ROGER WILLIAMS.

WRITTEN FOR AN ANNIVERSARY OF THE RHODE-
ISLAND EISTORICAL SOCIETY.

Now, while the echoing cannon's roar
Rocks our far frontal towers,
And bugle blast and trumpet's blare

Float o'er the "Land of Flowers;"
While our bold eagle spreads his wing,
No more in lofty pride,

But sorrowing sinks, as if from Heaven
The ensanguined field to hide :
Turn we from War's bewildering blaze,
And Conquest's choral song,
To the still voice of other days,
Long heard-forgotten long.
Listen to his rich words, intoned
To "songs of lofty cheer,"
Who, in the "howling wilderness,"
When only God could hear,
Breathed not of exile, nor of wrong,
Through the long winter nights,
But uttered, in exulting song,

The soul's unchartered rights.
Who opened wide the guarded doors
Where Conscience reigned alone,
And bade the nations own her laws,
And tremble round her throne;
Who sought the oracles of God

Within her veiled shrine,

Nor asked the monarch nor the priest
Her sacred laws to sign.

The brave, high heart, that would not yield
Its liberty of thought,
Far o'er the melancholy main,

Through bitter trials brought;
But, to a double exile doomed,

By Faith's pure guidance led Through the dark labyrinth of life, Held fast her golden thread. Listen!-the music of his dream Perchance may linger still

In the old familiar places

Beneath the emerald hill.

The waveworn rock still breasts the storm
On Seekonk's lonely side,

Where the dusk natives hailed the bark
That bore their gentle guide.

The spring that gushed, amid the wild,
In music on his ear,

Still pours its waters undefiled,

The fainting heart to cheer.
But the fair cove, that slept so calm
Beneath o'ershadowing hills,

And bore the pilgrim's evening psalm
Far up its flowery rills—

The tide that parted to receive
The stranger's light canoe,
As if an angel's balmy wing
Had swept its waters blue-
When, to the healing of its wave,
We come in pensive thought,
Through all its pleasant borders
A dreary change is wrought!

The fire-winged courser's breath has swept
Across its cooling tide:

Lo! where he plants his iron heel,
How fast the wave has dried!
Unlike the fabled Pegasus,

Whose proud hoof, where he trode
Earth's flinty bosom, oped a fount
Whence living waters flowed.

Or, turn we to the green hill's side:

There, with the spring-time showers,
The white thorn, o'er a nameless grave,
Rains its pale, silver flowers.

Yet Memory lingers with the past,
Nor vainly seeks to trace
His footprints on a rock, whence time
Nor tempests can efface;

Whereon he planted, fast and deep,

The roof tree of a home

Wide as the wings of Love may sweep,

Free as her thoughts may roam; Where through all time the saints may dwell, And from pure fountains draw

That peace which passeth human thought, In liberty and law.

When heavenward, up the silver stair

Of silence drawn, we tread
The visioned mount that looks beyond
The valley of the dead-
Oh, may we gather to our hearts

The deeds our fathers wrought,
And feed the perfumed lamp of Love
In the cool air of Thought.
While Hope shall on her anchor lean,

May Memory fondly turn,

To wreathe the amaranth and the palm
Around their funeral urn!

HOW SOFTLY COMES THE SUMMER
WIND.

"And henceforth all that once was fair,
Grew fairer."

How softly comes the summer wind
At evening, o'er the hill-

For ever murmuring of thee

When busy crowds are still;
The wayside flowers seem to guess
And whisper of my happiness.

While, in the dusk and dewy hours,
The silent stars above

Seem leaning from their airy towers
To gaze on me in love;

And clouds of silver wander by,

Like missioned doves athwart the sky

Till Dian lulls the throbbing stars

Into elysian dreams,

And, rippling through my lattice-bars,
A brooding glory streams

Around me, like the golden shower

That rained through Danae's guarded tower.

A low, bewildering melody

Is murmuring in my ear

Tones such as in the twilight wood

The aspen thrills to hear,
When Faunus slumbers on the hill,
And all the tranced boughs are still.

The jasmine twines her snowy stars
Into a fairer wreath;

The lily, through my lattice-bars,
Exhales a sweeter breath;
And, gazing on Night's starry cope,

I dwell with "Beauty, which is Hope."

A SONG OF SPRING.

IN April's dim and showery nights,
When music melts along the air,
And Memory wakens at the kiss

Of wandering perfumes, faint and rare—
Sweet springtime perfumes, such as won
Proserpina from realms of gloom
To bathe her bright locks in the sun,

Or bind them with the pansy's bloom, When light winds rift the fragrant bowers Where orchards shed their floral wreath, Strewing the turf with starry flowers,

And dropping pearls at every breath; When all night long the boughs are stirred With fitful warblings from the nest,

And the heart flutters like a bird

With its sweet, passionate unrest— Oh! then, beloved, I think on thee, And on that life, so strangely fair, Ere yet one cloud of memory

Had gathered in hope's golden air.
I think on thee and thy lone grave
On the green hillside far away;

I see the wilding flowers that wave
Around thee as the night winds sway;
And still, though only clouds remain

On life's horizon, cold and drear,
The dream of youth returns again
With the sweet promise of the year.

I linger till night's waning stars
Have ceased to tremble through the gloom,
Till through the orient's cloudy bars
I see the rose of morning bloom!
All flushed and radiant with delight,
It opens through earth's stormy skies,
Divinely beautiful and bright

As on the hills of paradise.

Lo! like a dewdrop on its breast
The morning star of youth and love,
Melting within the rosy east,

Exhales to azure depths above.
My spirit, soaring like a lark,
Would follow on its airy flight,
And, like yon little diamond spark,
Dissolve into the realms of light.
Sweet-missioned star! thy silver beams
Foretell a fairer life to come,
And through the golden gate of dreams
Allure the wandering spirit home.

DAVID.

SUGGASTED BY A STATUE.*

Ar, this is he-the bold and gentle boy,

That in lone pastures by the mountain's side Guarded his fold, and through the midnight sky Saw on the blast the God of battles ride; Beheld his bannered armies on the height, And heard their clarion sound through all the stormy night.

The valiant boy that o'er the twilight wold

Tracked the dark lion and ensanguined bear;
Following their bloody footsteps from the fold
Far down the gorges to their lonely lair-
This the stout heart, that from the lion's jaw
Back o'er the shuddering waste the bleeding victim
bore.

Though his fair locks lie all unshorn and bare
To the bold toying of the mountain wind,
A conscious glory haunts the o'ershadowing air,
And waits with glittering coil his brows to bind,
While his proud temples bend superbly down,
As if they felt e'en now the burden of a crown.
Though a stern sorrow slumbers in his eyes,
As if his prophet glance foresaw the day
When the dark waters o'er his soul should rise,
And friends and lovers wander far away-
Yet the graced impress of that floral mouth
Breathes of love's golden dream and the voluptuous

south.

Peerless in beauty as the prophet star,

That in the dewy trances of the dawn Floats o'er the solitary hills afar,

And brings sweet tidings of the lingering morn; Or weary at the day-god's loitering wane, Strikes on the harp of light a soft prelusive strain. So his wild harp with psaltery and shawm

Awoke the nations in thick darkness furled, While mystic winds from Gilead's groves of balm Wafted its sweet hosannas through the worldSo when the Dayspring from on high he sang, With joy the ancient hills and lonely valleys rang. Ay, this is he-the minstrel, prophet, king,

Before whose arm princes and warriors sank; Who dwelt beneath Jehovah's mighty wing,

And from the "river of his pleasures" drank; Or through the rent pavilions of the storm Beheld the cloud of fire that veiled his awful form. And now he stands as when in Elah's vale, Where warriors set the battle in array, He met the Titan in his ponderous mail,

Whose haughty challenge many a summer's day Rang through the border hills, while all the host Of faithless Israel heard and trembled at his boast. Till the slight stripling from the mountain fold Stood, all unarmed, amid their sounding shields, And in his youth's first bloom, devoutly bold,

Dared the grim champion of a thousand fields: So stands he now, as in Jehovah's might Glorying, he met the foe and won the immortal fight.

* This fine statue, executed by Thomas F. Hoppin, of Providence, R. I., represents the young champion of Is rael as he stands prepared to attack the Philistine.

THIS accomplished and popular author was born in a pleasant country town about twelve miles from the city of Portland, in Maine. Descended on her father's side from Thomas Prince, one of the early Puritan governors of the Plymouth colony, and claiming through the Oakeses, on her mother's side, the same early identification with the first European planters of our soil, Mrs. OAKES-SMITH may readily be supposed to have that characteristic which is so rarely found among us, Americanism; and her writings in their department may be regarded as the genuine expression of an American mind.

At the early age of sixteen, Miss Prince was married to Mr. Seba Smith, at that time editor of the leading political journal of his native state, and since then well known to his countrymen as the original "Jack Downing," whose great popularity has been attested by a score of imitators. The embarrassed affairs of Mr. Smith (who, himself a poet, partook with a poet's sanguineness of temper in that noted attempt to settle the wild lands of Maine, which proved so disastrous a speculation to some of the wealthiest families of the state) first impelled Mrs. Oakes-Smith to take up her pen to aid in the support of her children. She had before that period, indeed, given utterance to her poetic sensibilities in several anonymous pieces, which are still much admired. But a shrinking and sensitive modesty forbade her appearing as an author; and though, in her altered circumstances, when she found that her talents might be made available, she did not hesitate, like a true woman, to sacrifice feeling to duty, yet some of her most beautiful prose writings still continue to appear under nommes des plumes, with which her truly feminine spirit avoids identification.

Seeking expression, yet shrinking from notoriety; and with a full share of that respect for a just fame and appreciation which belongs to every high-toned mind, yet oppressed by its shadow when circumstance is the impelling motive of publication, the writings of

Mrs. Oakes-Smith might well be supposed to betray great inequality; still in her many contributions to the magazines, it is remarkable how few of her pieces display the usual carelessness and haste of magazine articles. As an essayist especially, while graceful and lively, she is compact and vigorous; while through poems, essays, tales, and criticisms, (for her industrious pen seems equally skilful and happy in each of these depatments of literature,) through all her manifold writings, indeed, there runs the same beautiful vein of philosophy, viz.: that truth and goodness of themselves impart a holy light to the mind, which gives it a power far above mere intellectuality; that the highest order of human intelligence springs from the moral and not the reasoning faculties.

One of her most popular poems is The Acorn, which, though inferior in high inspiration to The Sinless Child, is by many preferred for its happy piay of fancy and proper finish. Her sonnets, of which she has written many, have not been as much admired as The April Rain, The Brook, and other fugitive pieces, which we find in many popular collections. I doubt, indeed, whether they will ever attain the popularity of these “unconsidered trifles," though they indicate concentrated poetical power of a very high, possibly of the very highest order. ever, with The Sinless Child. taste will often captivate the uncultivated many; works of mere taste as often delight the cultivated few; but works of genius appeal to the universal mind.

Not so, how

Works of bad

The simplicity of diction, and pervading beauty and elevation of thought, which are the chief characteristics of The Sinless Child, bring it undoubtedly within the last category. And why do such writings seize at once on the feelings of every class? Wherein lies this power of genius to wake a response in society? Is it the force of a high will, fusing feeble natures, and stamping them for the moment with an impress of its own? or is it that in every heart, unless thoroughly cor

rupted by the world-in every mind, unless completely encrusted by cant, there lurks an inward sense of the simple, the beautiful, and the true; an instinctive perception of excellence which is both more unerring and more universal than that of mere intellect. Such is the cheering view of humanity enforced in The Sinless Child, and the reception of it is evidence of the truth of the doctrine it so finely shadows forth. "It is a work," says a discriminating critic, "which demands more in its composition than mere imagination or intellect could supply ;" and I may add that the writer, in unconsciously picturing the actual graces of her own mind, has made an irresistible appeal to the ideal of soul-loveliness in the minds of her readers. before us like the florist in Arabian story, whose magic vase produced a plant of such simple, yet perfect beauty, that the multitude were in raptures from the familiar field associations of childhood which it called forth, while the skill of the learned alone detected the unique rarity of the enchanting flower.

She comes

An analysis of The Sinless Child will not be attempted here, but a few passages are quoted to exhibit its graceful play of fancy and the pure vein of poetical sentiment by which it is pervaded. And first, the episode of the Step-Mother:

You speak of Hobert's second wife,
A lofty dame and bold:

I like not her forbiding air,

And forehead high and cold.
The orphans have no cause for grief,
She dare not give it now,
Though nothing but a ghostly fear
Her heart of pride could bow.
One night the boy his mother called:
They heard him weeping say-
"Sweet mother, kiss poor Eddy's cheek,
And wipe his tears away!"

Red grew the lady's brow with rage,
And yet she feels a strife

Of anger and of terror too,

At thought of that dead wife.

Wild roars the wind, the lights burn blue,
The watch-dog howls with fear;
Loud neighs the steed from out the stall:
What form is gliding near?
No latch is raised, no step is heard,
But a phantom fills the space-
A sheeted spectre from the dead,
With cold and leaden face!
What boots it that no other eye
Beheld the shade appear?
The guilty lady's guilty soul
Beheld it plain and clear!

It slowly glides within the room,
And sadly looks around-
And stooping, kissed her daughter's cheek
With lips that gave no sound!
Then softly on the stepdame's arm
She laid a death-cold hand,
Yet it hath scorched within the flesh
Like to a burning brand;

And gliding on with noiseless foot,

O'er winding stair and hall,
She nears the chamber where is heard
Her infant's trembling call.
She smoothed the pillow where he lay,
She warmly tucked the bed,
She wiped his tears, and stroked the curls
That clustered round his read.
The child, caressed, unknowing fear,
Hath nestled him to rest;
The mother folds her wings beside-
The mother from the blest!

It is commonly difficult to select from a poem of which the parts make one harmonious whole; but the history of The Sinless Child is illustrated all through with cabinet pictures which are scarcely less effective when separated from their series than when combined, and the reader will be gratified with a few of those which best exhibit the author's manner and feeling:

GUARDIAN ANGELS.

With downy pinion they enfold

The heart surcharged with wo,
And fan with balmy wing the eye
Whence floods of sorrow flow;
They bear, in golden censers up,
That sacred gift, a tear-
By which is registered the griefs
Hearts may have suffered here.
No inward pang, no yearning love
Is lost to human hearts-
No anguish that the spirit feels,

When bright-winged Hope departs. Though in the mystery of life

Discordant powers prevail; That life itself be weariness, And sympathy may fail: Yet all becomes a discipline,

To lure us to the sky;

And angels bear the good it brings
With fostering care on high.
Though human hearts may weary grow,
And sink to toil-spent sleep,
And we are left in solitude
And agony to weep:

Yet they with ministering zeal
The
cup
of healing bring,
And bear our love and gratitude

Away, on heavenward wing;
And thus the inner life is wrought,

The blending earth and heavenThe love more earnest in its glow

Where much has been forgiven!

FIELD ELVES.

The tender violets bent in smiles

To elves that sported nigh, Tossing the drops of fragrant dew

To scent the evening sky.

They kissed the rose in love and mirth,

And its petals fairer grew;

A shower of pearly dust they brought,

And o'er the lily threw.

A host flew round the mowing field,
And they were showering down
The cooling spray on the early grass,
Like diamonds o'er it thrown;

They gemmed each leaf and quivering spear
With pearls of liquid dew,

And bathed the stately forest tree

Till his robe was fresh and new.

SUPERSTITION.

For oft her mother sought the child
Amid the forest glade,

And marvelled that in darksome glen
So tranquilly she stayed.

For every jagged limb to her
A shadowy semblance hath

Of spectres and distorted shapes,
That frown upon her path,

And mock her with their hideous eyes;
For when the soul is blind

To freedom, truth, and inward light,
Vague fears debase the mind.

MIDSUMMER.

"Tis the summer prime, when the noiseless air In perfumed chalice lies,

And the bee goes by with a lazy hum,

Beneath the sleeping skies:

When the brook is low, and the ripples bright, As down the stream they go,

The pebbles are dry on the upper side,

And dark and wet below.

The tree that stood where the soil's athirst,
And the mulleins first appear,
Hath a dry and rusty-colored bark,

And its leaves are curled and sere;
But the dogwood and the hazel-bush
Have clustered round the brook-
Their roots have stricken deep beneath,
And they have a verdant look.
To the juicy leaf the grasshopper clings,
And he gnaws it like a file;
The naked stalks are withering by,
Where he has been erewhile.
The cricket hops on the glistering rock,
Or pipes in the faded grass;
The beetle's wing is folded mute,

Where the steps of the idler pass.

CONSCIENCE.

"Dear mother! in ourselves is hid

The holy spirit-land,

Where Thought, the flaming cherub, stands
With its relentless brand:

We feel the pang when that dread sword
Inscribes the hidden sin,
And turneth everywhere to guard
The paradise within."

FLOWERS.

Each tiny leaf became a scroll
Inscribed with holy truth,

A lesson that around the heart
Should keep the dew of youth;
Bright missals from angelic throngs

In
every by-way left—
How were the earth of glory shorn,

Were it of flowers bereft!

They tremble on the Alpine height;
The fissured rock they press;
The desert wild, with heat and sand,
Shares, too, their blessedness:
And wheresoe'er the weary heart
Turns in its dim despair,

The meek-eyed blossom upward looks,
Inviting it to prayer.

INFANT SLUMBER.

A holy smile was on her lip

Whenever sleep was there;

She slept, as sleeps the blossom, hushed
Amid the silent air.

Recently Mrs. Smith has turned her attention to the field which next to the epic is highest in the domain of literary art, and it is anticipated by those who have examined her tragedies that her success as a dramatic poet will secure for her a fame not promised by any of her previous achievements. The Roman Tribute, in five acts, refers to a familiar period in the history of Constantinople when Theodosius saved the city from being sacked by paying its price to the victorious Attila; and the subject suggests some admirable contrasts of rude integrity with treacherous courtesy, of pagan piety with the craft of a nominal Christianity, still pervaded by heathen prejudice while uncontrolled by heathen principle. The play opens with the spectacle of the frivolous monarch jesting with his court at their uncouth enemies, and exulting at the happy thought of buying them. off with money. Then appears Anthemius, who had been absent, raising levies for the defence of the city, indignant at the cowardly peace which makes the Roman tributary to the Hun, and—a soldier, a statesman, and a patriot-he determines to retrieve the national honor. Perplexed as to the best means of doing this, he sees that the whole government must be recast. Hitherto Theodosius and his sister had between them sustained its administration, with Anthemius as prime minister. The princess had conceived for him an attachment, and would have thrown herself and the purple into his arms; but he has no sympathy with her passion, and is intent only upon the emancipation of the em