PARTING.

SAY, when afar from mine thy home shall be,
Still will thy soul unchanging turn to me?
When other scenes in beauty round thee lie,
Will these be present to thy mental eye?
Thy form, thy mind, when others fondly praise,
Wilt thou forget thy poet's humbler lays?
Ah me! what is there, in earth's various range,
That time and absence may not sadly change!
And can the heart, that still demands new ties,
New thoughts, for all its thousand sympathies—
The waxen heart, where every seal may set,
In turn, its stamp-remain unalter'd yet,
While nature changes with each fleeting day,
And seasons dance their varying course away?
Ah! shouldst thou swerve from truth, all else must
part,

That yet can feed with life this wither'd heart!
Whate'er its doubts, its hopes, its fears may be,
"T were, even in madness, faithful still to thee;
And shouldst thou snap that silver chord in twain,
The golden bowl no other links sustain;
Crush'd in the dust, its fragments then must sink,
And the cold earth its latest life-drops drink.
Blame not, if oft, in melancholy mood,
This theme, too far, sick fancy hath pursued;
And if the soul, which high with hope should beat,
Turns to the gloomy grave's unbless'd retreat.

Majestic nature! since thy course began,
Thy features wear no sympathy for man;
The sun smiles loveliest on our darkest hours;
O'er the cold grave fresh spring the sweetest flowers,
And man himself, in selfish sorrows bound,
Heeds not the melancholy ruin round.
The crowd's vain roar still fills the passing breeze
That bends above the tomb the cypress-trees.
One only heart, still true in joy or wo,

Is all the kindest fates can e'er bestow.
If frowning Heaven that heart refuse to give,
O, who would ask the ungracious boon--to live?
Then better 't were, if longer doom'd to prove
The listless load of life, unbless'd with love,
To seek midst ocean's waste some island fair,-
And dwell, the anchorite of nature, there;-
Some lonely isle, upon whose rocky shore
No sound, save curlew's scream, or billow's roar,
Hath echoed ever; in whose central woods,
With the quick spirit of its solitudes,
In converse deep, strange sympathies untried,
The soul might find, which this vain world denied.

But I will trust that heart, where truth alone,
In loveliest guise, sits radiant on her throne;
And thus believing, fear not all the power
Of absence drear, or time's most tedious hour.
If e'er I sigh to win the wreaths of fame,
And write on memory's scroll a deathless name,
'Tis but thy loved, approving smile to meet,
And lay the budding laurels at thy feet.
If e'er for worldly wealth I heave a sigh,
And glittering visions float on fancy's eye,
"Tis but with rosy wreaths thy path to spread,
And place the diadem on beauty's head.
Queen of my thoughts, each subject to thy sway,
Thy ruling presence lives but to obey;

And shouldst thou e'er their bless'd allegiance slight,
The mind must wander, lost in endless night.
Farewell! forget me not, when others gaze
Enamour'd on thee, with the looks of praise;
When weary leagues before my view are cast,
And each dull hour seems heavier than the last,
Forget me not. May joy thy steps attend,
And mayst thou find in every form a friend;
With care unsullied be thy every thought;
And in thy dreams of home, forget me not!

CONCLUSION TO YAMOYDEN.

SAD was the theme, which yet to try we chose, In pleasant moments of communion sweet; When least we thought of earth's unvarnish'd

woes,

And least we dream'd, in fancy's fond deceit, That either the cold grasp of death should meet, Till after many years, in ripe old age; Three little summers flew on pinions fleet, And thou art living but in memory's page, And earth seems all to me a worthless pilgrimage.

Sad was our theme; but well the wise man sung,

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Better than festal halls, the house of wo;" "Tis good to stand destruction's spoils among, And muse on that sad bourne to which we go. The heart grows better when tears freely flow; And, in the many-colour'd dream of earth, One stolen hour, wherein ourselves we know, Our weakness and our vanity,--is worth Years of unmeaning smiles, and lewd, obstreperous mirth.

"Tis good to muse on nations pass'd away, Forever, from the land we call our own; Nations, as proud and mighty in their day, Who deem'd that everlasting was their throne. An age went by, and they no more were known! Sublimer sadness will the mind control, Listening time's deep and melancholy moan; And meaner griefs will less disturb the soul; And human pride falls low, at human grandeur's goal.

PHILIP! farewell! thee King, in idle jest, Thy persecutors named; and if indeed, The jewell'd diadem thy front had press'd, It had become thee better, than the breed Of palaces, to sceptres that succeed, To be of courtier or of priest the tool, Satiate dull sense, or count the frequent bead, Or pamper gormand hunger; thou wouldst rule Better than the worn rake, the glutton, or the fool!

I would not wrong thy warrior shade, could I Aught in my verse or make or mar thy fame; As the light carol of a bird flown by [name: Will pass the youthful strain that breathed thy But in that land whence thy destroyers came, A sacred bard thy champion shall be found; He of the laureate wreath for thee shall claim The hero's honours, to earth's farthest bound, Where Albion's tongue is heard, or Albion's songs resound.

NORA'S SONG.*

SLEEP, child of my love! be thy slumber as light As the red bird's that nestles secure on the spray; Be the visions that visit thee fairy and bright

As the dew-drops that sparkle around with the ray!

O soft flows the breath from thine innocent breast; In the wild wood, sleep cradles in roses thy head; But her who protects thee, a wanderer unbless'd, He forsakes, or surrounds with his phantoms of dread.

I fear for thy father! why stays he so long

On the shores where the wife of the giant was thrown,

And the sailor oft linger'd to hearken her song,
So sad o'er the wave, e'er she harden'd to stone.
He skims the blue tide in his birchen canoe,
Where the foe in the moonbeams his path may
descry;

The ball to its scope may speed rapid and true,

And lost in the wave be thy father's death-cry! The Power that is round us,-whose presence is

near,

In the gloom and the solitude felt by the soul, Protect that frail bark in its lonely career, And shield thee, when roughly life's billows shall roll.

WOMAN.*

WOMAN! bless'd partner of our joys and woes! Even in the darkest hour of earthly ill, Untarnish'd yet, thy fond affection glows, Throbs with each pulse, and beats with every thrill! Bright o'er the wasted scene thou hoverest still, Angel of comfort to the failing soul; Undaunted by the tempest, wild and chill, That pours its restless and disastrous roll O'er all that blooms below, with sad and hollow howl! When sorrow rends the heart, when feverish pain Wrings the hot drops of anguish from the brow, To soothe the soul, to cool the burning brain, O, who so welcome and so prompt as thou! The battle's hurried scene and angry glow, The death-encircled pillow of distress, The lonely moments of secluded wo, Alike thy care and constancy confess,

Alike thy pitying hand and fearless friendship bless!

From "Yamoyden."

Thee youthful fancy loves in aid to call; Thence first invoked the sacred sisters were; The form that holds the enthusiast's heart in thrall, He, mid his bright creation, paints most fair; True, in this earthly wilderness of care,-As hunters path the wilds and forests through; And firm,-all fragile as thou art,-to bear Life's dangerous billows,-as the light canoe, That shoots, with all its freight, the impetuous rapid's flow.

Thee, Indians tell, the first of men to win, Clomb long the vaulted heaven's unmeasured height:

And well their uncouth fable speaks therein The worth even savage souls can never slight. Tired with the chase, the hunter greets at night Thy welcome smile, the balm of every wo; Thy patient toil makes all his labours light; And from his grave when friends and kindred go, Thou weeping comest, the sweet sagamité to strow!

GOOD-NIGHT.

GOOD-NIGHT to all the world! there's none,
Beneath the "over-going" sun,

To whom I feel or hate or spite,
And so to all a fair good-night.

Would I could say good-night to pain,
Good-night to conscience and her train,
To cheerless poverty, and shame
That I am yet unknown to fame!

Would I could say good-night to dreams
That haunt me with delusive gleams,
That through the sable future's veil
Like meteors glimmer, but to fail.
Would I could say a long good-night
To halting between wrong and right,
And, like a giant with new force,
Awake prepared to run my course!

But time o'er good and ill sweeps on,
And when few years have come and gone,
The past will be to me as naught,
Whether remember'd or forgot.

Yet let me hope one faithful friend
O'er my last couch shall tearful bend;
And, though no day for me was bright,
Shall bid me then a long good-night.

28

GRENVILLE MELLEN was the third son of the late Chief Justice PRENTISS MELLEN, LL. D., of Maine, and was born in the town of Biddeford, in that state, on the nineteenth day of June, 1799. He was educated at Harvard College, and after leaving that seminary became a law-student in the office of his father, who had before that time removed to Portland. Soon after being admitted to the bar, he was married, and commenced the practice of his profession at North Yarmouth, a pleasant village near his native town. Within three years-in October, 1828-his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, died, and his only child followed her to the grave in the succeeding spring. From this time his character was changed. He had before been an ambitious and a happy man. The remainder of his life was clouded with melancholy.

I believe Mr. MELLEN did not become known as a writer until he was about twenty-five years old. He was then one of the contributors to the Cambridge "United States Literary Gazette." In the early part of 1827, he published a satire entitled "Our Chronicle of Twenty-six," and two years afterward, "Glad Tales and Sad Tales," a collection of prose sketches, which had previously been printed in the periodicals. "The Martyr's Triumph, Buried Valley, and other Poems," appeared in 1834. The principal poem in this volume is founded on the history of Saint Alban, the first Christian martyr in England. It is in the measure of the "Faery Queene," and has some creditable passages; but, as a whole, it hardly rises above mediocrity. In the "Buried Valley" he describes the remarkable avalanche near the Notch in the White Mountains, by which the Willey family were destroyed, many years ago. In a poem entitled "The Rest of Empires," in the same collection, he laments the custom of the elder bards to immortalize the deeds of conquerors alone, and contrasts their prostitution of the influence of poetry with the nobler uses to which it is applied in later days, in the following lines, which are characteristic of his best manner :

"We have been taught, in oracles of old,

Of the enskied divinity of song;

That Poetry and Music, hand in hand,

Came in the light of inspiration forth,

And claim'd alliance with the rolling heavens.

And were those peerless bards, whose strains have come In an undying echo to the world,

Whose numbers floated round the Grecian isles,

And made melodious all the hills of Rome,

Were they inspired ?-Alas, for Poetry!
That her great ministers, in early time,
Sung for the brave alone-and bade the soul
Battle for heaven in the ranks of war!
It was the treason of the godlike art
That pointed glory to the sword and spear,
And left the heart to moulder in its mail!

It was the menial service of the bard-
It was the basest bondage of his powers,
In later times to consecrate a feast,
And sing of gallantry in hall and bower,
To courtly knights and ladies.

"But other times have strung new lyres again,
And other music greets us. Poetry
Comes robed in smiles, and, in low breathing sounds,
Takes counsel, like a friend, in our still hours,
And points us to the stars-the waneless stars-
That whisper an hereafter to our souls.
It breathes upon our spirits a rich balm,
And, with its tender tones and melody,
Draws mercy from the warrior--and proclaims
A morn of bright and universal love

To those who journey with us through the vale;
It points to moral greatness-deeds of mind,
And the high struggles, worthy of a man.
Have we no minstrels in our echoing halls,
No Wild CADWALLON, with his wilder strain,
Pouring his war-songs upon helmed ears?
We have sounds stealing from the far retreats
Of the bright company of gifted men,
Who pour their mellow music round our age,
And point us to our duties and our hearts;
The poet's constellation beams around-
A pensive CowPER lives in all his lines,
And MILTON hymns us on to hope and heaven!"

After spending five or six years in Boston, Mr. MELLEN removed to New York, where he resided nearly all the remainder of his life. He wrote much for the literary magazines, and edited several works for his friend, Mr. COLMAN, the publisher. In 1839, he established a Monthly Miscellany, but it was abandoned after the publication of a few numbers. His health had been declining for several years; his disease finally assumed the form of consumption, and he made a voyage to Cuba, in the summer of 1840, in the hope that he would derive advantage from a change of climate, and the sea air. He was disappointed; and learning of the death of his father, in the following spring, he returned to New York, where he died, on the fifth of September, 1841.

Mr. MELLEN was a gentle-hearted, amiable man, social in his feelings, and patient and resigned in the long period of physical suffering which preceded his death. As a poet, he enjoyed a higher reputation in his lifetime than his works will preserve. They are without vigour of thought or language, and are often dreamy, mystic, and unintelligible. In his writings there is no evidence of creative genius; no original, clear, and manly thought; no spirited and natural descriptions of life or nature; no humour, no pathos, no passion; nothing that appeals to the common sympathies of mankind. The little poem entitled "The Bugle," although "it whispers whence it stole its spoils," is probably superior to any thing else he wrote. It is free from the affectations and unmeaning epithets which distinguish nearly all his works.

ENGLISH SCENERY.

THE Woods and vales of England!-is there not
A magic and a marvel in their names?
Is there not music in the memory
Of their old glory?—is there not a sound,
As of some watchword, that recalls at night
All that gave light and wonder to the day?
In these soft words, that breathe of loveliness,
And summon to the spirit scenes that rose
Rich on its raptured vision, as the eye
Hung like a tranced thing above the page
That genius had made golden with its glow-
The page of noble story-of high towers,
And castled halls, envista'd like the line
Of heroes and great hearts, that centuries
Had led before their hearths in dim array-
Of lake and lawn, and gray and cloudy tree,
That rock'd with banner'd foliage to the storm
Above the walls it shadow'd, and whose leaves,
Rustling in gather'd music to the winds,
Seem'd voiced as with the sound of many seas!
The woods and vales of England! O, the founts,
The living founts of memory! how they break
And gush upon my stirr'd heart as I gaze!
I hear the shout of reapers, the far low
Of herds upon the banks, the distant bark
Of the tired dog, stretch'd at some cottage door,
The echo of the axe, mid forest swung,
And the loud laugh, drowning the faint halloo.
Land of our fathers! though 'tis ours to roam
A land upon whose bosom thou mightst lie,
Like infant on its mother's-though 'tis ours
To gaze upon a nobler heritage

Than thou couldst e'er unshadow to thy sons,—
Though ours to linger upon fount and sky,
Wilder, and peopled with great spirits, who
Walk with a deeper majesty than thine,—
Yet, as our father-land, O, who shall tell
The lone, mysterious energy which calls
Upon our sinking spirits to walk forth
Amid thy wood and mount, where every hill
Is eloquent with beauty, and the tale
And song of centuries, the cloudless years
When fairies walk'd thy valleys, and the turf
Rung to their tiny footsteps, and quick flowers
Sprang with the lifting grass on which they trod-
When all the landscape murmur'd to its rills,
And joy with hope slept in its leafy bowers!

MOUNT WASHINGTON.

MOUNT of the clouds, on whose Olympian height The tall rocks brighten in the ether air, And spirits from the skies come down at night, To chant immortal songs to Freedom there! Thine is the rock of other regions, where The world of life, which blooms so far below, Sweeps a wide waste: no gladdening scenes appear, Save where, with silvery flash, the waters flow Beneath the far-off mountain, distant, calm, and slow. Thine is the summit where the clouds repose, Or, eddying wildly, round thy cliffs are borne;

come,

When Tempest mounts his rushing car, and throws His billowy mist amid the thunder's home! Far down the deep ravine the whirlwinds And bow the forests as they sweep along; While, roaring deeply from their rocky womb, The storms come forth, and, hurrying darkly on, Amid the echoing peaks the revelry prolong! And when the tumult of the air is fled, And quench'd in silence all the tempest flame, There come the dim forms of the mighty dead, Around the steep which bears the hero's name: The stars look down upon them; and the same Pale orb that glistens o'er his distant grave Gleams on the summit that enshrines his fame, And lights the cold tear of the glorious brave, The richest, purest tear that memory ever gave! Mount of the clouds! when winter round thee The hoary mantle of the dying year, [throws Sublime amid thy canopy of snows, Thy towers in bright magnificence appear! "Tis then we view thee with a chilling fear, Till summer robes thee in her tints of blue; When, lo! in soften'd grandeur, far, yet clear, Thy battlements stand clothed in heaven's own hue, To swell as Freedom's home on man's unbounded view!

THE BUGLE.

O! WILD, enchanting horn! Whose music up the deep and dewy air Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there, Till a new melody is born

Wake, wake again, the night

Is bending from her throne of beauty down,
With still stars burning on her azure crown,
Intense and eloquently bright.

Night, at its pulseless noon!

When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long Barks at the melancholy moon.

Hark! how it sweeps away,

Soaring and dying on the silent sky,

As if some sprite of sound went wandering by, With lone halloo and roundelay!

Swell, swell in glory out!

Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, And my stirr'd spirit hears thee with a start As boyhood's old remember'd shout.

O! have ye heard that peal, From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements, Or from the guarded field and warrior tents, Like some near breath around you steal?

Or have ye in the roar

Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle's clamour, to the skies,
Where wings and tempests never soar?
Go, go-no other sound,
No music that of air or earth is born,
Can match the mighty music of that horn,
On midnight's fathomless profound!

GRENVILLE MELLEN was the third son of the late Chief Justice PRENTISS MELLEN, LL. D., of Maine, and was born in the town of Biddeford, in that state, on the nineteenth day of June, 1799. He was educated at Harvard College, and after leaving that seminary became a law-student in the office of his father, who had before that time removed to Portland. Soon after being admitted to the bar, he was married, and commenced the practice of his profession at North Yarmouth, a pleasant village near his native town. Within three years-in October, 1828-his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, died, and his only child followed her to the grave in the succeeding spring. From this time his character was changed. He had before been an ambitious and a happy man. The remainder of his life was clouded with melancholy.

I believe Mr. MELLEN did not become known as a writer until he was about twenty-five years old. He was then one of the contributors to the Cambridge "United States Literary Gazette." In the early part of 1827, he published a satire entitled "Our Chronicle of Twenty-six," and two years afterward, "Glad Tales and Sad Tales," a collection of prose sketches, which had previously been printed in the periodicals. "The Martyr's Triumph, Buried Valley, and other Poems," appeared in 1834. The principal poem in this volume is founded on the history of Saint Alban, the first Christian martyr in England. It is in the measure of the " Faery Queene," and has some creditable passages; but, as a whole, it hardly rises above mediocrity. In the "Buried Valley" he describes the remarkable avalanche near the Notch in the White Mountains, by which the Willey family were destroyed, many years ago. In a poem entitled "The Rest of Empires," in the same collection, he laments the custom of the elder bards to immortalize the deeds of conquerors alone, and contrasts their prostitution of the influence of poetry with the nobler uses to which it is applied in later days, in the following lines, which are characteristic of his best manner :

"We have been taught, in oracles of old,

Of the enskied divinity of song;

That Poetry and Music, hand in hand,

Came in the light of inspiration forth,

And claim'd alliance with the rolling heavens.

And were those peerless bards, whose strains have come In an undying echo to the world,

Whose numbers floated round the Grecian isles,

And made melodious all the bills of Rome,

Were they inspired ?-Alas, for Poetry!
That her great ministers, in early time,
Sung for the brave alone-and bade the sout
Battle for heaven in the ranks of war!
It was the treason of the godlike art
That pointed glory to the sword and spear,
And left the heart to moulder in its mail!

It was the menial service of the bard-
It was the basest bondage of his powers,
In later times to consecrate a feast,
And sing of gallantry in hall and bower,
To courtly knights and ladies.

"But other times have strung new lyres again,
And other music greets us. Poetry
Comes robed in smiles, and, in low breathing sounds,
Takes counsel, like a friend, in our still hours,
And points us to the stars-the waneless stars—
That whisper an hereafter to our souls.
It breathes upon our spirits a rich balm,
And, with its tender tones and melody,
Draws mercy from the warrior-and proclaims
A morn of bright and universal love

To those who journey with us through the vale;
It points to moral greatness-deeds of mind,
And the high struggles, worthy of a man.
Have we no minstrels in our echoing halls,
No wild CADWALLON, with his wilder strain,
Pouring his war-songs upon helmed ears?
We have sounds stealing from the far retreats
Of the bright company of gifted men,
Who pour their mellow music round our age,
And point us to our duties and our hearts;
The poet's constellation beams around-
A pensive CowPER lives in all his lines,
And MILTON hymns us on to hope and heaven!"

After spending five or six years in Boston, Mr. MELLEN removed to New York, where he resided nearly all the remainder of his life. He wrote much for the literary magazines, and edited several works for his friend, Mr. COLMAN, the publisher. In 1839, he established a Monthly Miscellany, but it was abandoned after the publication of a few numbers. His health had been declining for several years; his disease finally assumed the form of consumption, and he made a voyage to Cuba, in the summer of 1840, in the hope that he would derive advantage from a change of climate, and the sea air. He was disappointed; and learning of the death of his father, in the following spring, he returned to New York, where he died, on the fifth of September, 1841.

serve.

Mr. MELLEN was a gentle-hearted, amiable man, social in his feelings, and patient and resigned in the long period of physical suffering which preceded his death. As a poet, he enjoyed a higher reputation in his lifetime than his works will preThey are without vigour of thought or language, and are often dreamy, mystic, and unintelligible. In his writings there is no evidence of creative genius; no original, clear, and manly thought; no spirited and natural descriptions of life or nature; no humour, no pathos, no passion; nothing that appeals to the common sympathies of mankind. The little poem entitled "The Bugle," although it whispers whence it stole its spoils," is probably superior to any thing else he wrote. It is free from the affectations and unmeaning epithets which distinguish nearly all his works.

66