TO THE MEMORY OF HIS MOTHER.

If heartfelt pain e'er led me to accuse
The dangerous gift of the alluring Muse,
"Twas in the moment when my verse impressed
Some anxious feelings on a mother's breast.
O thou fond spirit, who with pride hast smiled
And frowned with fear on thy poetic child,
Pleased, yet alarmed, when in his boyish time
He sighed in numbers or he laughed in rhyme:
Thou tender saint, to whom he owes much more
Than ever child to parent owed before,

In life's first season, when the fever's flame
Shrunk to deformity his shrivelled frame,
And turned each fairer image in his brain
To blank confusion and her crazy train,

"Twas thine, with constant love, through lingering years,
To bathe thy idiot orphan in thy tears;
Day after day, and night succeeding night,
To turn incessant to the hideous sight,
And frequent watch, if haply at thy view
Departed reason might not dawn anew.
Though medicinal art with pitying care,
Could lend no aid to save thee from despair,

Thy fond maternal heart adhered to hope and prayer;
Nor prayed in vain: thy child from Powers above
Received the sense to feel and bless thy love.

Oh, might he then receive the happy skill
And force proportioned to his ardent will
With truth's unfading radiance to emblaze
Thy virtues, worthy of immortal praise!

Nature, who decked thy form with beauty's flowers,
Exhausted on thy soul her finer powers;
Taught it with all her energy to feel

Love's melting softness, Friendship's fervent zeal;
The generous purpose and the active thought,
With charity's diffusive spirit fraught.

There all the best of mental gifts she placed,
Vigor of judgment, purity of taste;

Superior parts without their spleenful leaven,
Kindness to earth, and confidence in heaven.

While my fond thoughts o'er all thy merits roll,
Thy praise thus gushes from my filial soul,
Nor will the public with harsh vigor blame
This my just homage to thy honored name
To please that public-if to please be mine-
Thy virtues trained me: let the praise be thine.

INSCRIPTION FOR THE TOMB OF COWPER.

Ye who with warmth the public triumph feel
Of talents dignified by sacred zeal,
Here, to devotion's bard devoutly just,
Pay your fond tribute due to Cowper's dust!
England, exulting in his spotless fame,

Ranks with her dearest sons his favorite name.
Sense, fancy, wit, suffice not all to raise
So clear a title to affection's praise;
His highest virtues to the heart belong;
His virtues formed the magic of his song.

INSCRIPTION FOR THE TOMB OF MRS. UNWIN.

Trusting in God with all her heart and mind,
This woman proved magnanimously kind;
Endured affliction's desolating hail,

And watched a poet through misfortune's vale.
Her spotless dust angelic guards defend :
It is the dust of Unwin-Cowper's friend,
That single title in itself is fame,

For all who read his verse revere his name.

THE DEPARTING SWALLOWS.

Ye gentle birds, that perch aloof,

And smooth your pinions on my roof,

Preparing for departure hence,

Now winter's angry threats commence!

Like you, my soul would smooth her plume
For longer flights beyond the tomb.
May God, by whom are seen and heard
Departing men and wandering bird,
In mercy mark us for his own,
And guide us to the land unknown!

HAYNE, PAUL HAMILTON, an American poet, born at Charleston, S. C., January 1, 1830; died at Copse Hill, near Augusta, Ga., July 6, 1886. He was a son of Lieutenant Hayne of the United States Navy, and a nephew of Governor Hayne, of South Carolina. He was educated at the University of South Carolina; and was for a short time engaged in the practice of law. In 1853 he became editor of Russell's Magazine; and was afterward connected editorially with the Charleston Literary Gazette, the Southern Opinion, the Southern Society, and other literary journals. He had inherited from his mother, a woman of rare talent and refinement, a taste for literature and a poetic mind: and these had been nursed by the constant reading, from his childhood, of the chronicles of Froissart and the works of Shakespeare and the older dramatists and poets. So that the outbreak of the civil war found him, with Timrod, Sims, and a few others, already at the head of the best literary society that Charleston had yet known. His library, his home, all the heirlooms of the old Southern family were destroyed when Charleston was bombarded. He became an aide-de-camp to Governor Pickens; and when, on account of ill-health, he could not serve in the field, he composed poems which were among the most popular of the war-songs of the South. After the war, he built himself a little

cottage of boards on a hill in the midst of a few acres of pine-land near Augusta; and here, until his death, he toiled with his pen to support his family. His works include Poems (1855); Sonnets and other Poems (1857); Avolio, a Legend of the Island of Cos (1859); Legends and Lyrics (1872); The Mountain of the Lovers, and other Poems (1873); Life of Robert Y. Hayne (1878); Life of Hugh S. Legaré (1878); a complete edition of his Poems (1882). In 1872 he published the poems of his friend Henry Timrod, to which he prefixed a Memoir; and at his death he left enough manuscript to make two or three volumes more of his own works. Among his lectures, the most noteworthy is The Literature of Imagination.

It ought to be said that the touching sonnet to Carolina was written during the period of reconstruction, when, as the author thought, the fame of the great statesmen and orators of his native State was "fast becoming a mere shadowy tradition." And of his Whittier it has been written, that "among all the attempts to describe the personal bearing of that unique and venerable figure in our literature, there has been none quite so good as this from the shy, sensitive, passionate South Carolinian."

CAROLINA.

That fair young land which gave me birth is dead! Lost as a fallen star that quivering dies

Down the pale pathway of autumnal skies,

A vague, faint radiance flickering where it fled;
All she hath wrought, all she hath planned or said,
Her golden eloquence, her high emprise

Wrecked, on the languid shore of Lethe lies,
While cold Oblivion veils her piteous head:"

O mother! loved and loveliest! debonair
As some brave queen of antique chivalries.
Thy beauty's blasted like thy desolate coasts;--
Where now thy lustrous form, thy shining hair?
Where thy bright presence, thine imperial eyes?
Lost in dim shadows of the realm of Ghosts!
-From Poems, 1882.

WHITTIER.

So, 'neath the Quaker-poet's tranquil roof,
From all dull discords of the world aloof,

I sit once more, and measured converse hold
With him whose nobler thoughts are rhythmic gold.

See his deep brows half puckered in a knot
O'er some hard problem of our mortal lot,
Or a dream, soft as May winds of the South,
Waft a girl's sweetness round his firm-set mouth.

Or should he deem wrong threats, the public weal,
Lo! the whole man seems girt with flashing steel;
His glance a sword-thrust, and his words of ire
Like thunder-tones from some old prophet's lyre.

Or by the hearth-stone when the day is done, Mark, swiftly launched, a sudden shaft of fun; The short quick laugh, the smartly smitten knees, And all sure tokens of a mind at ease.

Discerning which, by some mysterious law,
Near to his seat two household favorites draw,
Till on her master's shoulders, sly and sleek,
Grimalkin, mounting, rubs his furrowed cheek;

While terrier Dick, denied all words to rail,
Snarls as he shakes a short protesting tail,
But with shrewd eyes says, plain as plain can be,
"Drop that shy cat. I'm worthier far than she."

And he who loves all lowliest lives to please,
Conciliates soon his dumb Diogenes,
Who in return his garment nips with care,
And drags the poet out, to take the air.