And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side.
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the

leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a lot so brief; Yet not unmeet it was, that one, like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

THE sad and solemn night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious hosts of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires:

All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

Her constellations come, and round the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they :
Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen they follow in his flaming way:
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.
Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,
And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;

There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun

The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wreck'd mariner, his compass lost,

Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,
Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray
The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

AUTUMN WOODS.

ERE, in the northern gale,

The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.

The mountains that infold

In their wide sweep, the color'd landscape round,
Seem groups of giant kings in purple and gold,
That guard the enchanted ground.

I roam the woods that crown
The upland, where the mingled splendors glow,
Where the gay company of trees look down
On the green fields below.

My steps are not alone

In these bright walks; the sweet southwest at play,
Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown
Along the winding way.

And far in heaven, the while,

The sun, that sends that gale to wander here,
Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile,-
The sweetest of the year.

Where now the solemn shade,
Verdure and gloom where many branches meet;
So grateful, when the noon of summer made
The valleys sick with heat?

Let in through all the trees

Come the strange rays; the forest depths are bright;
Their sunny-colour'd foliage, in the breeze,

Twinkles, like beams of light.

4

The rivulet, late unseen,

Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run,
Shines with the image of its golden screen,

And glimmerings of the sun.

But 'neath yon crimson tree,

Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,

Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,

Her blush of maiden shame.

Oh, Autumn! why so soon

Depart the hues that make thy forests glad;
Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon,
And leave thee wild and sad!

Ah, 't were a lot too blest

For ever in thy colour'd shades to stray
Amidst the kisses of the soft southwest
To rove and dream for aye;

And leave the vain low strife,

That makes men mad-the tug for wealth and power,
The passions and the cares that wither life,
And waste its little hour.

,

AN INDIAN STORY.

I KNOW where the timid fawn abides
In the depths of the shaded dell,

Where the leaves are broad, and the thicket hides,
With its many stems and its tangled sides,
From the eye of the hunter well.

I know where the young May violet grows,
In its lone and lowly nook,

On the mossy bank, where the larch tree throws
Its broad dark boughs, in solemn repose,

Far over the silent brook.

And that timid fawn starts not with fear
When I steal to her secret bower,
And that young May violet to me is dear,
And I visit the silent streamlet near,
To look on the lovely flower.

Thus Maquon sings as he lightly walks
To the hunting ground on the hills;

"T is a song of his maid of the woods and rocks,
With her bright black eyes and long black locks,
And voice like the music of rills.

He goes to the chase-but evil eyes
Are at watch in the thicker shades;

For she was lovely that smiled on his sighs,
And he bore, from a hundred lovers, his prize,
The flower of the forest maids.

The boughs in the morning wind are stirr'd,
And the woods their song renew,
With the early carol of many a bird,

And the quicken'd tune of the streamlet heard
Where the hazles trickle with dew.

And Maquon has promis'd his dark-hair'd maid,
Ere eve shall redden the sky,

A good red deer from the forest shade,

That bounds with the herd through grove and glade, At her cabin door shall lie.

The hollow woods, in the setting sun,
Ring shrill with the fire-bird's lay;
And Maquon's sylvan labours are done,
And his shafts are spent, but the spoil they won
He bears on his homeward way.

He stops near his bower-his eye perceives
Strange traces along the ground-

At once, to the earth his burden he heaves,
He breaks through the veil of boughs and leaves,
And gains its door with a bound.

But the vines are torn on its walls that leant,
And all from the young shrubs there

By struggling hands have the leaves been rent,
And there hangs, on the sassafras broken and bent,
One tress of the well known hair.

But where is she who at this calm hour,
Ever watch'd his coming to see,

She is not at the door, nor yet in the bower,
He calls-but he only hears on the flower
The hum of the laden bee.

It is not a time for idle grief,

Nor a time for tears to flow;

The horror that freezes his limbs is brief-
He grasps his war axe and bow, and a sheaf
Of darts made sharp for the foe.

And he looks for the print of the ruffian's feet,
Where he bore the maiden away;

And he darts on the fatal path more fleet
Than the blast that hurries the vapour and sleet
O'er the wild November day.

"T was early summer when Maquon's bride Was stolen away from his door;

But at length the maples in crimson are dyed,
And the grape is black on the cabin side,-

And she smiles at his hearth once more.

But far in a pine grove, dark and cold,
Where the yellow leaf falls not,
Nor the autumn shines in scarlet and gold,
There lies a hillock of fresh dark mould,
In the deepest gloom of the spot.

And the Indian girls, that pass that way,
Point out the ravisher's grave;

"And how soon to the bower she loved," they say,
"Return'd the maid that was borne away
From Maquon, the fond and the brave."

THANATOPSIS.

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his dark musings, with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth, unto the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around-
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,-
Comes a still voice-Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,

To be a brother to th' insensible rock,

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place