Can scarcely dream of: which his eye must see,
To know how beautiful this world can be!
But soft!-the tinges of the west decline,
And night falls dewy o'er these banks of pine.
Among the reeds, in which our idle boat
Is rocked to rest, the wind's complaining note
Dies, like a half-breathed whispering of flutes;
Along the wave the gleaming porpoise shoots,
And I can trace him, like a watery star,1
Down the steep current, till he fades afar
Amid the foaming breaker's silvery light,
Where yon rough Rapids sparkle through the night!
Here, as a'ong this shadowy bank I stray,

2

And the smooth glass-snake, gliding o'er my way,
Shows the dim moonlight through his scaly form,
Fancy, with all the scene's enchantment warm,
Hears in the murmur of the nightly breeze,
Some Indian Spirit warble words like these:

From the clime of sacred doves,3
Where the blessed Indian roves,
Through the air on wing, as white
As the spirit-stones of light,*
Which the eye of morning counts
On the Appalachian mounts!
Hither oft my flight I take
Over Huron's lucid lake,

Where the wave, as clear as dew,
Sleeps beneath the light canoe,
Which, reflected, floating there,
Looks as if it hung in air !5

Then, when I have strayed awhile
Through the Manataulin isle,"
Breathing all its holy bloom,
Swift upon the purple plume
Of my Wakon-Bird? I fly
Where, beneath a burning sky,

1 Anburey, in his Travels, has noticed this shooting illumination which porpoises diffuse at night through the St. Lawrence.-Vol. i. p. 29.

The glass-snake is brittle and transparent. 3 'The departed spirit goes into the Country of Souls, where, according to some, it is transformed into a dove.'-Charlevoix, upon the Traditions and the Religion of the Savages of Canada. See the curious Fuble of the American Orpheus in Lafitau, tom. i. p. 402.

The mountains appeared to be sprinkled with white stones, which glistened in the sun, and were called by the Indians "manetoe aseniah," or spirit-stones.'-Mackenzie's Journal. 5 I was thinking here of what Carver says so beautifully in his description of one of these lakes: When it was calm, and the sun shone bright, I could sit in my canoe, where the depth was upwards of six fathoms, and plainly see huge

piles of stone at the bottom, of different shapes, some of which appeared as if they had been hewn the water was at this time as pure and transparent as air, and my canoe seemed as if it hung suspended in that element. It was impossible to look attentively through this limpid medium, at the rocks below, without finding, be fore many minutes were elapsed, your head swim and your eyes no longer able to behold the dazzling scene.'

6 Manataulin signifies a Place of Spirits, and this island in Lake Huron is held sacred by the Indians.

7 The Wakon-Bird, which probably is of the same species with the Bird of Paradise, receives its name from the ideas the Indians have of its superior excellence; the Wakon-Bird being, in their language, the Bird of the Great Spirit.'Morse.

O'er the bed of Erie's lake,
Slumbers many a water-snake,
Basking in the web of leaves
Which the weeping lily weaves !1

Then I chase the floweret-king
Through his bloomy wild of spring;
See him now, while diamond hues
Soft his neck and wings suffuse,
In the leafy chalice sink,
Thirsting for his balmy drink;
Now behold him all on fire,
Lovely in his looks of ire,
Breaking every infant stem,
Scattering every velvet gem,
Where his little tyrant lip
Had not found enough to sip!

Then my playful hand I steep

Where the gold-thread loves to creep,
Cull from thence a tangled wreath,
Words of magic round it breathe,
And the sunny chaplet spread
O'er the sleeping fly-bird's head,3
Till, with dreams of honey blessed,
Haunted in his downy nest
By the garden's fairest spells,
Dewy buds and fragrant bells,
Fancy all his soul embowers
In the fly-bird's heaven of flowers!

Oft, when hoar and silvery flakes
Melt along the ruffled lakes;

When the gray moose sheds his horns,
When the track at evening warns
Weary hunters of the way

To the wigwam's cheering ray,
Then, aloft through freezing air,
With the snow-bird soft and fair
As the fleece that heaven flings
O'er his little pearly wings,
Light above the rocks I play,
Where Niagara's starry spray,
Frozen on the cliff, appears
Like a giant's starting tears!

The islands of Lake Erie are surrounded to a considerable distance by the large pond-lily, whose leaves spread thickly over the surface of the lake, and form a kind of bed for the watersnakes in summer.

2 The gold-thread is of the vine kind, and grows in swamps. The roots spread themselves Just under the surface of the morasses, and are easily drawn out by handfuls. They resemble a

large entangled skein of silk, and are of a bright yellow.'-Morse.

3 L'oiseau mouche, gros comme un hanneton, est de toutes couleurs, vives et changeantes: il tire sa subsistence des fleurs comme les abeilles; son nid est fait d'un coton très-fin suspendu à une branche d'arbre.'-Voyages aux Indes Occidentales, par M. Bossu. Second part, lett. xx. • Emberiza hyemalis.-See Imlay's Kentucky, p. 280.

There, amid the Island-sedge,
Just upon the cataract's edge,
Where the foot of living man
Never trod since time began,
Lone I sit, at close of day,
While, beneath the golden ray,
Icy columns gleam below,
Feathered round with falling snow,
And an arch of glory springs,
Brilliant as the chain of rings
Round the neck of virgins hung,-
Virgins who have wandered young
O'er the waters of the west

To the land where spirits rest!

Thus have I charmed, with visionary lay,
The lonely moments of the night away;
And now, fresh daylight o'er the water beams!
Once more embarked upon the glittering streams,
Our boat flies light along the leafy shore,
Shooting the falls, without a dip of oar
Or breath of zephyr, like the mystic bark
The poet saw, in dreams divinely dark,
Borne, without sails, along the dusky flood,
While on its deck a pilot angel stood,
And, with his wings of living light unfurled,
Coasted the dim shores of another world!

Yet oh! believe me in this blooming maze
Of lovely nature, where the fancy strays
From charm to charm, where every floweret's hue
Hath something strange, and every leaf is new!
I never feel a bliss so pure and still,

So heavenly calm, as when a stream or hill,
Or veteran oak, like those remembered well,
Or breeze or echo, or some wild-flower's smell
(For, who can say what small and fairy ties
The memory flings o'er pleasure as it flies ?)
Reminds my heart of many a sylvan dream
I once indulged by Trent's inspiring stream;
Of all my sunny morns and moonlight nights
On Donington's green lawns and breezy heights!
Whether I trace the tranquil moments o'er,
When I have seen thee cull the blooms of lore,
With him, the polished warrior, by thy side,
A sister's idol and a nation's pride!

When thou hast read of heroes, trophied high
In ancient fame, and I have seen thine eye
Turn to the living hero, while it read,

For pure and brightening comments on the dead!

Lafitau wishes to believe, for the sake of his theory, that there was an order of vestals established among the Iroquois Indians.

Or whether memory to my mind recalls
The festal grandeur of those lordly halls,
When guests have met around the sparkling board,
And welcome warmed the cup that luxury poured;
When the bright future star of England's throne
With magic smile hath o'er the banquet shone,
Winning respect, nor claiming what he won,
But tempering greatness, like an evening sun
Whose light the eye can tranquilly admire,
Glorious but mild, all softness yet all fire!
Whatever hue my recollections take,
Even the regret, the very pain they wake
Is dear and exquisite !-but oh! no more-
Lady! adieu-my heart has lingered o'er

These vanished times, till all that round me lies,

Stream, banks, and bowers, have faded on my eyes!

'Twas but for a moment-and yet in that time
She crowded the impressions of many an hour:
Her eye had a glow, like the sun of her clime,
Which waked every feeling at once into flower!
Oh! could we have stolen but one rapturous day,
To renew such impressions again and again,
The things we could look, and imagine, and say,
Would be worth all the life we had wasted till then!
What we had not the leisure or language to speak,
We should find some more exquisite mode of revealing,
And, between us, should feel just as much in a week,
As others would take a millennium in feeling!

WRITTEN ON PASSING DEADMAN'S ISLAND,1
IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, LATE IN THE EVENING, SEPTEMBER 1804.
SEE you, beneath yon cloud so dark,
Fast gliding along, a gloomy bark!

Her sails are full, though the wind is still,
And there blows not a breath her sails to fill !

This is one of the Magdalen Islands, and, singularly enough, is the property of Sir Isaac Coffin. The above lines were suggested by a superstition very common among sailors, who call this ghost-ship, I think, the flying Dutch

man.'

We were thirteen days on our passage from Quebec to Halifax, and I had been so spoiled by

the very splendid hospitality with which my friends of the Phaeton and Boston had treated me, that I was but ill prepared to encounter the miseries of a Canadian ship. The weather, however, was pleasant, and the scenery along the river delightful. Our passage through the Gut of Canso, with a bright sky and a fair wind, was particularly striking and romantic,

Oh! what doth that vessel of darkness bear?
The silent calm of the grave is there,
Save now and again a death-knell rung,
And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung!
There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tossed!
Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire that lights her deck
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew!
To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,

And the hand that steers is not of this world!

Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on,
Thou terrible bark! ere the night be gone,
Nor let morning look on so foul a sight
As would blanch for ever her rosy light!

TO THE BOSTON FRIGATE.1

ON LEAVING HALIFAX FOR ENGLAND, OCTOBER 1804.
ΝΟΣΤΟΥ ΠΡΟΦΑΣΙΣ ΓΛΥΚΕΡΟΥ.-Pindar. Pyth. 4.
WITH triumph this morning, oh Boston! I hail
The stir of thy deck and the spread of thy sail;
For they tell me I soon shall be wafted, in thee
To the flourishing isle of the brave and the free,
And that chill Nova Scotia's unpromising strand2
Is the last I shall tread of American land.

Well-peace to the land! may the people, at length,
Know that freedom is bliss, but that honour is strength;
That though man have the wings of the fetterless wind,
Of the wantonest air that the north can unbind,
Yet if health do not sweeten the blast with her bloom,
Nor virtue's aroma its pathway perfume,

Unblest is the freedom and dreary the flight,
That but wanders to ruin and wantons to blight!
Farewell to the few I have left with regret,
May they sometimes recall, what I cannot forget,

'Commanded by Captain J. E. Douglas, with whom I returned to England, and to whom I am indebted for many, many kindnesses. In truth, I should but offend the delicacy of my friend Douglas, and at the same time do injustice to my own feelings of gratitude, did I attempt to say how much I owe to him.

2 Sir John Wentworth, the Governor of Nova Scotia, very kindly allowed me to accompany him en his visit to the college which they have lately

established at Windsor, about forty miles from Halifax, and I was indeed most pleasantly sur prised by the beauty and fertility of the country which opened upon us after the bleak and rocky wilderness by which Halifax is surrounded. I was told that, in travelling onwards, we should find the soil and the scenery improve, and it gave me much pleasure to know that the worthy Governor has by no means such an 'inamabile regnum' as I was at first sight inclined to believe.