sculptures stand
On every hill, and look like spirits there
That drink the harmony. Oh, it is well!
Why should a darkness scowl on any spot
Where man grasps immortality? Light, light,
And art, and poetry, and eloquence,
And all that we call glorious, are its dower.

Ch, ye whose mouldering frames were brought and placed

By pious hands within these flowery slopes
And gentle hills, where are ye dwelling now?
For man is more than element. The soul
Lives in the body as the sunbeam lives
In trees or flowers that were but clay without.
Then where are ye, lost sunbeams of the mind?
Are ye where great Orion towers and holds
Eternity on his stupendous front?

Or where pale Neptune in the distant space
Shows us how far, in His creative mood,
With pomp of silence and concentred brows,
Walk'd forth the Almighty? Haply ye have gone
Where other matter roundeth into shapes
Of bright beatitude: or do ye know
Aught of dull space or time, and its dark load
Of aching weariness?

They answer not.
But HE whose love created them of old,
To cheer his solitary realm and reign,
With love will still remember them.

HYMN TO THE HUDSON RIVER.

LOSE not a memory of the glorious scenes, Mountains, and palisades, and leaning rocks, Steep white-wail'd towns and ships that lie beneath, By which, like some serene, heroic soul Revolving nob'e thoughts, thou calmly cam'st, O mighty river of the North! Thy lip Meets Ocean here, and in deep joy he lifts His great white brow, and gives his stormy voice A milder tone, and murmurs pleasantly To every shore, and bids the insolent blast To touch thee very gently; for thy banks Held empires broad and populous as the leaves That rustle o'er their grave-republics gone Long, long ago, before the pale men came, Like clouds into the dim and dusty past: But there is dearer reason; for the rills That feed thee, rise among the storied rocks Where Freedom built her battle-tower; and blow Their flutes of silver by the poor man's door; And innocent childhood in the ripple dips Its rosy feet; and from the round blue sky That circles ali, smiles out a certain Godhead.

Oh, lordly river! thou shalt henceforth be A wanderer of the deep; and thou shalt hear The sad, wild voices of the solemn North Utter uncertain words in cloudy rhythm, But full of terrible meaning, to the wave That moans by Labrador; and thou shalt pause To pay thy worship in the coral temples, The ancient Meccas of the reverent sea; And thou shalt start again on thy blue path To kiss the southern isles; and thou shalt know What beauty thrones the blue Symplegades, What glory the long Dardanelles; and France Shal listen to thy calm, deep voice, and learn That Freedom must be calm if she would fix Her mountain moveless in a heaving world; And Greece shall hear thee chant by Marathon,

And Ita'y shall feel thy breathing on her shores,
Where Liberty once more takes up her lance;
And when thou hurriest back, full of high themes,
Great Albion shall joy through every cliff,
And lordly hall, and peasant-home, and old
Cathedral where earth's emperors sleep-whose

crowns

Were laurel and whose sceptres pen and harp-
The mother of our race shall joy to hear
Thy low, sweet murmuring: her sonorous tongue
Is thine, her glory thine; for thou dost bear
On thy rejoicing tide, rejoicing at the task,
The manly Saxon sprung from her own loins
In far America.

Roll on roll on,
Thou river of the North! Tell thou to all
The isles, tell thou to all the continents
The grandeur of my land. Speak of its vales
Where Independence wears a pastoral wreath
Amid the holy quiet of his flock;

And of its mountains with their cloudy beards
Toss'd by the breath of centuries; and speak
Of its tall cataracts that roll their bass
Among the choral of its midnight storms,
And of its rivers lingering through the plains,
So long, that they seem made to measure Time;
And of its lakes that mock the haughty sea;
And of its caves where banish'd gods might find
Night large enough to hide their crownless heads;
And of its sunsets, glorious and broad
Above the prairies spread like oceans on
And on, and on over the far din leagues,
Till vision shudders o'er immensity.*
Rol on! roll on, thou river of the North!
Bear on thy wave the music of the crash
That tells a forest's fall, wide woods that hold
Beneath their cloister'd bark a registry
Where Time may almost find how old he is.†
Keep in thy memory the frequent homes,
That from the ruin rise, the triumphs these
Of real kings whose conquering march shines up
Into the wondering Oregon.

Oh, tell,

Thou glorious stream! to Europe's stately song,
Whose large white brows are fullest of the god-
To Asia's mighty hordes, whose dark eyes gaze
With wonder and unchangeable belief

On mountains where JEHOVAH sat, when Earth
Was fit to hold JEHOVAH on her thrones-
To Afric, with her huge, rough brain on fire,
And Titan energy gone mad-teil thou to all,
That Freedom hath a home; that man arose
Even as a mountain rises when its heart
Of flame is stirr'd, and its indignant breast
Heaves, and burls off the enormous chain of ice
That marr'd its majesty. Say to the tribes,
"There is a hope, a love, a home for all;
The rivers woo them to their lucent lengths;
The woods to their green haunts; the prairies sigh
Throughout their broad and flowery solitudes

* A reference to American geography will show that there is no extravagance in these lines. Witness Niagara, the Mississippi river, Lake Superior, the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the Grand Prairie of Illinois.

† The concentric circles of trees designate their age.

For some companionship. True, there are chains
On certain swarthy limbs. It shall not be
Forever. Yes! the fetter'd shall be loosed,
And liberty beam ample as the land!"

And, fearless river! tell to all the tribes
The might that lives in every human soul,
And what a feeble thing a tyrant is!
So speaking, that their hearts will bow
Before the beautiful, which holds the true,
As heaven in its sweet azure holds the sun;
So speaking, that they see the universe
Was made for Beauty's sake, and like a robe
It undulates around the inner soul,
A feeling and a harmony, a thought
That shows a deeper thought, until the soul
Trembles before the vision, and the voice,
Made musical by worship, whispers," Joy !"
But utter all most calmly, with thy voice
Low as a seraph's near the eternal throne,
For mighty truths are always very calm.

CHANT OF A SOUL.

Mr youth has gone-the glory, the delight
That gave new moons unto the night,

And put in every wind a tone

And presence that was not its own.
I can no more create,

What time the Autumn blows her solemn tromp,
And goes with golden pomp

Through our unmeasurable woods:

I can no more create, sitting in youthful state
Above the mighty floods,

And peopling glen, and wave, and air,
With shapes that are immortal. Then
The earth and heaven were fair,

While only less than gods seem'd all my fellow-men.

Oh! the delight, the gladness,

The sense yet love of madness,
The glorious choral exultations,
The far-off sounding of the banded nations,
The wings of angels at melodious sweeps
Upon the mountain's hazy steeps-

The very dead astir within their coffin'd deeps;
The dreamy veil that wrapp'd the star and sod-
A swathe of purple, gold, and amethyst;
And, luminous behind the billowy mist,
Something that look'd to my young eyes like God.

Too late I learn I have not lived aright,
And hence the loss of that delight
Which put a moon into the moonless night.
I mingled in the human maze;

I sought their horrid shrine;

I knelt before the impure blaze;

I made their idols mine.

I lost mine early love-that land of balms
Most musical with solemn psalms
Sounding beneath the tall and graceful palms.
Who lives aright?