GEMS

FROM

THE AMERICAN POETS.

JOHN SHAW, M. D.

Dr. Shaw was born in Maryland, in 1778, and died at sea, near the West India Islands, in 1809. He was secretary to General Eaton, at Tunis, in 1800 ; and in 1803 accompanied Lord Selkirk on his expedition to form a settlement on St. Louis Island in Upper Canada. A collection of his poems was published in Philadelphia in 1810,

SONG.

Who has robb'd the ocean cave,

To tinge thy lips with coral hue ?
Who, from India's distant wave,
For thee, those pearly treasures drew ?

Who, from yonder orient sky,
Stole the morning of thine eye ?

Thousand charms, thy form to deck,

From sea, and earth, and air are torn;
Roses bloom upon thy cheek,

On thy breath their fragrance borne.

Guard thy bosom from the day,

Lest thy snows should melt away.
But one charm remains behind,

Which mute earth can ne'er impart;
Nor in ocean wilt thou find,
Nor in the circling air-a heart;

Fairest, wouldst thou perfect be,
Take, O take that heart from me!

WASHINGTON ALLSTON.

WASHINGTON ALLSTON, A. R. A., was born in South Carolina in 1779, and died in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, on the 8th of July, 1843. He was the greatest of the American painters. A collection of his poems was published in London in 1812. “ Monaldi, his principle prose work, appeared in Boston in 1841.

AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.*

ALL hail ! thou noble land,

Our fathers' native soil !
O stretch thy mighty hand,

Gigantic grown by toil,

* This poem was first published in Coleridge's “Sibylline Leaves, in 1810.

O’er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore;

For thou, with magic night,
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phæbus travels bright

The world o'er!

The genius of our clime,

From his pine-embattled steep, Shall hail the great sublime;

While the Tritons of the deep
With their conchs the kindred league shall

proclaim.
Then let the world combine
O'er the main our naval line,
Like the milky-way, shall shine

Bright in fame!

Though ages long have pass'd

Since our fathers left their home,
Their pilot in the blast,

O’er untravell’d seas to roam,-
Yet lives the blood of England in our veins !

And shall we not proclaim
That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame

By its chains ?
While the language free and bold

Which the bard of Avon sung,
In which our MILTON told

How the vault of heaven rung,
When Satan, blasted, fell with his host !

While this, with reverence meet,
Ten thousand echoes greet,

From rock to rock repeat

Round our coast;

While the manners, while the arts,

That mould a nation's soul, Still cling around our hearts,

Between let ocean roll, Our joint communion breaking with the sun: Yet, still, from either beach, The voice of blood shall reach, More audible than speech,

“We are one !"

ROSALIE.

O POUR upon my soul again

That sad, unearthly strain,
That seems from other worlds to plain ;
Thus falling, falling from afar,
As if some melancholy star
Had mingled with her light her sighs,

And dropp'd them from the skies.
No-never came from aught below

This melody of woe,
That makes my heart to overflow
As from a thousand gushing springs
Unknown before ; that with it brings
This nameless light--if light it be-

That veils the world I see.

For all I see around me wears

The hue of other spheres ;
And something blent of smiles and tears
Comes from the very air I breathe.
0, nothing, sure, the stars beneath,
Can mould a sadness like to this

So like angelic bliss.
So, at that dreamy hour of day

When the last lingering ray
Stops on the highest cloud to play-
So thought the gentle ROSALIE
As on her maiden revery
First fell the strain of him who stole

In music to her soul.

COLERIDGE. AND thou art gone most loved, most honor'd friend! No-never more thy gentle voice shall blend With air of earth its pure ideal tonesBinding in one, as with harmonious zones, The heart and intellect. And I no more Shall with thee gaze on that unfathom’d deep, The Human Soul; as when, push'd off the shore, Thy mystic bark would thro' the darkness sweepItself the while so bright! For oft we seem'd As on some starless sea-all dark above, All dark below-yet, onward as we drove, To plough up light that ever round us stream'd. But he who mourns is not as one bereft Of all he loved : thy living Truths are left.