But soon advancing to its growth,
Looks up with beauty too.
And, as midsummer suns prevail,
Upon its blossoms glow
Commingling hues, like sunset rays-
Then bursts its sheeted snow.

How shall we fly this lovely spot,
Where rural joys prevail-
The social board, the eager chase,
Gay dance, and merry tale?

Alas! our youth must leave their sports,
When spring-time ushers May;
Our maidens quit the planted flower,
Just blushing into day-

Or, all beneath yon rural mound,

Where rest th' ancestral dead,

By mourning friends, with severed hearts,
Unconscious will be led.

Oh, southern summer, false and fair!
Why, from thy loaded wing,

Blent with rich flowers and fruitage rare,
The seeds of sorrow fling?

MUSIC ON THE CANAL.

I was weary with the daylight,
I was weary with the shade,
And my heart became still sadder
As the stars their light betrayed;

I sickened at the ripple,

As the lazy boat went on,

And felt as though a friend was lost,
When the twilight ray was gone.
The meadows, in a firefly glow,

Looked gay to happy eyes:

To me they beamed but mournfully,
My heart was cold with sighs.

They seemed, indeed, like summer friends—
Alas! no warmth had they;

I turned in sorrow from their glare,
Impatient turned away.

And tear-drops gathered in my eyes,
And rolled upon my cheek,

And when the voice of mirth was heard,
I had no heart to speak:

I longed to press my children

To my sad and homesick breast,
And feel the constant hand of love
Caressing and caressed.

And slowly went my languid pulse,
As the slow canal-boat goes,
And I felt the pain of weariness,

And sighed for home's repose;
And laughter seemed a mockery,
And joy a fleeting breath,
And life a dark, volcanic crust,
That crumbles over death.
But a strain of sweetest melody
Arose upon my ear,

The blessed sound of woman's voice,
That angels love to hear!

And manly strains of tenderness
Were mingled with the song-
A father's with his daughter's notes,
The gentle with the strong.
And my thoughts began to soften,
Like snows when waters fall,
And open as the frost-closed buds,
When spring's young breezes call;
While to my faint and weary soul
A better hope was given,
And all once more was bright with faith,
"Twixt heart, and earth, and Heaven.

THE CONGRESSIONAL BURYING-GROUND.

THE pomp of death was thereThe lettered urn, the classic marble rose, And coldly, in magnificent repose,

Stood out the column fair.

The hand of art was seen

Throwing the wild flowers from the gravelled walk, The sweet wild flowers, that hold their quiet talk Upon the uncultured green.

And now perchance, a bird,

Hiding amid the trained and scattered trees,
Sent forth his carol on the scentless breeze-
But they were few I heard.

Did my heart's pulses beat?

And did mine eye o'erflow with sudden tears,
Such as gush up mid memories of years,
When humbler graves we meet ?

An humbler grave I met,

On the Potomac's leafy banks, when May, Weaving spring flowers, stood out in colors gay, With her young coronet :

A lonely, nameless grave,

Stretching its length beneath th' o'erarching trees, Which told a plaintive story, as the breeze

Came their new buds to wave.

But the lone turf was green

As that which gathers o'er more honored forms; Nor with more harshness had the wintry storms Swept o'er that woodland scene.

The flower and springing blade
Looked upward with their young and shining eyes,
And met the sunlight of the happy skies,
And that low turf arrayed.

And unchecked birds sang out
The chorus of their spring-time jubilee—
And gentle happiness it was to me,

To list their music-shout.

And to that stranger-grave

The tribute of enkindling thoughts-the free
And unbought power of natural sympathy--
Passing, I sadly gave.

TO THE URSULINES.

Оn, pure and gentle ones, within your ark
Securely rest!

Blue be the sky above-your quiet bark
By soft winds blest!

Still toil in duty, and commune with Heaven,
World-weaned and free;

God to his humblest creatures room has given
And space to be.

Space for the eagle in the vaulted sky
To plume his wing-

Space for the ringdove by her young to lie,
And softly sing.

Space for the sunflower, bright with yellow glow,
To court the sky-

Space for the violet, where the wild woods grow,
To live and die.

Space for the ocean, in its giant might,
To swell and rave-

Space for the river, tinged with rosy light,
Where green banks wave.

Space for the sun to tread his path in might
And golden pride—

Space for the glow-worm, calling, by her light,
Love to her side.

Then, pure and gentle ones, within your ark
Securely rest!

Blue be the skies above, and your still bark
By kind winds blest.

RETURN TO MASSACHUSETTS.

THE martin's nest-the simple nest!
I see it swinging high,
Just as it stood in distant years,
Above my gazing eye;

But many a bird has plumed its wing,
And lightly flown away,

Or drooped his little head in death,
Since that my youthful day!

The woodland stream-the pebbly stream!
It gayly flows along,

As once it did when by its side

I sang my merry song:

But many a wave has rolled afar,

Beneath the summer cloud, Since by its bank I idly poured My childish song aloud.

The sweet-brier rose--the wayside rose,
Still spreads its fragrant arms,
Where graciously to passing eyes

It gave its simple charms;

But many a perfumed breeze has passed,
And many a blossom fair,

Since with a careless heart I twined
Its green wreaths in my hair.

The barberry bush-the poor man's bush!
Its yellow blossoms hang,

As erst, where by the grassy lane
Along I lightly sprang;

But many a flower has come and gone,
And scarlet berry shone,

Since I, a school-girl in its path,
In rustic dance have flown.

ANNIE IN THE GRAVEYARD.

SHE bounded o'er the graves,
With a buoyant step of mirth;
She bounded o'er the graves,
Where the weeping willow waves,
Like a creature not of earth.

Her hair was blown aside,
And her eyes were glittering bright;
Her hair was blown aside,
And her little hands spread wide,
With an innocent delight.

She spelt the lettered word
That registers the dead;
She spelt the lettered word,
And her busy thoughts were stirred
With pleasure as she read.

She stopped and culled a leaf
Left fluttering on a rose;
She stopped and culled a leaf,
Sweet monument of grief,
That in our churchyard grows.
She culled it with a smile-
"T was near her sister's mound:
She culled it with a smile,
And played with it awhile,
Then scattered it around.

I did not chill her heart,
Nor turn its gush to tears;

I did not chill her heart-
Oh, bitter drops will start
Full soon in coming years.

SARAH JOSEPHA BUELL, now Mrs. HALE, was born in 1790 at Newport in New Hampshire, whither her parents had removed soon after the close of the Revolution, from Saybrook in Connecticut. There were then few schools in that part of the country, and perhaps none from which the parents of Miss Buell would have sought for her more than the most elementary instruction. Her mother, however, was a woman of considerable cultivation, and of a fine understanding; she attended carefully to the education of her children, and the studies of our author which she could not direct were afterward guided by a brother, who graduated at Dartmouth college in 1809, and was a good classical and general scholar. But the completion of her education was deferred until after her marriage, which took place about the year 1814. Her husband, Mr. David Hale, was an accomplished lawyer, well read in the best literature, and anxious for the thorough development of her abilities, of which he had formed a high estimate. "We commenced," writes Mrs. Hale, "immediately after our marriage, a system of study, which we pursued together, with few interruptions, and these unavoidable, during his life. The hours we allotted for this purpose were from eight o'clock in the evening till ten. In this manner we studied French, botany — then almost a new science in this country, but for which my husband had an uncommon taste- and obtained some knowledge of mineralogy, geology, &c., besides pursuing a long and instructive course of miscellaneous reading.”

Mr. Hale died suddenly in September, 1822, having been married about eight years, during which he had been eminently successful in attaining to professional eminence, but without having yet secured even the basis of a fortune. Mrs. Hale was a widow and was poor, and after the strongest feelings of sorrow had subsided, and the affairs of her deceased husband had been settled, she formed plans for the support and education of her family, which she subsequently executed with an energy and perseverance which

command admiration, and which with her powers could not fail of success. Literature, which had hitherto been cultivated for its own reward, became now her profession and only means of support.

The first publication of Mrs. Hale was The Genius of Oblivion, and other Original Poems, printed at Concord in 1823. The Genius of Oblivion is a descriptive story in about fifteen hundred octo-syllabic linesfounded upon a tradition of the aboriginal settlement of this country. At the close of the poem is an intimation of a half-formed design to write a sequel to it. She says:

And hence Columbia's first inhabitants

The authors of these Monuments of Old:
And their destruction, I may sing, perchance,
If haply this, my tale, so featly told,
Escape Medusan critics' withering glance,
And in my country's favor live enrolled,
As not unworthy of her smile: but this,

A hope I may but cherish, or-dismiss. Her next work, however, was Northwood, a Tale of New England, in two volumes, published in Boston in 1827. Her object in this novel is to illustrate common life among the descendants of the Puritans, and she undoubtedly succeeded in sketching with spirit and singular fidelity the forms of society with which she was acquainted by observation. The doctor, the deacon, the family of the squire, and other village characters, are most natural and truthful delineations. But Northwood evinces little of the constructive faculty, and only its portraitures that have been referred to can be much commended.

In 1828 Mrs. Hale removed to Boston to conduct the American Ladies' Magazine, a monthly miscellany established at that time, and edited by her for about nine years. In this work were originally published many of the prose compositions which were subsequently issued in two separate volumes under the titles of Sketches of American Character, and Traits of American Life. In the same period she published Flora's Interpreter, The Lady's Wreath, and several small books for children. She remained in Boston until 1838, when she removed to Philadel

phia, where she has since resided, as editor of the Lady's Book, one of the most popular and widely-circulated literary periodicals in the English language.

In 1846 Mrs. Hale published a poem more remarkable than any other she has written, for a certain delicacy of fancy and expression, under the name of Alice Ray; and in 1848 appeared her Three Hours, or the Vigil of Love, and other Poems, a collection in which Alice Ray is included, and upon which altogether must rest her best literary reputation. Three Hours, or the Vigil of Love, is very much in the style of some of the more fantastic stories of Winthrop Mackworth

Praed. The heroine has fled with her lover, an escaped state prisoner, from England to Boston, and the interest of the poem arises from the effective manner in which, while she is waiting his return, in a stormy night, her fears are awakened, and by a vivid recollection of tales of horror heightened to an indescribable dread.

It was two hundred years ago,
When moved the world so very slow,
And when the wide Atlantic sea
Appeared like an eternity.

The following scene, from ghostly stories she heard in childhood, is among the phantasms by which she is haunted, and it exhibits in a favorable light Mrs. Hale's capabilities in this line of art:

Once a holy man was set
Watching where the witches met.
Open Bible, naked sword-
And three candles on the board-
There the godly man was set
Watching where the witches met;
Knowing well his dreadful doom,
Should they drive him from the room.

The candles three were burning bright,
The sword was flashing back the light,
As it struck the deep midnight;
While the holy book he read,
And all was still as are the dead.

Suddenly there came a roar
Like breakers on a rocky shore,
When the ocean's thundering boom
Knells the mariner to his tomb.
The good man felt the struggling strife,
As the ship went down with its load of life!
His seat was shaken by the roar,
And upward seemed to rise the floor!
While round and round, as eddies hurl,
The room and table seemed to whirl!
Yet still the holy book read he,
And prayed for those who sail the sea.

Then came a shrieking, wild and high,
As when flames are bursting nigh,
And their blood has stained the sky!
Fly! fly! fly!" in a strangling cry,
Was hoarsely rattled on his ear—
While the crackling flames came near!
And still the holy book read he,

And prayed for those where fires might be.
And then appeared a sight of dread:
The roof was opened above his head;
He saw, in the far-off, dusky view,
A bloody hand and an arm come through!—
The lady seemed to see them too.

At the close of the third hour the husband

is restored, and all these fearful shadows are dispelled. The plot is simple and the execution of the poem generally finished; but its effect is marred by the introduction of some needless reflections and by occasional changes of the rhythm.

Among the published works of Mrs. Hale is Ormond Grosvenor, a Tragedy, in Five Acts, founded upon the celebrated case of Colonel Isaac Hayne, the revolutionary martyr of South Carolina. This was printed in 1838, but it has since been partly re-written and very much improved. In 1848 she gave to the public Harry Guy, a Story of the Sea, in nearly three thousand lines of most compact versification. Her long and elaborate poems entitled Felicia, and The Rhime of Life, from some extracts that have been appear printed, to possess more impassioned earnestness than her other compositions, and they contain perhaps the clearest expressions of her intellectual and social character.

Mrs. Hale has a ready command of pure and idiomatic English, and her style has frequently a masculine strength and energy. She has not much creative power, but she excels in the aggregation and artistical disposition of common and appropriate imagery. She has evidently been all her life a student, and there has been a perceptible and constant improvement in her writings ever since her first appearance as an author. Besides her works that have been published in separate volumes, she has written a very large number of tales, sketches, essays, criticisms, poems, and other compositions, which are scattered through the various periodicals with which she has been connected. They are all indicative of sound principles, and of kindness, knowledge, and judgment.

THE MISSISSIPPI.

MONARCH of rivers in the wide domain Where Freedom writes her signature in stars, And bids her eagle bear the blazing scroll To usher in the reign of peace and love, Thou mighty Mississippi!-may my song Swell with thy power, and though an humble rill, Roll, like thy current, through the sea of time, Bearing thy name, as tribute from my soul Of fervent gratitude and holy praise, To Him who poured thy multitude of waves. Shadowed beneath those awful piles of stone, Where liberty has found a Pisgah height, O'erlooking all the land she loves to bless, The jagged rocks and icy towers her guard, Whose splintered summits seize the warring clouds, And roll them, broken, like a host o'erthrown, Adown the mountain's side, scattering their wealth Of powdered pearl and liquid diamond dropsThere is thy source, great river of the west!

Slowly, like youthful Titan gathering strength
To war with Heaven and win himself a name,
The stream moves onward through the dark ravines,
Rending the roots of over-arching trees,
To form its narrow channel, where the star,
That fain would bathe its beauty in the wave,
Like lover's glance steals trembling through the
That veil the waters with a vestal's care: [leaves
And few of human form have ventured there,
Save the swart savage in his bark canoe.

But now it deepens, struggles, rushes on;
Like goaded war-horse, bounding o'er the foe,
It clears the rocks it may not spurn aside,
Leaping, as Curtius leaped adown the gulf,
And rising, like Antæus from the fall,
Its course majestic through the land pursues,
And the broad river o'er the valley reigns!
It reigns alone: the tributary streams
Are humble vassals, yielding to its sway;
And when the wild Missouri fain would join
A rival in the race-as Jacob seized
On his red brother's birthright-even so
The swelling Mississippi grasps that wave,
And, rebaptizing, makes the waters one.

It reigns alone and earth the sceptre feels:
Her ancient trees are bowed beneath the wave,
Or, rent like reeds before the whirlwind's swoop,
Toss on the bosom of the maddened flood,
A floating forest, till the waters, calmed,
Like slumbering anaconda gorged with prey,
Open a haven to the moving mass,
Or form an island in the dark abyss.

It reigns alone: old Nile would ne'er bedew The lands it blesses with its fertile tide. Even sacred Ganges, joined with Egypt's flood, Would shrink beside this wonder of the west! Ay, gather Europe's royal rivers allThe snow-swelled Neva, with an empire's weight On her broad breast, she yet may overwhelm ; Dark Danube, hurrying, as by foe pursued, Through shaggy forests and from palace walls, To hide its terrors in a sea of gloom; The castled Rhine, whose vine-crowned waters flow, The fount of fable and the source of song;

The rushing Rhone, in whose cerulean depths
The loving sky seems wedded with the wave;
The yellow Tiber, choked with Roman spoils,
A dying miser shrinking 'neath his gold;
And Seine, where Fashion glasses fairest forms;
And Thames, that bears the riches of the world:
Gather their waters in one ocean mass-
Our Mississippi, rolling proudly on,
Would sweep them from its path, or swallow up,
Like Aaron's rod, these streams of fame and song!
And thus the peoples, from the many lands,
Where these old streams are household memories,
Mingle beside our river, and are one-
And join to swell the strength of Freedom's tide,
That from the fount of Truth is flowing on,
To sweep earth's thousand tyrannies away.

How wise, how wonderful the works of God!
And, hallowed by his goodness, all are good.
The creeping glow-worm, the careering sun,
Are kindled from the effluence of his light;
The ocean and the acorn-cup are filled
By gushings from the fountain of his love.
He poured the Mississippi's torrent forth,
And heaved its tide above the trembling land-
Grand type how Freedom lifts the citizen
Above the subject masses of the world-
And marked the limits it may never pass.
Trust in his promises, and bless his power,
Ye dwellers on its banks, and be at peace.

And ye, whose way is on this warrior wave, When the swoln waters heave with ocean's might, And storms and darkness close the gate of heaven, And the frail bark, fire-driven, bounds quivering on, As though it rent the iron shroud of night, And struggled with the demons of the floodFear nothing! He who shields the folded flower, When tempests rage, is ever present here. Lean on "our Father's" breast in faith and prayer And sleep-his arm of love is strong to save.

Great Source of being, beauty, light, and love Creator-Lord-the waters worship thee! Ere thy creative smile had sown the flowersEre the glad hills leaped upward, or the earth, With swelling bosom, waited for her childBefore eternal Love had lit the sun, Or Time had traced his dial-plate in stars, The joyful anthem of the waters flowed: And Chaos like a frightened felon fled, While on the deep the Holy Spirit moved.

And evermore the deep has worshipped God; And bards and prophets tune their mystic lyres, While listening to the music of the floods. Oh, could I catch this harmony of sounds, As borne on dewy wings they float to heaven, And blend their meaning with my closing strain!

Hark! as a reed-harp thrilled by whispering winds, Or naiad murmurs from a pearl-lipped shell, It comes-1 -the melody of many waves! And loud, with Freedom's world-awaking note, The deep-toned Mississippi leads the choir. The pure, sweet fountains chant of heavenly hope; The chorus of the rills is household love; The rivers roll their song of social joy; And ocean's organ voice is sounding forth The hymn of Universal Brotherhood!