Then we shall hail the glorious day,

The spirit's new creation, And pour our grateful feelings forth, A pure and warm libation.

Wake, mother, wake to chastened joy, The golden sun is dawning!

Wake, mother, wake, and hail with me

This happy Christmas morning.

The winter was occupied by a course of reading in history, and by occasional composition. In May the family removed to Saratoga. Margaret fancied herself, under the balmy influences of the season, much better-but all others had abandoned hope. It is a needless and painful task to trace step by step the progress of disease. The closing scene came on the 25th of the following November.

The poetical writings of Lucretia Davidson, which have been collected, amount in all to two hundred and seventy-eight pieces, among which are five of several cantos each. A portion of these were published, with a memoir by Professor S. B. F. Morse, in 1829. The volume was well received, and noticed in a highly sympathetic and lulatory manner by Southey, in the Quarterly Review. The poems were reprinted, with a life by Miss Sedgwick, which had previously appeared in Sparks's American Biography.

Margaret's poems were introduced to the world under the kind auspices of Washington Irving. Revised editions of both were published in 1850 in one volume, a happy companionship which will doubtless be permanent.

A volume of Selections from the Writings of Mrs. Margaret M. Dwidson, the Mother of Lucretia Maria and Margaret M. Davidson, with a preface by Miss C. M. Sedgwick, appeared in 1844. It contains a prose tale, A Few Eventful Days in 1814; a poetical version of Ruth and of Ossian's McFingal, with a few Miscellaneous Poems.

Lieutenant L. P. Davidson, of the U. S. army, the brother of Margaret and Lucretia, who also died young, wrote verses with elegance and ease.t

EMMA C EMBURY.

Mrs. Embury, the wife of Mr. Daniel Embury, a gentleman of wealth and distinguished by his intellectual and social qualities, a resident of Brooklyn, New York, is the daughter of James R. Manly, for a long while an eminent New York physician. She early became known to the public as a writer

The following lines were addressed from Greta Hall, in 1842. by Caroline Southey, "To the Mother of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson."

Oh, lady! greatly favored! greatly tried!
Was ever glory, ever grief like thine,
Since her's,-the mother of the Man divine-
The perfect one-the crowned, the crucified?
Wonder and joy, high hopes and chastened pride
Thrilled thee; intently watching, hour by hour,
The fast unfolding of each human flower,
In hues of more than earthly brilliance dyed-
And then, the blight-the fading-the first fear-
The sickening hope-the doom-the end of all;
Heart-withering, if indeed all ended here.

But from the dust, the coffin, and the pall,
Mother bereaved! thy tearful eyes upraise-
Mother of angels! join their songs of praise.

+ Some lines from his pen, entitled Longings for the West, are printed in the South Lit. Mess. for Feb. 1843.

of verses in the columns of the New York Mirror and other journals under the signature of “Ianthe." In the year 1828 a volume from her pen was published, Guido, and Other Poems, by Ianthe. This was followed by a volume on Female Education, and a long series of tales and sketches in the magazines of the day, which were received with favor for their felicitous sentiment and ease in composition. Constance Latimer is one of these, which has given title to a collection of the stories, The Blind Girl and Other Tales. Her Pictures of Early Life, Glimpses of Home Life or Causes and Consequences, are similar volumes. In 1845 she contributed the letter-press, both prose and verse, to an illustrated volume in quarto, Nature's Gems, or American Wild Flowers. She has also written a volume of poems, Love's TokenFlowers, in which these symbols of sentiment are gracefully interpreted. In 1848 appeared her volume, The Waldorf Family, or Grandfather's Legends, in which the romantic lore of Brittany is presented to the young.

Carne C. Contury

These writings, which exhibit good sense and healthy natural feeling, though numerous, are to be taken rather as illustrations of domestic life and retired sentiment than as the occupation of a professed literary career.

Of her poetry, her songs breathe an air of nature, with much sweetness.

BALLAD.

The maiden sat at her busy wheel,

Her heart was light and free,
And ever in cheerful song broke forth
Her bosom's harmless glee:
Her song was in mockery of love,
And oft I heard her say,
"The gathered rose and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day."

I looked on the maiden's rosy cheek,
And her lip so full and bright,
And I sighed to think that the traitor love
Should conquer a heart so light:
But she thought not of future days of woe,
While she carolled in tones so gay-
"The gathered rose and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day."

A year passed on, and again I stood
By the humble cottage door;
The maid sat at her busy wheel,

But her look was blithe no more;
The big tear stood in her downcast eye,
And with sighs I heard her say,
"The gathered rose and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day."

Oh, well I knew what had dimmed her eye,
And made her cheek so pale:

The maid had forgotten her early song,

While she listened to love's soft tale; She had tasted the sweets of his poisoned cup, It had wasted her life away

And the stolen heart, like the gathered rose, Had charmed but for a day.

Come to me, love; forget each sordid duty

That chains thy footsteps to the crowded mart, Come, look with me upon earth's summer beauty, And let its influence cheer thy weary heart. Come to me, love! Come to me, love; the voice of song is swelling From nature's harp in every varied tone, And many a voice of bird and bee is telling A tale of joy amid the forests lone.

Come to me, love! Come to me, love; my heart can never doubt thee, Yet for thy sweet companionship I pine; Oh, never more can joy be joy without thee, My pleasures, even as my life, are thine. Come to me, love!

OH! TELL ME NOT OF LOFTY FATE,

Oh! tell me not of lofty fate,
Of glory's deathless name;
The bosom love leaves desolate,
Has naught to do with fame.
Vainly philosophy would soar-
Love's height it may not reach;
The heart soon learns a sweeter lore
Than ever sage could teach.

The cup may bear a poisoned draught,
The altar may be cold,

But yet the chalice will be quaffed-
The shrine sought as of old.

Man's sterner nature turns away

To seek ambition's goal!

Wealth's glittering gifts, and pleasure's ray,
May charm his weary soul;

But woman knows one only dream-
That broken, all is o'er;

For on life's dark and sluggish stream
Hope's sunbeam rests no more.

CAROLINE LEE HENTZ.

MRS. HENTZ is a daughter of General John Whiting, and a native of Lancaster, Massachusetts. She married, in 1825, Mr. N. M. Hentz, a French gentleman, at that time associated with Mr. Bancroft in the Round Hill School at Northampton. Mr. Hentz was soon after appointed Professor in the college at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he remained for several years. They then removed to Covington, Kentucky, and afterwards to Cincinnati and Florence, Alabama. Here they conducted for nine years a

prosperous female Academy, which in 1843 was removed to Tuscaloosa, in 1845 to Tuskegee, and in 1848 to Columbus, Georgia.

While at Covington, Mrs. Hentz wrote the tragedy of De Lara, or the Moorish Bride, for the prize of $500, offered by the Arch Street Theatre, of Philadelphia. She was the succes-ful competitor, and the play was produced, and performed for several nights with applause. It was afterwards published.

In 1843 she wrote a poem, Human and Divine Philosophy, for the Erosophic Society of the University of Alabama, before whom it was delivered by Mr. A. W. Richardson.

In 1846 Mrs. Hentz published Aunt Patty's Scrap Bag, a collection of short stories which she had previously contributed to the magazines. This was followed by The Mob Cap, 1848 ; Linda, or the Young Pilot of the Belle Creole, 1850; Rena, or the Snow Bird, 1851; Marcus Warland, or the Long Moss Spring; Eoline, or Magnolia Vale, 1852; Wild Jack; Helen and Arthur, or Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel, 1853; The Planter's Northern Bride, two volumes, the longest of her novels, in 1854.

Mrs. Hentz has also written a number of fugitive poems which have appeared in various periodicals. Her second tragedy, Lamorah, or the Western Wilds, an Indian play, was performed, and published in a newspaper at Columbus. The scenes and incidents of her stories are for the most part drawn from the Southern states, and are said to be written in the midst of her social circle, and in the intervals of the ordinary avocations of a busy life.

THE SNOW FLAKES.

Ye're welcome, ye white and feathery flakes,
That fall like the blossoms the summer wind shakes
From the bending spray-Oh! say do ye come,
With tidings to me, from my far distant home!
"Our home is above in the depths of the sky-
In the hollow of God's own hand we lie-
We are fair, we are pure, our birth is divine-
Say, what can we know of thee, or of thine?"

I know that ye dwell in the kingdoms of air-
I know ye are heavenly, pure, and fair;
But oft have I seen ye, far travellers roam,

By the cold blast driven, round my northern home.

"We roam over mountain, and valley, and sea,

We hang our pale wreaths on the leafless tree:
The herald of wisdom and merey we go,

And perchance the far home of thy childhood we know.

"We roam, and our fairy track we leave,
While for nature a winding sheet we weare-
A cold, white shroud that shall mantle the gloom,
Till her Maker recalls her to glory and bloom."
Oh! foam of the shoreless ocean above!
I know thou descendest in merey and love:
All chill as thou art, yet benign is thy birth,
As the dew that impearls the green bosom of
Earth.

And I've thought as I've seen thy tremulous spray.
Soft curling like mist on the branches lay,
In bright relief on the dark blue sky,
That thou meltest in grief when the sun came nigh.
"Say, whose is the harp whose echoing song
Breathes wild on the gale that wafts us along?

The moon, the flowers, the blossoming tree, Wake the minstrel's lyre, they are brighter than we."

The flowers shed their fragrance, the moonbeams their light,

Over scenes never veiled by your drap'ry of white; But the clime where I first saw your downy flakes fall,

My own native clime is far dearer than all.

Oh! fair, when ye clothed in their wintry mail,
The elms that o'ershadow my home in the vale,
Like warriors they looked, as they bowed in the
storm,

With the tossing plume and the towering form.

Ye fade, ye melt-I feel the warm breath

Of the redolent South o'er the desolate heath-
But tell me, ye vanishing pearls, where ye dwell,
When the dew-drops of Summer bespangle the
dell?

"We fade,- -we melt into crystalline spheres-
We weep, for we pass through a valley of tears;
But onward to glory-away to the sky-
In the hollow of God's own hand we lie."

Mrs. Whitman published in 1853 Hours of Life and Other Poems, a few of which are translations from the German. She is also the author of three ballads founded on the fairy stories of the Golden Ball, the Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, portions of which are from the pen of her sister, Miss Anna Marsh Power; and of several elaborate critical articles on German and other authors of modern Europe, in the chief languages of which she is a proficient.

Mrs. Whitman's volume of poems is a book of a rare passionate beauty, marked by fine mental "Hours of Life," characteristics. The chief poem, is a picture of the soul in its progress through time, and its search out of disappointment and experience for peace and security. Its learned philosophical spirit is not less remarkable than its tenderness and spiritual melody.

The volume also contains numerous descriptions of scenery and poems of sentiment, in which passion is intimately blended with nature. Several

of these are devoted to the memory of the late Edgar A. Poe, whose wild poetic creations and melancholy career have awakened in the author's mind a peculiar sympathy and imaginative interest.

O'erwearied with life's restless change
From extacy to agony,

Its fleeting pleasures born to die,
The mirage of its phantasie,
Its worn and melancholy range
Of hopes that could no more estrange
The married heart of memory,

Doomed, while we drain life's perfumed wine,
For the dull Lethean wave to pine,
And, for each thrill of joy, to know
Despair's slow pulse or sorrow's throe-
I sought some central truth to span
These wide extremes of good and ill-
I longed with one bold glance to scan
Life's perfect sphere,-to rend at will
The gloom of Erebus,-dread zone-
Coiled like a serpent round the throne
Of heaven,-the realm where Justice veils
Her heart and holds her even scales,-
Where awful Nemesis awaits

The doomed, by Pluto's iron gates.

In the long noon-tide of my sorrow,
I questioned of the eternal morrow;
I gazed in sullen awe

Far through the illimitable gloom
Down-deepening like the swift mælstroom,
The doubting soul to draw

Into eternal solitudes,

Where unrelenting silence broods
Around the throne of Law.

I questioned the dim chronicle
Of ages gone before-

I listened for the triumph songs

That rang from shore to shore,

Where the heroes and the conquerors wrought

The mighty deeds of yore

Where the foot-prints of the martyrs

Had bathed the earth in gore,

And the war-horns of the warriors

Were heard from shore to shore.

Their blood on desert plains was shed-
Their voices on the wind had filed-
They were the drear and shadowy DEAD!
Still, through the storied past, I sought
Au answer to my sleepless thought;
In the cloisters old and hoary
Of the medieval time-
In the rude ancestral story
Of the ancient Runic rhyme.

I paused on Grecian plains, to trace
Some remnant of a mightier race,
Serene in sorrow and in strife,
Calm conquerors of Death and Life,
Types of the god-like forms that shone
Upon the sculptured Parthenon.

But still, as when Prometheus bare
From heaven the fiery dart,

I saw the "vulture passions" tear
The proud Caucasian heart-
The war of destiny with will
Still conquered, yet conflicting still.

I heard loud Hallelujas
From Israel's golden lyre,

And I sought their great Jehovah
In the cloud and in the fire.

I lingered by the stream that flowed. "Fast by the oracle of God"—

I bowed, its sacred wave to sip

Its borders, and its palms that threw Aloft their waving coronal,

Were blistered by a poison dew.
Serener elements I sought,
Sublimer altitudes of thought,

The truth Saint John and Plato saw,
The mystic light, the inward law;
The Logos ever found and lost,
The aureola of the Ghost.

I hailed its faint auroral beam

In many a Poet's delphic dream,

On many a shrine where faith's pure flame
Through fable's gorgeous oriel came.
Around the altars of the god,
In holy passion hushed, I trod,
Where once the mighty voice of Jove
Rang through Dodona's haunted grove.
No more the dove with sable plumes*
Swept through the forest's gorgeous glooms;
The shrines were desolate and cold,
Their peans hushed, their story told,
In long, inglorious silence lost,
Like fiery tongues of Pentecost.
No more did music's golden surge
The mortal in immortal merge:
High canticles of joy and praise
Died with the dream of other days;
I only heard the Manad's wail,

That shriek that made the orient pale:
Evohe!-ah evohe!

The mystic burden of a woe

Whose dark enigma none may know; †
The primal curse--the primal throe.

Evohe-ah-evohe!

Nature shuddered at the cry
Of that ancient agony.

Still the fabled Python bound me-
Still the serpent coil enwound me--
Still I heard the Mænad's cry,
Evohe!-ah-evohe!

*

Wearied with man's discordant creed,
I sought on Nature's page to read
Life's history, ere yet she shrined
Her essence in the incarnate mind;
Intent her secret laws to trace
In primal solitudes of space,
From her first, faint atomic throes,
To where her orbéd splendor glows
In the vast, silent spheres that roll
For ever towards their unknown goal.

I turned from dull alchemic lore
With starry Chaldeans to soar,
And sought, on fancy's wing, to roam
That glorious galaxy of light

Where mingling stars, like drifting foam,

"The priestesses of Dodona assert that two black pigeons flew from Thebes in Egypt; one of which settled in Lybia, the other among themselves: which latter, resting on a beechtree, declared with a human voice that here was to be the oracle of Jove."-Herodotus. Book II, ch. 52.

"The Mænads, in their wild incantations, carried serpents in their hands, and with frantic gestures, cried out Eva! Eva! Epiphanius thinks that this invocation related to the mother of mankind; but I am inclined to believe that it was the word Epha or Opha, rendered by the Greeks, Ophis, a serpent. I take Abaddon to have been the name of the same ophite God whose worship has so long infected the world. The learned Heinsius makes Abaddon the same as the serpent Python."Jacob Bryant's Analysis of Ancient Mythology.

While Manads cry aloud Evoe. Evoe!
That voice that is contagion to the world.
Shelley's Prometheus.

Melt on the solemn shores of night;
But still the surging glory chased
The dark through night's chaotic waste,
And still, within its deepening voids,
Crumbled the burning asteroids.

Long gloating on that hollow gloom,
Methought that in some vast mælstroom,
The stars were hurrying to their doom,—
Bubbles upon life's boundless sea,
Swift meteors of eternity,

Pale sparks of mystic fire, that fall
From God's unwaning coronal.

Is there, I asked, a living woe

In all those burning orbs that glow
Through the blue ether?-do they share
Our dim world's anguish and despair-
In their vast orbits do they fly
From some avenging destiny-
And shall their wild eyes pale beneath
The dread anathema of Death?

Our own fair earth-shall she too drift,
For ever shrouded in a weft

Of stormy clouds, that surge and swirl
Around her in her dizzy whirl:—
For ever shall a shadow fall
Backward from her golden wall,

Its dark cone stretching, ghast and grey,
Into outer glooms away?—

From the sad, unsated quest

Of knowledge, how I longed to rest
On her green and silent breast!

I languished for the dews of death
My fevered heart to steep,
The heavy, honey-dews of death,
The calm and dreamless sleep.

I left my fruitless lore apart,
And leaned my ear on Nature's heart,
To hear, far from life's busy throng,
The chime of her sweet undersong.
She pressed her balmy lips to mine,
She bathed me in her sylvan springs;
And still, by many a rural shrine,
She taught me sweet and holy things.
I felt her breath my temples fan,

I learned her temperate laws to scan,
My soul, of hers, became a conscious part;
Her beauty melted through my inmost heart.

Still I languished for the word
Her sweet lips had never spoken,
Still, from the pale shadow-land,
There came nor voice nor token;
No accent of the Holy Ghost
Whispered of the loved and lost;
No bright wanderer came to tell
If, in worlds beyond the grave,
Life, love, and beauty, dwell.

A holy light began to stream
Athwart the cloud-rifts, like a dream
Of heaven; and lo! a pale, sweet face,
Of mournful grandeur and imperial grace-
A face whose mystic sadness seemed to borrow
Immortal beauty from that mortal sorrow-
Looked on me; and a voice of solemn cheer
Uttered its sweet evangels on my ear;
The open secrets of that eldest lore
That seems less to reveal than to restore.

"Pluck thou the Life-tree's golden fruit,
Nor seek to bare its sacred root;
Live, and in life's perennial faith
Renounce the heresy of death:

66

Believe, and every sweet accord
Of being, to thine ear restored,
Shall sound articulate and clear;
Perfected love shall banish fear,
Knowledge and wisdom shall approve
The divine synthesis of love."

Royally the lilies grow

On the grassy leas,

Basking in the sun and dew,
Swinging in the breeze.

Doth the wild-fowl need a chart
Through the illimitable air?
Heaven lies folded in my heart;
Seek the truth that slumbers there;
Thou art Truth's eternal heir."

"Let the shadows come and go;
Let the stormy north wind blow:
Death's dark valley cannot bind thee
In its dread abode;

There the Morning Star shall find thee,
There the living God.

Sin and sorrow cannot hide thee-
Death and hell cannot divide thee
From the love of God."

In the mystic agony
On the Mount of Calvary,
The Saviour with his dying eyes
Beheld the groves of Paradise,
"Then weep not by the charnel stone
Nor veil thine eyelids from the sun.
Upward, through the death-dark glides,
The spirit on resurgent tides

Of light and glory on its way:
Wilt thou by the cerements stay?—
Thou the risen Christ shalt see
In redeemed Humanity.
Though mourners at the portal wept,
And angels lingered where it slept,
The soul but tarried for a night,

Then plumed its wings for loftier flight." "Is thy heart so lonely?-Lo, Ready to share thy joy and woe, Poor wanderers tarry at thy gate, The way-worn and the desolate, And angels at thy threshold wait: Would'st thou love's holiest guerdon win-Arise, and let the stranger in."

"The friend whom not thy fickle will,
But the deep heart within thee, still
Yearneth to fold to its embrace,

Shall seek thee through the realms of space.
Keep the image Nature sealed
On thy heart, by love annealed,
Keep thy faith serene and pure;
Her royal promises are sure,

Her sweet betrothals shall endure."
"Hope thou all things and believe;
And, in child-like trust, achieve
The simplest mandates of the soul,
The simplest good, the nearest goal;
Move but the waters and their pulse
The broad ocean shall convulse."
"When love shall reconcile the will
Love's mystic sorrow to fulfil,
Its fiery baptism to share,-
The burden of its cross to bear,-
Earth shall to equilibrium tend,
Ellipses shall to circles bend,
And life's long agony shall end."

"Then pluck the Life-tree's golden fruit,
No blight can reach its sacred root.

The blind shall see-the dead shall live;
Can the man-child forfeit more
Than the father can forgive?

The Dragon, from his empire driven, No more shall find his place in Heaven, "Till e'en the Serpent power approve The divine potency of love." "Guard thy faith with holy care,— Mystic virtues slumber there; 'Tis the lamp within the soul Holding genii in control:

Faith shall walk the stormy water-
In the unequal strife prevail-
Nor, when comes the dread avatar
From its fiery splendors quail.
Faith shall triumph o'er the grave,
Love shall bless the life it gave."

THE TRAILING ARBUTUS.

There's a flower that grows by the greenwood tree,
In its desolate beauty more dear to me,
Than all that bask in the noontide beam
Through the long, bright summer by fount and

stream.

Like a pure hope, nursed beneath sorrow's wing,
Its timid buds from the cold moss spring,
Their delicate hues like the pink sea-shell,
Or the shaded blush of the hyacinth's bell,
Their breath more sweet than the faint perfume
That breathes from the bridal orange-bloom.

It is not found by the garden wall,

It wreathes no brow in the festal hall,
But it dwells in the depths of the shadowy wood,
And shines, like a star, in the solitude.
Never did numbers its name prolong,
Ne'er hath it floated on wings of song,
Bard and minstrel have passed it by,
And left it, in silence and shade, to die.
But with joy to its cradle the wild-bees come,
And praise its beauty with drony hum,
And children love, in the season of spring,
To watch for its earliest blossoming.

In the dewy morn of an April day,
When the traveller lingers along the way,
When the sod is sprinkled with tender green
Where rivulets water the earth, unseen,
When the floating fringe on the maple's crest
Rivals the tulip's crimson vest,

And the budding leaves of the birch-trees throw
A trembling shade on the turf below,
When my flower awakes from its dreamy rest
And yields its lips to the sweet south-west,
Then, in those beautiful days of spring,
With hearts as light as the wild-bird's wing,
Flinging their tasks and their toys aside,
Gay little groups through the wood-paths glide,
Peeping and peering among the trees

As they scent its breath on the passing breeze,
Hunting about, among lichens grey,

And the tangled mosses beside the way,
Till they catch the glance of its quiet eye,
Like light that breaks through a cloudy sky.

For me, sweet blossom, thy tendrils cling
Round my heart of hearts, as in childhood's spring,
And thy breath, as it floats on the wandering air,
Wakes all the music o. memory there.
Thou recallest the time when, a fearless child.