Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

And where is every one he printed
Upon that lip so ruby-tinted -
Seals of the purest gem of bliss,
Oh! richer, softer far thau this!
'And then the ring-my love! recall
How many rings, delicious all,

His arms around that neck have twisted,
Twining warmer far than this did!
Where are they all, so sweet, so many?
Oh dearest, give back all, if any!'

While thus I murmured, trembling too
Lest all the nymph had vowed was true,
I saw a smile relenting rise
'Mid the moist azure of her eyes,
Like daylight o'er a sea of blue
While yet the air is dim with dew!
She let her cheek repose on mine,
She let my arms around her twine-
Oh! who can tell the bliss one feels
In thus exchanging rings and, seals !

TO MISS SUSAN B-CKF-D.

I MORE than once have heard, at night,
A song like those thy lips have given;
And it was sung by shapes of light,

Who seemed, like thee, to breathe of Heaven!

But this was all a dream of sleep,

And I have said, when morning shone, 'Oh! why should fairy Fancy keep These wonders for herself alone?

I knew not then that Fate had lent
Such tones to one of mortal birth;
I knew not then that Heaven had sent
A voice, a form, like thine on earth!

And yet, in all that flowery maze

Through which my life has loved to tread, When I have heard the sweetest lays

From lips of dearest lustre shed;

When I have felt the warbled word

From Beauty's mouth of perfume sighing,

Sweet as music's hallowed bird

Upon a rose's bosom lying!

Though form and song at once combined
Their loveliest bloom and softest thrill,
My heart hath sighed, my heart hath pined
For something softer, lovelier still!

Oh! I have found it all, at last,

In thee, thou sweetest living lyre,
Through which the soul hath ever passed
Its harmonizing breath of fire!

All that my best and wildest dream,
In Fancy's hour, could hear or see
Of Music's sigh or Beauty's beam,
Are realized at once in thee !

LINES,

WRITTEN AT THE COHOS, OR FALLS OF THE MOHAWK RIVER.1

Già era in loco ove s' udia 'l rimbombo

Dell' acqua.-Dante.

FROM rise of morn till set of sun,
I've seen the mighty Mohawk run;
And as I marked the woods of pine
Along his mirror darkly shine,
Like tall and gloomy forms that pass
Before the wizard's midnight glass;
And as I viewed the hurrying pace
With which he ran his turbid race,
Rushing, alike untired and wild,

Through shades that frowned and flowers that smiled,
Flying by every green recess

That wooed him to its calm caress,

Yet, sometimes turning with the wind,

As if to leave one look behind!

Oh! I have thought, and thinking sighed―
How like to thee, thou restless tide!
May be the lot, the life of him,
Who roams along thy water's brim !
Through what alternate shades of woe
And flowers of joy my path may go !
How many an humble, still retreat
May rise to court my weary feet,
While still pursuing, still unblest,
I wander on, nor dare to rest!
But, urgent as the doom that calls
Thy water to its destined falls,
I see the world's bewildering force
Hurry my heart's devoted course

There is a dreary and savage character in the country immediately above these falls, which is much more in harmony with the wildness of such 1 scene than the cultivated lands in the neighbourhood of Niagara. See the drawing of them in Mr. Weld's book. According to him, the perpendicular height of the Cohos Fall is fifty feet;

but the Marquis de Chastellux makes it seventysix.

The fine rainbow, which is continually forming and dissolving as the spray rises into the light of the sun, is perhaps the most interesting beauty which these wonderful cataracts exhibit.

From lapse to lapse, till life be done,
And the lost current cease to run!
Oh! may my falls be bright as thine!
May Heaven's forgiving rainbow shine
Upon the mist that circles me,
As soft as now it hangs o'er thee!

CLORIS AND FANNY.

CLORIS! if I were Persia's king,
I'd make my graceful queen of thee;
While Fanny, wild and artless thing,
Should but thy humble handmaid be,

There is but one objection in it-
That, verily, I'm much afraid
I should, in some unlucky minute,
Forsake the mistress for the maid!

SONG

OF THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE WOODS.1

Qua vía difficilis, quaque est via nulla.-Ovid. Metam. lib. iii. v. 227.

Now the vapour, hot and damp,
Shed by day's expiring lamp,
Through the misty ether spreads
Every ill the white man dreads:
Fiery fever's thirsty thrill,
Fitful ague's shivering chill!

Hark! I hear the traveller's song,
As he winds the woods along :
Christian! 'tis the song of fear;
Wolves are round thee, night is near,
And the wild thou dar'st to roam-
Oh! 'twas once the Indian's home."

Hither, sprites, who love to harm,
Wheresoe'er you work your charm,
By the creeks, or by the brakes,

Where the pale witch feeds her snakes,

passing through the very dreary wilderness be- when General Sullivan, with an army of 4000 men, The idea of this poem occurred to me in and the adjacent country, until the year 1779, the woods, and the little village of Buffalo, upon where, being obliged to live on salted provisions, tween Batavia, a new settlement in the midst of drove them from their country to Niagara, route in travelling through the Genesee country of them died. Two hundred of them, it is said, Lake Erie. This is the most fatiguing part of the to which they were unaccustomed, great numbers The Five Confederated Nations (of Indians) camped.'-Morse's American Geography.

to Niagara.

were settled along the banks of the Susquehannah

were buried in one grave, where they had en

And the cayman1 loves to creep,
Torpid, to his wintry sleep;
Where the bird of carrion flits,
And the shuddering murderer sits
Lone beneath a roof of blood,
While upon his poisoned food,
From the corpse of him he slew,
Drops the chill and gory dew!

Hither bend you, turn you hither
Eyes that blast and wings that wither!
Cross the wandering Christian's way,
Lead him, ere the glimpse of day,
Many a mile of maddening error,
Through the maze of night and terror,
Till the morn behold him lying
On the damp earth, pale and dying!
Mock him, when his eager sight
Seeks the cordial cottage light;
Gleam then like the lightning bug,
Tempt him to the den that's dug
For the foul and famished brood
Of the she wolf, gaunt for blood!
Or, unto the dangerous pass
O'er the deep and dark morass,
Where the trembling Indian brings
Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings,
Tributes, to be hung in air
To the Fiend presiding there!
Then, when night's long labour past,
Wildered, faint, he falls at last,
Sinking where the causeway's edge
Moulders in the slimy sedge,
There let every noxious thing
Trail its filth and fix its sting,
Let the bull-toad taint him over,
Round him let musquitoes hover,
In his ears and eyeballs tingling,
With his blood their poison mingling,
Till, beneath the solar fires,
Rankling all, the wretch expires !

The alligator, who is supposed to lie in a orpid state all the winter in the bank of some ereek or pond, having previously swallowed a large number of pine knots, which are his only sustenance during the time.

This was the mode of punishment for murder (as Father Charlevoix tells us) among the Hurons. They laid the dead body upon poles at the top of a cabin, and the murderer was obliged to remain several days together, and to receive all that dropped from the carcase, not only on him

self but on his food.'

We find also collars of porcelain, tobacco,

3

ears of maize, skins, etc., by the side of difficult and dangerous ways, on rocks, or by the side of the falls; and these are so many offerings made to the spirits which preside in these places.' See Charlevoix's Letter on the Traditions and the Religion of the Savages of Canada.

Father Hennepin, too, mentions this ceremony; he also says: We took notice of one barbarian, who made a kind of sacrifice upon an oak at the Cascade of St. Antony of Padua, upon the river Mississippi.'-See Hennepin's Voyage into North America.

[blocks in formation]

TELL me the witching tale again,
For never has my heart or ear
Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,

So pure to feel, so sweet to hear!

Say, Love! in all thy spring of fame,
When the high Heaven itself was thine;
When piety confessed the flame,

And even thy errors were divine!

Did ever Muse's hand so fair

A glory round thy temple spread?
Did ever lip's ambrosial air

Such perfume o'er thy altars shed?

One maid there was, who round her lyre
The mystic myrtle wildly wreathed-
But all her sighs were sighs of fire,
The myrtle withered as she breathed!

Oh! you that Love's celestial dream
In all its purity would know,
Let not the senses' ardent beam

Too strongly through the vision glow!
Love sweetest lies concealed in night,
The night where Heaven has bid him lie;
Oh! shed not there unhallowed light,
Or, Psyche knows, the boy will fly !1

Dear Psyche! many a charmed hour,
Through many a wild and magic waste,
To the fair fount and blissful bower,

Thy mazy foot my soul hath traced!

Where'er thy joys are numbered now,
Beneath whatever shades of rest,
The Genius of the starry brow
Has chained thee to thy Cupid's breast;

1 See the story in Apuleius. With respect to this beautiful allegory of Love and Psyche, there is an ingenious idea suggested by the senator Buonarotti, in his Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi. He thinks the fable is taken from some very occuit mysteries, which had long been celebrated in honour of Love; and he accounts, upon this supposition, for the silence of the more ancient authors upon the subject, as it was not till towards the decline of pagan superstition that writers could venture to reveal or

discuss such ceremonies. Accordingly, he ob-
serves, we find Lucian and Plutarch treating, with-
out reserve, of the Dea Syria, and Isis and Osiris;
and Apuleius, who has given us the story of
Cupid and Psyche, has also detailed some of the
mysteries of Isis.-See the Giornale di Litterati
d'Italia, tom. xxvii, articol. 1. See also the Ob-
servations upon the Ancient Gems in the Museum
Florentinum, vol, i, p. 156.
* Constancy.

« ForrigeFortsæt »