But here, alas! by Erie's stormy lake,
As, far from such bright haunts my course I take,
No proud remembrance o'er the fancy plays,
No classic dream, no star of other days
Hath left that visionary light behind,
That ling'ring radiance of immortal mind,
Which gilds and hallows even the rudest scene,
The humblest shed, where genius once has been!

All that creation's varying mass assumes Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms; Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow, Bright lakes expand, and conquering1 rivers flow; But mind, immortal mind, without whose ray, This world's a wilderness and man but clay, Mind, mind alone, in barren, still repose, Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows. Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats, and all From the rude wigwam to the congress-hall, From man the savage, whether slaved or free, To man the civilized, less tame than he,"Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife Betwixt half-polish'd and half-barbarous life; Where every ill the ancient world could brew Is mix'd with every grossness of the new; Where all corrupts, though little can entice, And naught is known of luxury, but its vice!

Is this the region then, is this the clime For soaring fancies? for those dreams sublime, Which all their miracles of light reveal To heads that meditate and hearts that feel? Alas! not so-the Muse of Nature lights Her glories round; she scales the mountain heights, And rams the forests; every wondrous spot Burns with her step, yet man regards it not. She whispers round, her words are in the air, But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there," Without one breath of soul, divinely strong, One ray of mind to thaw them into song.

Yet, yet forgive me, oh ye sacred few, Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew; Whom, known and loved through many a social eve, "Twas bliss to live with, and 'twas pain to leave."

1 This epithet was suggested by Charlevoix's striking description of the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi. "I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much of the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waves to the opposite shore, without mixing them afterwards it gives its color to the Mississippi, which it never loses again, but carries quite down to the sea."-Letter xxvii.

Not with more joy the lonely exile scann'd
The writing traced upon the desert's sand,
Where his lone heart but little hoped to find
One trace of life, one stamp of human kind,
Than did I hail the pure, th' enlighten'd zeal,
The strength to reason and the warmth to fet,
The manly polish and the illumined taste,
Which,-'mid the melancholy, heartless waste
My foot has traversed,--oh you sacred few!
I found by Delaware's green banks with you.

Long may you loathe the Gallic dross that runs
Through your fair country and corrupts its sons;
Long love the arts, the glories which adorn
Those fields of freedom, where your sires were born
Oh! if America can yet be great,

If neither chain'd by choice, nor doom'd by fate
To the mob-mania which imbrutes her now,
She yet can raise the crown'd, yet civic brow
Of single majesty,-can add the grace
Of Rank's rich capital to Freedom's base,
Nor fear the mighty shaft will feebler prove
For the fair ornament that flowers above ;-
If yet released from all that pedant throng,
So vain of error and so pledged to wrong,
Who hourly teach her, like themselves, to hide
Weakness in vaunt, and barrenness in pride,
She yet can rise, can wreath the Attic charms
Of soft refinement round the pomp of arms,
And see her poets flash the fires of song,
To light her warriors' thunderbolts along ;-
It is to you, to souls that favoring heaven
Has made like yours, the glorious task is given:-
Oh! but for such, Columbia's days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quicken'd without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,
Her fruits would fall, before her spring were o'er.

Believe me, Spencer, while I wing'd the hours Where Schuylkill winds his way through banks of flowers,

Though few the days, the happy evenings few, So warm with heart, so rich with mind they flew, That my charm'd soul forgot its wish to roam, And rested there, as in a dream of home.

delphia, I passed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States afforded me. Mr. Dennie has succeeded in diffusing through this cultivated little circle that love for good literature and sound politics, which he feels so zealously himself, and which is so very rarely the characteristie of his countrymen. They will not, I trust, accuse me of illiberality for the picture which I have given of the ignorance and corruption that surround them. If I did not hate, as I ought, the rabble to which they are opposed, I could not value, as I do, the spirit with which they defy it; and in

In the society of Mr. Dennie and his friends, at Phila

And looks I met, like looks I'd loved before,
And voices too, which, as they trembled o'er
The chord of memory, found full many a tone
Of kindness there in concord with their own
Yes, we had nights of that communion free,
That flow of heart, which I have known with thee
So oft, so warmly; nights of mirth and mind,
Of whims that taught, and follies that refined.
When shall we both renew them? when, restored
To the gay feast and intellectual board,
Shall I once more enjoy with thee and thine
Those whims that teach, those follies that refine?
Even now, as wand'ring upon Erie's shore,

I hear Niagara's distant cataract roar,
I sigh for home,-alas! these weary feet
Have many a mile to journey, ere we meet.

Ω ΠΑΤΡΙΣ, ΩΣ ΣΟΥ ΚΑΡΤΑ ΝΥΝ ΜΝΕΙΑΝ ΕΧΩ.

BALLAD STANZAS.

EURIPIDES.

I KNEW by the smoke, that so gracefully curl'd Above the green elms, that a cottage was near, And I said, “If there's peace to be found in the world,

"A heart that was humble might hope for it here!"

It was noon, and on flowers that languish'd around
In silence reposed the voluptuous bee;
Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound
But the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-

tree.

And, "Here in this lone little wood," I exclaim'd, "With a maid who was lovely to soul and to eye,

I wrote these words to ar air which our boatmen sung to us frequently. The wind was so unfavorable that they were obliged to row all the way, and we were five days in descending the river from Kingston to Montreal, exposed to an intense sun during the day, and at night forced to take shelter from the dews in any miserable hut upon the banks that would receive us. But the magnificent scenery of the St. Lawrence repays all such difficulties.

Our voyageurs had good voices, and sung perfectly in tune together. The original words of the air, to which I adapted these stanzas, appeared to be a long, incoherent story, of which I could understand but little, from the barbarous pronunciation of the Canadians. It begins

Dans mon chemin j'ai rencontré
Deux cavaliers très-bien montés;

And the refrain to every verse was,

A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais jouer,

A l'ombre d'un bois je m'en vais danser.

I ventured to harmonize this air, and have published it. Without that charm which association gives to every little

"Who would blush when I praised her, and weep if I blamed,

"How blest could I live, and how calm could I die!

"By the shade of yon sumach, whose red berry dips "In the gush of the fountain, how sweet to recline,

"And to know that I sigh'd upon innocent lips, "Which had never been sigh'd on by any but mine!"

A CANADIAN BOAT SONG.

WRITTEN ON

THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.1

Et remigem cantus hortatur.

QUINTILIAN

FAINTLY as tolls the evening chime
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn.2
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the daylight's past.

Why should we yet our sail unfurl? There is not a breath the blue wave to curl; But, when the wind blows off the shore, Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar. Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast, The Rapids are near and the daylight's past.

Utawas' tide! this trembling moon Shall see us float over thy surges soon.

memorial of scenes or feelings that are past, the melody may, perhaps, be thought common and trifling; but I remember when we have entered, at sunset, upon one of those beautiful lakes into which the St. Lawrence so grandly and unexpect edly opens, I have heard this simple air with a pleasure which the finest compositions of the finest masters have never given me; and now there is not a note of it which does not recall to my memory the dip of our oars in the St. Lawrence, the flight of our boat down the Rapids, and all those new and fanciful impressions to which my heart was alive during the whole of this very interesting voyage.

The above stanzas are supposed to be sung by those voyageurs who go to the Grand Portage by the Utawas River. For an account of this wonderful undertaking, see Sir Alexander Mackenzie's General History of the Fur Trade, prefixed to his Journal.

2" At the Rapid of St. Ann they are obliged to take out part, if not the whole, of their lading. It is from this spot the Canadians consider they take their departure, as it possesses the last church on the island, which is dedicated to the tutelar saint of voyagers."-Mackenzie, General History of the Fur Trade.

Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers, Oh, grant us cool heavens and favoring airs. Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast, The Rapids are near and the daylight's past.

TO THE

LADY CHARLOTTE RAWDON.

FROM THE BANKS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.

NOT
many months have now been dream'd away
Since yonder sun, beneath whose evening ray
Our boat glides swiftly past these wooded shores,
Saw me where Trent his mazy current pours,
And Donington's old oaks, to every breeze,
Whisper the tale of bygone centuries;-
Those oaks, to me as sacred as the groves,
Beneath whose shade the pious Persian roves,
And hears the spirit-voice of sire, or chief,
Or loved mistress, sigh in every leaf.1
There, oft, dear Lady, while thy lip hath sung
My own unpolish'd lays, how proud I've hung
On every tuneful accent! proud to feel
That notes like mine should have the fate to steal
As o'er thy hallowing lip they sigh'd along,
Such breath of passion and such soul of song.
Yes, I have wonder'd, like some peasant boy
Who sings, on Sabbath-eve, his strains of joy,
And when he hears the wild, untutor'd note
Back to his ear on softening echoes float,
Believes it still some answering spirit's tone,
And thinks it all too sweet to be his own!

I dreamt not then that, ere the rolling year Had fill'd its circle, I should wander here In musing awe; should tread this wondrous world, See all its store of inland waters hurl'd In one vast volume down Niagara's steep, Or calm behold them, in transparent sleep,

1 "Avendo essi per costume di avere in venerazione gli alberi grandi et antichi, quasi che siano spesso ricettaccoli di anime beate."-Pietro della Valle, part. second., lettera 16 da i giardini di Sciraz.

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

The glass-snake is brittle and transparent. 4"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 fable of the American Orpheus in Lafitau, tom. i. p. 402.

"The mountains appeared to be sprinkled with white

Where the blue hills of old Toronto shed
Their evening shadows o'er Ontario's bed;
Should trace the grand Cadaraqui, and glide
Down the white rapids of his lordly tide
Through massy woods, mid islets flowering fair
And blooming glades, where the first sinful pair
For consolation might have weeping trod,
When banish'd from the garden of their God.
Oh, Lady! these are miracles, which man,
Caged in the bounds of Europe's pigmy span,
Can scarcely dream of,-which his eye must see
To know how wonderful this world can be!

But lo, the last tints of the west decline, And night falls dewy o'er these banks of pine. Among the reeds, in which our idle boat Is rock'd 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, Down the steep current, till he fades afar Amid the foaming breakers' silvery light, Where yon rough rapids sparkle through the night, Here, as along this shadowy bank I stray, 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 land beyond the sea,
Whither happy spirits flee;
Where, transform'd to sacred doves,*
Many a blessed Indian roves
Through the air on wing, as white
As those wondrous stones of light,"
Which the eye of morning counts
On the Apallachian 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.

stones, which glistened in the sun, and were called by the Indians manetoe aseniah, or spirit-stones.”—Mackenzie's Journal.

• These lines were suggested by Carver's description of one of the American lakes. "When it was calm," he says, "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, before many minutes were elapsed, your head swim and your eyes no longer able to behold the dazzling scene."

Then, when I have stray'd awhile

Through the Manataulin isle,'

Breathing all its holy bloom,
Swift I mount me on the plume
Of my Wakon-Bird,' and fly
Where, beneath a burning sky,
O'er the bed of Erie's lake
Slumbers many a water-snake,
Wrapt within the web of leaves,
Which the water-lily weaves."
Next I chase the flow'ret-king
Through his rosy realm 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,
Scatt'ring 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," Till, with dreams of honey blest, 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

1 Après avoir traversé plusieurs isles peu considérables, nous en trouvâmes le quatrième jour une fameuse nommée l'Isle de Manitoualin.-Voyages du Baron de Luhontan, tom. i. let. 15. Manataulin signifies a Place of Spirits, and this island in Lake Huron is held sacred by the Indians.

"The Wakon-Bird, which probably is of the same specles 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.

3 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 water-snakes in summer.

4 The gold thread is of the vine kind, and grows in swarips. 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 yt 'low."-Morse.

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. 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, Feather'd round with falling snow,

And an arch of glory springs, Sparkling as the chain of rings Round the neck of virgins hung,Virgins, who have wander'd young O'er the waters of the west

To the land where spirits rest!

Thus have I charm'd, with visionary lay, The lonely moments of the night away; And now, fresh daylight o'er the water beams! Once more embark'd upon the glitt'ring 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 unfurl'd, Coasted the dim shores of another world!

Yet, oh believe me, mid this mingled naze Of nature's beauties, where the fancy strays

"L'oisean 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 cotton très-fin suspendu à une branche d'arbre."-Voyages auz Indes Occidentales, par M. Bossu, seconde part, lett. xx. • Emberiza hyemalis.-See Imlay's Kentucky, p. 280.

7 Lafitau supposes that there was an order of vestals established among the Iroquois Indians.-Maurs des Sauvages Américains, &c., tom. i. p. 173.

8 Vedi che sdegna gli argomenti umani;
Si che remo non vuol, ne altro velo,
Che l' ale sue tra liti si lontani.

Vedi come l' ha dritte verso 'l cielo
Trattando l'aere con l'eterne penne;
Che non si mutan, come mortal pelo.

DANTE, Purgator., cant. II.

From charm to charm, where every flow'ret's hue
Hath something strange, and every leaf is new,-
I never feel a joy so pure and still,

So inly felt, as when some brook or hill,
Or veteran oak, like those remember'd well,
Some mountain echo, or some wild-flower's smell,
(For, who can say by what small fairy ties,
The mem'ry clings to pleasure as it flies?)
Reminds my heart of many a silvan dream
I once indulged by Trent's inspiring stream;
Of all my sunny morns and moonlight nights
On Donnington's green lawns and breezy heights.

Whether I trace the tranquil moments o'er
When I have seen thee cull the fruits of lore,
With him, the polish'd 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 bright'ning comments on the dead ;—
Or whether memory to my mind recalls
The festal grandeur of those lordly halls,
When guests have met around the sparkling board,
And welcome warm'd the cup that luxury pour'd;
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,
Radiant, but mild, all softness, yet all fire ;-
Whatever hue my recollections take,
Even the regret, the very pain they wake
Is mix'd with happiness ;-but, ah! no more-
Lady! adieu-my heart has linger'd o'er
Those vanish'd times, till all that round me lies,
Streams, banks, and bowers have faded on my eyes!

Oh! could we have borrow'd from Time but a day, To renew such impressions again and again, The things we should look and imagine and say Would be worth all the life we had wasted ti then.

What we had not the leisure or language to speak, We should find some more spiritual mode of re

vealing,

And, between us, should feel just as much in » week

As others would take a millennium in feeling.

WRITTEN

ON PASSING DEADMAN'S ISLAND,

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!

Say 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 toss'd.

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 furl'd,
And the hand that steers is not of this world!

pitality of my friends of the Phaeton and Boston, that I was but ill prepared for the miseries of a Canadian vessel. 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.