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ANNA CORA MOWATT.

ANNA CORA OGDEN, a daughter of Mr. Samuel Gouverneur Ogden, now of the city of New York, was born in Bordeaux during a temporary residence of her parents in France. Her father's family has long been distinguished in the social and commercial history of New York, and her mother was descended from Francis Lewis, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Ogden had lost the principal portion of a large fortune in Miranda's celebrated expedition into South America, and his residence at Bordeaux was occasioned by mercantile affairs which in a few years secured for him a second time rank among the great merchants and capitalists of his native city.

A melancholy interest was thrown around Mr. Ogden's return, by the loss of two sons, who were swept overboard in a storm during the voyage; but the surviving members of the family settled in his old home, and for several years the education of the daughters occupied and rewarded his best attention. In the château in which they had lived near Bordeaux, they had passed the holy days and domestic anniversaries in masques and private theatricals, and there Anna Cora Ogden gave, in the abandon with which she enacted childish characters, the first indications of that histrionic genius for which she is now distinguished. At thirteen she read with delight the plays of Voltaire, and the next year she personated the heroine of Alzire on her mother's birthday. She had previously become acquainted with Mr. Mowatt, a young lawyer of good family and flattering prospects, who then became a suitor for her hand, and as her parents, to whom the marriage was not objectionable, demanded its postponement until she should be seventeen years of age, they eloped and were privately married by one of the French clergymen of the city.

Mr. and Mrs. Mowatt resided several years near the city of New York, and in this period she wrote Pelayo, or the Cavern of Covadonga, a poetical romance, in six cantos, which was published anonymously by the Harpers

in 1836. Mr. Mowatt's health having declined, they seized the occasion of the marriage of a younger daughter of Mr. Ogden to visit Europe. They resided in Germany and France a year and a half, and in Paris Mrs. Mowatt wrote Gulzare, the Persian Slave, a five act play, which was printed in New York soon after their return, in 1841. The interruption of his business caused by this visit to Europe, and the infirm condition of his health, induced Mr. Mowatt to abandon the profession of the law and to embark in trade, and in the period of commercial disasters which followed, he lost nearly all his property. Mr. Ogden had also suffered new misfortunes, and these reverses led Mrs. Mowatt to the first public display of her abil ities. The dramatic readings of Mr. Vandenhoff had been eminently successful in the chief cities of the Union, and, confident of her powers, she determined to follow his example. She had already acquired some reputation in literature, which secured for her a favorable reception on her first appearance, of which the results more than justified her sanguine anticipations. Her readings from the poets were repeated to large and applauding audiences in Boston, Providence, and New York. Mr. Mowatt having become a partner in a publishing house, she turned her attention again to literary composition, and produced in quick succession several volumes, among which were Sketches of Celebrated Persons, and the Fortune Hunter, a Novel. In 1844 she wrote Evelyn, or the Heart Unmasked, a Tale of Fashionable Life, which is the last and in some respects the best of her works of this description. It is spirited and witty, but unequal, and was written too hastily and carelessly to be justly regarded as the measure of her talents.

Her next work was Fashion, a Comedy, which was successfully acted in the theatres of New York and Philadelphia in the spring of 1845; and in the following autumn she made her brilliant first appearance as an actress, at the Park Theatre. She afterward made two theatrical tours of the principal

cities of the United States, and in the spring | of 1847 she brought out in New York her third five act play, Armand, or the Child of the People. In November of the same year she sailed with her husband for England, and she has since played in Manchester and London a wide range of characters, in many of which she has won high praises from the most judicious critics.

and her dramatic pieces, are brief and fugitive, and generally wanting in that artistic finish of which she has frequently shown herself to be capable.

All who know her personally, and those who are familiar with her history, will join in the exclamation of Mary Howitt, in a recent notice of her, "How excellent in character, how energetic, unselfish, devoted, is

The poems of Mrs. Mowatt, except Pelayo this interesting woman!"

THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER.

WITHIN the darkened chamber sat
A proud but stricken form;
Upon her vigil-wasted cheeks

The grief-wrung tears were warm;
And faster streamed they as she bent
Above the couch of pain,

Where lay a withering flower that wooed
Those fond eyes' freshening rain.
The raven tress on that young brow
Was damp with dews of death;
And glassier grew her upraised eye
With every fluttering breath.
Coldly her slender fingers lay

Within the mourner's grasp;
Lightly they pressed that fostering hand,
And stiffened in its grasp.

Then low the mother bent her knee,
And cried in fervent prayer-
"Hear me, O God! mine own, my child,
Oh, holy Father, spare!

My loved, my last, mine only one

Tear her not yet away;

Leave this crushed heart its best, sole joy:
Be merciful, I pray !"

A radiance lit the maiden's face,
Though fixed in death her eye;
A smile had met the angel's kiss
That stole her parting sigh!
And round her cold lips still that smile
A holy brightness shed,

As though she joyed her sinless soul
To Him who gave had fled.
The mother clasped the senseless form,
And shrieked in wild despair,
And kissed the icy lips and cheek,

And touched the dewy hair.

"No warmth-no life-my child, my child!
Oh for one parting word,
One murmur of that lutelike voice,
Though but an instant heard!

"She is not dead-she could not die-
So young, so fair, so pure;
Spare me, in pity spare this blow!

All else I can endure.

Take hope, take peace, this blighted head
Strike with thy heaviest rod;
But leave me this, thy sweetest boon,

Give back my child, O God!"

The suppliant ceased; her tears were stayed;
Hushed were those wailings loud;

A hallowed peace crept o'er her soul;
Her head to earth was bowed
Low as her knee; for as she knelt,
About her, lo! a flood

Of soft, celestial lustre fell-
A form beside her stood.

And slowly then her awe-struck face
And frighted eyes she raised;

Her heart leaped high: those clouded orbs
Grew brighter as she gazed;

For oh! they rested on a shape

Majestic yet so mild, Imperial dignity seemed blent

With sweetness of a child.

It spake not, but that saintlike smile
Was full of mercy's light,
And power and pity from those eyes
Looked forth in gentle might;
Those angel looks, that lofty mien,

Have breathed without a word-
"Trust, and thy faith shall win thee all:
Behold, I am thy Lord!"

He turns, and on that beauteous clay
His godlike glances rest;
Commandingly the pallid brow

His potent fingers pressed:
The frozen current flows anew

Beneath that quickening hand; The pale lips, softly panting, move; She breathes at his command!

The spirit in its kindred realm

Has heard its Master's call;
And back returning at that voice,

Resumes its earthly thrall.
And now from 'neath those snowy lids
It shines with meeker light,
As though 't were chastened, purified,
By even that transient flight.
Loud swells the mother's cry of joy:
To Him how passing sweet!
Her child she snatches to her breast,
And sinks at Jesus' feet.

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MY LIFE.

My life is a fairy's gay dream,

And thou art the genii, whose wand Tints all things around with the beam, The bloom of Titania's bright land. A wish to my lips never sprung,

A hope in mine eyes never shone, But, ere it was breathed by my tongue, To grant it thy footsteps have flown. Thy joys, they have ever been mine,

Thy sorrows, too often thine own; The sun that on me still would shine, O'er thee threw its shadows alone. Life's garland then let us divide,

Its roses I'd fain see thee wear, For one-but I know thou wilt chideAh! leave me its thorns, love, to bear!

LOVE.

THOU Conqueror's conqueror, mighty Love! to thee
Their crowns, their laurels, kings and heroes yield;
Lo! at thy shrine great Antony bows the knee,
Disdains his victor wreath, and flies the field!
From woman's lips Alcides lists thy tone,
And grasps the inglorious distaff for his sword.
An eastern sceptre at thy feet is thrown,

A nation's worshipped idol owns thee lord;
And well fair Noorjehan his throne became,
When erst she ruled his empire in thy name.
The sorcerer Jarchas could to age restore
Youth's faded bloom or childhood's vanished glee;
Magician Love! canst thou not yet do more?
Is not the faithful heart kept young by thee?
But ne'er that traitor-bosom formed to stray,
Those perjured lips which twice thy vows have
breathed,

Can know the raptures of thy magic sway,
Or find the balsam in thy garland wreathed;
Fancy or Folly may his breast have moved,
But he who wanders never truly loved.

TIME.

NAY, rail not at Time, though a tyrant he be,
And say not he cometh, colossal in might,
Our beauty to ravish, put Pleasure to flight, [tree;
And pluck away friends, e'en as leaves from the
And say not Love's torch, which like Vesta's should
burn,

The cold breath of Time soon to ashes will turn.
You call Time a robber? Nay, he is not so:
While Beauty's fair temple he rudely despoils,
The mind to enrich with its plunder he toils;
And, sowed in his furrows, doth wisdom not grow?
The magnet mid stars points the north still to view;
So Time 'mong our friends e'er discloses the true.
Tho' cares then should gather, as pleasures flee by,
Tho' Time from thy features the charm steal away,
He'll dim too mine eye, lest it see them decay;
And sorrows we've shared will knit closer love's tie:
Then I'll laugh at old Time, and at all he can do,
For he'll rob me in vain, if he leave me but you!

THY WILL BE DONE.

Tax will be done! O heavenly King,
I bow my head to thy decree;
Albeit my soul not yet may wing

Its upward flight, great God, to thee! Though I must still on earth abide,

To toil, and groan, and suffer here, To seek for peace on sorrow's tide, And meet the world's unfeeling jeer. When heaven seemed dawning on my view, And I rejoiced my race was run, Thy righteous hand the bliss withdrew; And still I say, "Thy will be done!" And though the world can never more A world of sunshine be to me, Though all my fairy dreams are o'er,

And Care pursues where'er I flee; Though friends I loved-the dearest-best, Were scattered by the storm away, And scarce a hand I warmly pressed As fondly presses mine to-day: Yet must I live--must live for those

Who mourn the shadow on my brow,
Who feel my hand can soothe their woes,
Whose faithful hearts I gladden now.
Yes, I will live-live to fulfil

The noble mission scarce begun,
And pressed with grief to murmur still,

All Wise! All Just! "Thy will be done!"

ON A LOCK OF MY MOTHER'S HAIR.
WHOSE the eyes thou erst didst shade,
Down what bosom hast thou rolled,
O'er what cheek unchidden played,

Tress of mingled brown and gold! Round what brow, say, didst thou twine? Angel-mother, it was thine!

Cold the brow that wore this braid,

Pale the cheek this bright lock pressed, Dim the eyes it loved to shade,

Still the ever-gentle breastAll that bosom's struggles past, When it held this ringlet last. In that happy home above,

Where all perfect joy hath birth,
Thou dispensest good and love,

Mother, as thou didst on earth.
And though distant seems that sphere,
Still I feel thee ever near.
Though my longing eye now views
Thy angelic mien no more,

Still thy spirit can infuse

Good in mine, unknown before. Still the voice, from childhood dear, Steals upon my raptured earChiding every wayward deed, Fondly praising every just, Whispering soft, when strength I need, "Loved one! place in God thy trust!" Oh, 'tis more than joy to feel Thou art watching o'er my weal!

MARY NOEL MEIGS.

THE father of Miss BLEECKER (now Mrs. MEIGS) was of the Bleecker family so long distinguished in the annals of New York, and among her paternal connexions were Mrs. Anne Eliza Bleecker and Mrs. Faugeres, whose poems have been commented upon in an earlier part of this volume. Her maternal grandfather was the late Major William Popham, the last survivor of the staff

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Rosy June;

And I love the flashing ray

Of the rivulets at play,

As they sparkle into day,
Rosy. June!

Most lovely do I call thee,
Laughing June!

For thy skies are bright and blue,
As a sapphire's brilliant hue,

And the heats of summer noon,
Made cooler by thy breath-
O'er the clover-scented heath,

Which the scythe must sweep so soon:
And thou fan'st the fevered cheek

With thy softest gales of balm,

Till the pulse so low and weak

Beateth stronger and more calm...

Kind physician, thou dost lend
Like a tried and faithful friend,

To the suffering and the weary every blessing thou

canst bring;

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of Washington. In 1834 Miss Bleecker was married to Mr. Pierre E. F. McDonald, who died at the end of ten years. In 1845 she published an octavo volume entitled Poems by M. N. M., and she has since written many poems and prose essays for the magazines, besides several volumes of stories for children, &c. In the autumn of 1848 she was married to Mr. Henry Meigs, of New York.

And a thousand summer fancies with the melody have come;

And he turneth from the page

Of the prophet or the sage,

And forgetteth all the wisdom of his books;
For his heart is roving free
With the butterfly and bee,

And chimeth with the music of the brooks,
Singing still their merry tune

In the flashing light of noon,

One chord of thy sweet lyre, laughing June!
I have heart-aches many a one,
Rosy June!

And I sometimes long to fly

To a world of love and light,
Where the flowerets never die,

Nor the day gives place to night;
Where the weariness and pain
Of this mortal life are o'er,

And we fondly clasp again

All the loved ones gone before:
And I think, to lay my head
On some green and sheltered bed,

Where, at dawning or at noon,
Come the birds with liquid note
In each tender, warbling throat,

Or the breeze with mournful tune
To sigh above my grave—
Would be all that I should crave,

Rosy June!

But when thou art o'er the earth,

With thy blue and tranquil skies,
And thy gushing melodies,

And thy many tones of mirth-
When thy flowers perfume the air,

And thy garlands wreathe the bough,
And thy birthplace even now
Seems an Eden bright and fair-
How my spirit shrinks away

From the darkness of the tomb,
And I shudder at its gloom
While so beautiful the day.
Yet I know the skies are bright
In that land of love and light,

Brighter, fairer than thine own, lovely June!
No shadow dims the ray,

No night obscures the day,
But ever, ever reigneth high eternal noon.

A glimpse thou art of heaven,
Lovely June!

Type of a purer clime
Beyond the flight of time,

Where the amaranth flowers are rife
By the placid stream of life,
For ever gently flowing;
Where the beauty of the rose
In that land of soft repose
Nor blight nor fading knows,

In immortal fragrance blowing.
And my prayer is still to see,
In thy blessed ministry,

A transient gleam of regions that are all divinely

fair;

A foretaste of the bliss

In a holier world than this,

And a place beside the loved ones who are safely gathered there.

THE SPELLS OF MEMORY.

IT was but the note of a summer bird,
But a dream of the past in my heart it stirred,
And wafted me far to a breezy spot,
Where blossomed the blue forget-me-not.
And the broad, green boughs gave a checkered gleam
To the dancing waves of a mountain-stream,
And there, in the heat of a summer day,
Again on the velvet turf I lay,

And saw bright shapes in the floating clouds,
And reared fair domes mid their fleecy shrouds,
As I looked aloft to the azure sky,
And longed for a bird's soft plumes to fly,
Till lost in its depths of purity.

Alas! I have waked from that early dream:
Far, far away is the mountain-stream;
And the dewy turf, where so oft I lay,

And the woodland flowers, they are far away;
And the skies that once were to me so blue,
Now bend above with a darker hue:
And yet I may wander in fancy back
At Memory's call to my childhood's track,

And the fount of thought hath been deeply stirred

By the passing note of a summer bird.

It was but the rush of the autumn wind,
But it left a spell of the past behind,
And I was abroad with my brothers twain
In the tangled paths of the wood again:
Where the leaves were rustling beneath our feet,
And the merry shout of our gleesome mood
Was echoed far in the solitude,

As we caught the prize which a kindly breeze
Sent down in a shower from the chestnut-trees.
Oh! a weary time hath passed away
Since my brothers were out by my side at play;
A weary time, with its weight of care,
And its toil in the city's crowded air,
And its pining wish for the hilltops high;
For the laughing stream and the clear blue sky;

For the shaded dell, and the leafy halls
Of the old green wood where the sunlight falls.
But I see the haunts of my early days-
The old green wood where the sunshine plays,
And the flashing stream in its course of light,
And the hilltops high, and the sky so bright,
And the silent depths of the shaded dell,
Where the twilight shadows at noonday fell:
And the mighty charm which hath conquered these
Is naught, save a rush of the autumn breeze.
It was but a violet's faint perfume,
But it bore me back to a quiet room,
Where a gentle girl in the spring-time gay
Was breathing her fair young life away,
Whose light through the rose-hued curtains fell,
And tinted her cheek like the ocean-shell;
And the southern breeze on its fragrant wings
Stole in with its tale of all lovely things; [hours,
Where Love watched on through the long, long
And Friendship came with its gift of flowers;
And Death drew near with a stealthy tread,
And lightly pillowed in dust her head,
And sealed up gently the lids so fair,
And damped the brow with its clustering hair,
And left the maiden in slumber deep,

To waken no more from that tranquil sleep.

Then we laid the flower her hand had pressed

To wither and die on her gentle breast;
And back to the shade of that quiet room
I go with the violet's faint perfume.

LOVE'S ASPIRATION.

WHAT shall I ask for thee,

Beloved, when at the silent eve or golden morn
I seek the Eternal Throne on bended knee,
And to the God of Love my soul is borne,
Ascending through the angel-guarded air,
On the swift wings of Prayer?
What shall I ask? the bliss

Of earth's poor votaries? pleasures that must fade
As dew from summer blossom? Oh! for this
Thy fresh young spirit, dear one, was not made:
Purer and holier must its blessings be-

I ask not this for thee......

For thee, fair child, for thee,

In thy fresh, budding girlhood, shall my prayer
Go up unceasing, that the witchery
Of earthly tones alluring may not snare

Thy heart from purer things; but God's own hand
Lead to the better land.

Ever shall Love for thee Implore Heaven's best and holiest benison, Its perfect peace-that peace which can not be The gift of Earth; for this when upward borne My soul grows earnest, angel-lips of flame May echo thy sweet name. Ay, in their world of light Immortal voices catch a mother's prayer, And while I kneel, some waiting seraph bright, Swift on expanded wing, the boon may bear, And, soft as falling dewdrops, kindly shed Heaven's peace o'er thy young head.

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