Why dost thou come at set of sun, Those pensive words to say J. R. DRAKE. Why whip poor Will-What has he done- Why come from yon leaf-shaded hill, If poverty's his crime, let mirth Art Will himself?-It must be so- Yet wherefore strain thy tiny throat, What means thy melancholy note?- 66 Still Whip poor Will !"-Art thou a sprite, From unknown regions sent, To wander in the gloom of night, And ask for punishment? Is thine a conscience sore beset With guilt or, what is worse, Hast thou to meet writs, duns, and debt- If this be thy hard fate indeed, Art thou a lover, Will?-Hast proved The fairest can deceive? Thine is the lot of all who've loved Hast trusted in a friend, and seen A common error-men still lean Hast thou, in seeking wealth or fame, O'er all the earth 'tis just the same Hast found the world a Babel wide, Where flourish Arrogance and Pride, What, none of these?-Then, whence thy pain? Pray have the kindness to explain Dost merely ask thy just desert? WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE. Woodman, spare that tree! Whose glory and renown sought its grateful shade; In all their gushing joy Here too my sisters played. But let that old oak stand! My heart-strings round thee cling, CYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. My native land! I turn to you, With blessing and with prayer, Where man is brave and woman true And free as mountain air. Long may our flag in triumph wave, Against the world combined, And friends a welcome-foes a grave, Within our borders find. A LEGEND OF THE MOHAWK. In the days that are gone, by this sweet flowing Two lovers reclined in the shade of a tree; In the days that are gone, by this sweet flowing stream. In the days that are gone, they were laid 'neath the willow, The maid in her beauty, the youth in his pride; Both slain by the foeman who crossed the dark billow, And stole the broad lands where their children Whose fathers, when dying, in fear looked above, POETRY. To me the world's an open book, I read it in the running brook That sings its way towards the sen. It whispers in the leaves of trees, The swelling grain, the waving grass, And in the cool, fresh evening breeze That crisps the wavelets as they pass The flowers below, the stars above, In all their bloom and brightners given, Are, like the attributes of love, The poetry of earth and heaven. Thus Nature's volume, read aright, Attunes the soul to minstrelsy, Tinging life's clouds with rosy light And all the world with poetry. To her grave these tears are given, Ever to flow; She's the star I missed from heaven, Long time ago! THE CROTON ODE WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF THE CORPO Gushing from this living fountain, Gently o'er the rippling water, Lay their checks, as on a pillow, Hail the wanderer from a far land! And the heat of his delusion Water shouts a glad hosanna! Bubbles up the earth to bless! As the mists of Lethe throng, Will this rock-ribbed stream appear Like the gathered waters here. MY MOTHER'S BIBLE. This book is all that's left me now:- For many generations past Here is our family tree: My mother's hand this bible clasped; Ah! well do I remember those Whose names these records bear; Who round the hearth-stone used to close My father read this holy book, How calm was my poor mother's look, Her angel face-I see it yet! What thrilling memories come! Thou truest friend man ever knew, When all were false I found thee true, The mines of earth no treasures give GEORGE W. BURNAP, A CLERGYMAN of the Unitarian Church, and anthor of numerous publications, chiefly of a devotional character, was born in Merrimack, New Hampshire, in 1802. His father, the Rev. Jacob Burnap, was for a long time pastor of a Congregational church in that town. The son was a graduate of Harvard of 1824, and in 1827 succeeded the Rev. Jared Sparks, in the charge of the First Independent Church of Baltimore, Md. In 1835 he commenced author by publishing a volume of Lectures on the Doctrines of Controversy between Unitarians and other Denominations of Christians. In 1840 he published a volume of Lectures to Young Men on the Cultivation of the Mind, the Formation of Character, and the Conduct of Life; in the same year, a volume of Lectures on the Sphere and Duties of Women; and in 1824, Lectures on the History of Christianity. In 1844 he contributed to Sparks's "American Biography," a memoir of Leonard Calvert, first governor of Maryland. In 1845 he published Expository Lectures on the Principal Texts of the Bible which relate to the Doctrine of the Trinity: a volume of Miscellanies; and a Biography of Henry T. Ingalls. In 1848 he published a small work entitled Popular Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered and Answered; and in 1850, twenty discourses, On the Rectitude of Human Nature. He has been a contributor to the pages of The Christian Examiner since the year 1834.* In 1855 he published a volume, entitled, Christianity, its Essence and Evidence. This work contains the results of his studies of the New Testament for twenty years, and may be looked upon probably as the most compendious statement of the biblical theology of the author's In this enumeration of Dr. Burnap's writings we are indebted to Mr. Redfield's publication, The Men of the Time, ed. 1952. school of Unitarianism. He follows in the main the track of Andrews Norton; and with great boldness in animadverting upon some portions of the New Testament canon, he unites the most earnest defence of the supernatural origin of Christianity. He is a laborious student, a close reasoner, a terse and instructive writer. In richness of imagery and persuasive rhetoric he is less gifted than in clear statement and logical force. ISOLATION OF THE AMERICAN COLONIES. A PROMOTION OF DEMOCRACY.* This leads me to speak of the next cause of the Democracy of the North American Colonies, which I shall mention-their isolation. Three thousand miles of ocean intervened between them and the old world. This circumstance was not without the most decisive and important effects. The people had their own way, because they could not be controlled by their old masters at the distance of three thousand miles. Nobility never emigrated. There was nothing to tempt it to quit its ancient home. It was a plant of such a peculiar structure, that it would not bear translation to another soil. Here it would have withered and died, amidst the rugged forests and stern climate of America. A nobleman is the creation of a local conventionalism. He flourishes only in an artificial atmosphere. He must be seen by gas-light. He is at home only in courts and palaces. The pomp of courts, and the splendor of palaces, are the contrivances, not more of human pride than of far-sighted policy. They are intended to impose on the imagination of the multitude; to lead them to associate with the condition of their superiors, the ideas of providential and unattainable superiority, to which it is their destiny and their duty to submit. Take them away from the stage on which they choose to exhibit themselves; strip them of their dramatic costume; take away the overhanging chandelier and the glare of the foot lights, and let them mingle in the common crowd, and they become as other men, and the crowd begin to wonder how they could ever have looked up to them with so much reverence. They gained likewise advantages from associating together. An English nobleman had a hereditary right to a seat in the House of Lords. He made a part of the national legislature. This privilege was independent of the popular will. It was real power, a possession so flattering to the pride of man. There was no reason, therefore, why such a man should wish to leave his country. What could he find here congenial to his taste, or flattering to his pride, or tolerable to his habits of luxury and selfindulgence? A rude village on the shore of the ocean, or on the banks of a stream, of a few log cabins, scattered here and there in the wilderness, was all the New World had to offer for many generations. Not many would emigrate to such a country, who had anything to leave behind. Much less was it to be expected, that those would come here, who had drawn the highest prizes in life at home. They could not seek a new organization of the social condition, in which they had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Here and there there might be an adventurer of condition, who came to this country to improve his broken fortunes; but then it was, as in all new countries, with a hope of returning to enjoy his gains in a country and a state of society, where refined enjoyment was possible. From a Discourse, "Origin and Causes of Democracy in America," before the Maryland Society, Baltimore. 1853. And after all, beyond a limited circle, America was, at that time, very little known and very little regarded by the people of England. And it is very much so to the present hour. The best informed people, strange as it may seem, know little more of the Geography of this country than they do of the interior of Africa; and thousands and thousands who move in respectable society, are ignorant whether we are white or copper-colored, speak the English language or Choctaw. America, then, grew up in neglect and by stealth. Unattractive to the higher classes, she drew to herself the people. Here came the people, the hardhanded and stout-hearted, and carved out a New World for themselves. They adapted their institutions to their wants, and before the Old World was aware, there had sprung up on this broad continent a gigantic Republic, ready to take her position among the nations of the earth. NICHOLAS MURRAY. Tis writer, whose works have attracted a considerable share of attention from the Protestant community, was born in Ireland in 1802. There he was educated for the mercantile profession. He came to America in 1818, and was engaged for a short time in the printing-office of the Messrs. Harper, who were then laying the foundations for their large publishing establishment. This connexion has always been remembered with pleasure; and the Harpers have since published the numerous editions of the author's writings. He entered Williams College, Mass., in 1822, and was graduated in due course in the front rank of his class. He then entered the Theological Seminary at Princeton in 1826, and left it in the spring of 1829, to take the pastorate of the church in Wilkesbarre, Pa., where he was ordained in November, 1829. In June, 1833, he was called as Pastor to the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethtown, N. J. Here he has since remained, though frequently solicited to remove to New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Charleston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Natchez, and to two theological professorships. His first essay at writing for the public was, whilst in College. In Wilkesbarre, he wrote for the Christian Advocate, a monthly, edited by Dr. Ashbel Green, then ex-president of Princeton College. After his removal to Elizabethtown, he wrote for the papers, and a few articles for the Literary and Theological Journal, then edited by Dr. Woods. He also published a few occasional sermons. In 1844, he published a small volume, Notes Historical and Biographical, concerning Elizabethtown. In 1847, appeared the first series of Controversial Letters to Bishop Hughes, by Kirwan, a nom de plume which soon became quite famous. In 1848, a second and third series of these Letters appeared. They have been translated into several languages. In 1851, he published a pamphlet, The Decline of Popery and its Causes, in reply to one of Bishop Hughes. His Romanism at Home, which has passed through many editions, was published in 1852. In 1851, he made a tour in Europe, of which he published his observations in 1853, with the title Men and Things as seen in Europe. 1854, appeared his Parish Pencilling, a sketchbook of clerical experiences. In CYNTHIA TAGGART. THERE are few sadder stories in the whole range of literary biography than that of this lady, and on the other hand few which so happily exhibit the solace afforded in some instances by literary pursuits. Cynthia Taggart was the daughter of an old soldier of the Revolution. His father at the outset of the contest was possessed of a valuable farm at Middletown, six miles from Newport. During the British occupation of the neighborhood, he joined an expedition for the capture of the island. It was unsuccessful, and the British in revenge devastated his property. In the forgy the son, afterwards the father of Cynthia, was taken prisoner and imprisoned at Newport jail. After a fortnight's incarceration, he made his escape through one of the cellar windows which were provided with wooden bars only, and getting clear of the town crossed to the mainland at Bristol ferry during the night on a rude raft formed of rails from the fences. A like fate occurred to a small confiscated estate which was given to the father in consideration of his services and losses by the American authorities, so that the son, on the death of the father, succeeded to but a slender patrimony. C. Taggart His daughter, Cynthia Taggart, was born October 14, 1801. Owing to the humble, almost necessitous circumstances of the family, her educational advantages were confined to the instructions of the village school, and from these, owing to early ill health, she could only now and then profit. Although sickly from her birth, she enjoyed occasional intervals of health until her nineteenth year. The painful record of her subsequent career may be best left to her own simple recital. Shortly after this period, I was seized with a more serious and alarming illness, than any with which I had hitherto been exercised, and in the progress of which my life was for many weeks despaired of. But after my being reduced to the brink of the grave, and enduring excruciating pain and excessive weakness for more than three months, it yielded to su perior medical skill; and I so far recovered strength as to walk a few steps and frequently to ride abroad, though not without a great increase of pain an almost maddening agony of the brain, and a total deprivation of sleep for three or four nights and days successively. From this time a complication of the most painful and debilitating chronic diseases ensued, and have continued to prey upon my frail system during the subsequent period of my life.-from which no permanent relief could be obtained, either through medicine or the most judicious regimen,-natural sleep having been withheld to an almost if not altogether unparalleled degree, from the first serious illness throughout the twelve subsequent years. This unnatural deprivation has caused the greatest debility, and an agonizing painfulness and susceptibility of the whole system, which I think can neither be de scribed nor conceived. After the expiration of a little more than three years from the above men tioned illness, the greater part of which period I was able to sit up two or three hours in a day, and frequently rode, supported in a carriage, a short distance, though, as before observed, not without great increase of pain, and a total watchfulness for many succeeding nights,-I was again attacked with a still more acutely painful and dangerous malady, from which recovery for several weeks seemed highly improbable, when this most alarming complaint again yielded to medical skill, and life continued, though strength has never more returned. And in what agony, in what excruciating tortures and restless languishing the greater part of the last nine years has been past, it is believed by my parents that language is inadequate to describe or the human mind to conceive. During both the former and latter period of these long-protracted and uncompromising diseases, every expedient that has been resorted to, with the blissful hope of recovery, has proved, not only ineffectual to produce the desired result, but has, invariably, greatly aggravated and increased my complicated complaints; from which it has been impossible to obtain the smallest degree of relief that could render life supportable, and preserve the scorching brain from phrensy, without the constant use of the most powerful anodynes. Under these circumstances a number of poems were composed by her, and dictated to her father and sisters. One or two found their way to the Providence newspapers, others were read in manuscript by the physicians and clergyman who benevolently visited the poor invalid, and a small collection was finally published in 1833. The pieces it contains are all of a melancholy cast. They are the meditations of the sick bed, unrelieved by any hope of recovery, the yearnings of a lover of nature for the liberty of woods and fields, of an active mind for food for thought. Considering the circumstances under which they were written they are noticeable productions. The author lingered for several years after the publication of her volume, without any respite from illness until her death, on the twenty-third of March, 1849. The room, with darkened windows sad, Shut out from Nature's beauteous charms, Ah! what can chase the hopeless gloom, But Heaven, but humble prayer! ON A STORM. 1825. The harsh, terrific, howling Storm, Turns pale the cheek of mirth; And foaming billows dash. In all the varying shades of woe, Nor have I respite seen; Then welcome, Storm, loud, wild, and rude, RUFUS DAWES. THOMAS, the father of Rufus Dawes, and a Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, was born in Boston in 1757, and died in July, 1825. He was the author of a poem entitled The Law giren on Mount Sinai, published in Boston, in 1777, in a pamphlet. Rufus Dawes, the youngest but one of a large family of sixteen, was born at Boston, January 26, 1803. He entered Harvard in 1820, but was refused a degree, in consequence of his supposed participation in a disturbance of the discipline of the institution, a charge afterwards found to be unjust. The incident furnished the occasion of his first published poem, a satire on the Harvard faculty. Mr. Dawes next studied law, was admitted, but never practised the profession. He contributed to the United States Literary Gazette, published at Cambridge, and conducted for a time at Baltimore, The Emerald, also a weekly paper. In 1830, he published The Valley of the Nashaway and Other Poems, and in 1839, Geraldine, Athenia of Damascus, and Miscellaneous Poems. Mr. Dawes's chief poem, Geraldine, is a rambling composition of some three hundred and fifty stanzas, in the manner of Don Juan, and contains a series of episodical passages united by a somewhat extravagant plot. The tragedy is occupied with the siege of Damascus A. D. 634. Athenia, a noble lady, is beloved by Calous, the general in command of the city during the siege by the Turks. The latter, well nigh victorious, are about entering Damascus, when Calous re *Griswold's Poets of America, p. 268. |