JAMES WILLIAM MILLER.*

TO A SHOWER.

THE pleasant rain!-the pleasant rain!
By fits it plashing falls

On twangling leaf and dimpling pool—
How sweet its warning calls!
They know it-all the bosomy vales,
High slopes, and verdant meads;
The queenly elms and princely oaks
Bow down their grateful heads.

The withering grass, and fading flowers,
And drooping shrubs look gay;
The bubbly brook, with gladlier song,
Hies on its endless way;

All things of earth-the grateful things!
Put on their robes of cheer,

They hear the sound of the warning burst,

And know the rain is near.

It comes! it comes! the pleasant rain!
I drink its cooler breath;

It is rich with sighs of fainting flowers,
And roses' fragrant death;

It hath kiss'd the tomb of the lily pale,
The beds where violets die,

And it bears their life on its living wings-
I feel it wandering by.

And yet it comes! the lightning's flash
Hath torn the lowering cloud,
With a distant roar, and a nearer crash,
Out bursts the thunder loud.

It comes with the rush of a god's descent
On the hush'd and trembling earth,
To visit the shrines of the hallow'd groves
Where a poet's soul had birth.

With a rush, as of a thousand steeds,
Is the mighty god's descent;
Beneath the weight of his passing tread,
The conscious groves are bent.
His heavy tread-it is lighter now-
And yet it passeth on;

And now it is up, with a sudden lift-
The pleasant rain hath gone.
The pleasant rain!-the pleasant rain!
It hath passed above the earth,

I see the smile of the opening cloud,
Like the parted lips of mirth.
The golden joy is spreading wide
Along the blushing west,

And the happy earth gives back her smiles,
Like the glow of a grateful breast.

As a blessing sinks in a grateful heart,
That knoweth all its need,

So came the good of the pleasant rain,
O'er hill and verdant mead.

It shall breathe this truth on the human ear,
In hall and cotter's home,

That to bring the gift of a bounteous Heaven,
The pleasant rain hath come.

* J. W. MILLER was a native of Boston, and at one period connected with JOHN NEAL in the editorship of "The Yankee." I believe he died in 1826.

WILLIAM B. WALTER.*

TO AN INFANT.

AND art thou here, sweet boy, among
The crowds that come this world to throng
The loveliest dream of waking life!
Hope of the bosom's secret strife!
Emblem of all the heart can love!
Vision of all that's bright above!
Pledge, promise of remember'd years!
Seal of pure souls, yet bought with tears!
Hail! child of love!-I linger yet
Around thy couch, where slumber sweet
Hangs on thine eyelids' living shroud;
And thoughts and dreamings thickly crowd
Upon the mind like gleams of light
Which sweep along the darksome night,
Lurid and strange, all fearful sent

In flashings o'er the firmament!

O! wake not from that tranquil sleep!
Too soon 'twill break, and thou shalt weep;
Such is thy destiny and doom,

O'er this long past and long to come;
Earth's mockery, guilt, and nameless woe;
The pangs which thou canst only know;
All crowded in a little span,
The being of the creature Man!
Ah! little 'eemest thou, my child,
The way of life is dark and wild;
Its sunshine, but a light whose play
Serves but to dazzle and betray;
Weary and long-its end, the tomb,
Where darkness spreads her wings of gloom!
That resting-place of things which live,
The goal of all that earth can give!

It may be that the dreams of fame,
Proud Glory's plume, the warrior's name,
Shall lure thee to the field of blood;
There, like a god, war's fiery flood
May bear thee on! while far above,
Thy crimson banners proudly move,
Like the red clouds which skirt the sun,
When the fierce tempest-day is done!
Or lead thee to a cloister'd cell,
Where Learning's votaries lonely dwell;
The midnight lamp and brow of care;
The frozen heart that mocks despair;
Consumption's fires to burn thy cheek;
The brain that throbs, but will not break;
The travail of the soul, to gain

A name, and die-alas! in vain!

Thou reckest not, sweet slumberer, there,
Of this world's crimes; of many a snare
To catch the soul; of pleasures wild,
Friends false-foes dark-and hearts beguiled;
Of Passion's ministers who sway,
With iron sceptre, all who stray;

* WILLIAM B. WALTER was born in Boston, in 18-, and was educated at Bowdoin College. He wrote "Sukey, a poem," in the style of "Don Juan," "Visions of Romance," and some other metrical compositions, which were popular in their time. He died in 18-.

Of broken hearts-still loving on,
When all is lost, and changed, and gone!
What is it that thou wilt not prove?
Power, Wealth, Dominion, Grandeur, Love-
All the soul's idols in their turn!
And find each false, yet wildly burn
To grasp at all-and love the cheat;
Smile, when the ravening vultures eat
Into thy very bosom's core,

And drink up that—which is not gore!
Thy tears shalt flow, and thou shalt weep
As he has wept who eyes thy sleep,
But weeps no more-his heart is cold,
Warp'd, sicken'd, sear'd, with woes untold.
And be it so! the clouds which roll
Dark, heavy o'er my troubled soul,
Bring with them lightnings which illume,
To shroud the mind in deeper gloom!
But no! dear boy, my earnest prayer
Shall call on Heaven to bless thee here!
Long mayst thou live to love thy kind-
Brave, generous, of a lofty mind!
Thy father live again in thee,
Thy mother long her virtues see
Brightly reflected forth in thine-
Her solace in life's sad decline.

Sleep on! sleep on! but, O my soul,
This is not slumber's soft control!
Boy!-boy! awake-that struggling cry
So faint and low-that agony!
The long, sunk, heavy gasp and groan!
And O, that desolate, last moan!-
My God! the infant spirit's gone!
Are there no tears?-dark-dark-alone!
"Tis past! farewell! I little thought
The mockeries which my fancy wrought,
From fate's dark book were rudely torn!—
That clouds would darken o'er thy morn!
That death's stern hand would sweep away
The flower just springing to the day!
But wounded hearts must still bleed on!
Enough, enough-GoD's WILL BE DONE!

JAMES WALLIS EASTBURN.*

TO PNEUMA.

TEMPESTS their furious course may sweep
Swiftly o'er the troubled deep,
Darkness may lend her gloomy aid,
And wrap the groaning world in shade;
But man can show a darker hour,
And bend beneath a stronger power;-
There is a tempest of the soul,
A gloom where wilder billows roll!
The howling wilderness may spread
Its pathless deserts, parch'd and dread,
Where not a blade of herbage blooms,
Nor yields the breeze its soft perfumes;

Mr. EASTBURN was associated with ROBERT C. SANDS in writing "Yamoyden." See page 204.

Where silence, death, and horror reign,
Uncheck'd, across the wide domain;-
There is a desert of the mind
More hopeless, dreary, undefined!
There Sorrow, moody Discontent,
And gnawing Care are wildly blent;
There Horror hangs her darkest clouds,
And the whole scene in gloom enshrouds;
A sickly ray is cast around,

Where naught but dreariness is found;
A feeling that may not be told,
Dark, rending, lonely, drear, and cold.
The wildest ills that darken life
Are rapture to the bosom's strife;
The tempest, in its blackest form,
Is beauty to the bosom's storm;
The ocean, lash'd to fury loud,
Its high wave mingling with the cloud,
Is peaceful, sweet serenity

To passion's dark and boundless sea.

There sleeps no calm, there smiles no rest,
When storms are warring in the breast;
There is no moment of repose

In bosoms lash'd by hidden woes;
The scorpion sting the fury rears,
And every trembling fibre tears;
The vulture preys with bloody beak
Upon the heart that can but break!

JAMES N. BARKER.*

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.

SHE was, indeed, a pretty little creature,
So meek, so modest; what a pity, madam,
That one so young and innocent should fall
A prey to the ravenous wolf.

The wolf, indeed!
You've left the nursery to but little purpose,
If you believe a wolf could ever speak,
Though in the time of Esop, or before.
-Was't not a wolf, then? I have read the story
A hundred times; and heard it told: nay, told it
Myself, to my younger sisters, when we've shrank
Together in the sheets, from very terror,
And, with protecting arms, each round the other,
E'en sobb'd ourselves to sleep. But I remember,
I saw the story acted on the stage,

Last winter in the city, I and my school-mates, With our most kind preceptress, Mrs. Bazely, And so it was a robber, not a wolf,

That met poor little Riding Hood i' the wood! -Nor wolf nor robber, child: this nursery tale Contains a hidden moral.

Hidden: nay,

I'm not so young but I can spell it out,
And thus it is: children, when sent on errands,
Must never stop by the way to talk with wolves.

Mr. BARKER is a native of Philadelphia, and is now in one of the bureaus of the Treasury Department, at Washington. He is the author of "Tears and Smiles," "How to try a Lover," and several other dramatic compositions.

To gaze on such a scene! the grassy bank,
So gently sloping to the rivulet,

All purple with my own dear violet,

And sprinkled o'er with spring flowers of each tint.

There was that pale and humble little blossom,
Looking so like its namesake, Innocence;

The fairy-form'd, flesh-hued anemone,
With its fair sisters, called by country people

Fair maids o' the spring. The lowly cinquefoil too,
And statelier marigold. The violet sorrel
Blushing so rosy red in bashfulness,
And her companion of the season, dress'd
In varied pink. The partridge ever-green,
Hanging its fragrant wax-work on each stem,
And studding the green sod with scarlet berries-
--Did you see all those flowers? I mark'd them

not.

-O many more, whose names I have not learn'd.
And then to see the light blue butterfly
Roaming about, like an enchanted thing,
From flower to flower, and the bright honey-bee;
And there, too, was the fountain, overhung
With bush and tree, draped by the graceful vine,
Where the white blossoms of the dogwood met
The crimson red-bud, and the sweet birds sang
Their madrigals; while the fresh springing waters,
Just stirring the green fern that bathed within them,
Leap'd joyful o'er their fairy mound of rock,
And fell in music--then pass'd prattling on,
Between the flowery banks that bent to kiss them.
- I dream'd not of these sights or sounds.
Then just

Beyond the brook there lay a narrow strip,
Like a rich riband, of enamell'd meadow,

This wolf, the story goes,

Deceived poor grandam first, and ate her up: What is the moral here? Have all our grandams Been first devour'd by love?

Let us go in;

The air grows cool; you are a forward chit.

When struggling JOSEPH dropp'd fraternal tears, When GoD came down from heaven, and mortal men were seers?

Or, have thy forests waved, thy rivers run,
Elysian solitudes, untrod by man,
Silent and lonely, since, around the sun,
Her ever-wheeling circle earth began?
Thy unseen flowers did here the breezes fan,
With wasted perfume ever on them flung?
And o'er thy showers neglected rainbows span,
When ALEXANDER fought, when HOMER sung,
And the old populous world with thundering battle
rung?

Yet, what to me, or when, or how thy birth,-
No musty tomes are here to tell of thee;
None know, if cast when nature first the earth
Shaped round, and clothed with grass, and flower,
and tree,

Or whether since, by changes, silently,

Of sand, and shell, and wave, thy wonders grew; Or if, before man's little memory,

Some shock stupendous rent the globe in two, And thee, a fragment, far in western oceans threw.

I know but that I love thee. On my heart, Like a dear friend's, are stamp'd thy features now; Though there the Roman or the Grecian art Hath lent, to deck thy plain and mountain brow, No broken temples, fain at length to bow, [time. Moss-grown and crumbling with the weight of Not these o'er thee their mystic splendours throw, Themes eloquent for pencil or for rhyme, As many a soul can tell that pours its thoughts

sublime.

But thou art sternly artless, wildly free: We worship thee for beauties all thine own: Like damsel, young and sweet, and sure to be Admired, but only for herself alone. With richer foliage ne'er was land o'ergrown, No mightier rivers run, nor mountains rise, Nor ever lakes with lovelier graces shone, Nor wealthier harvests waved in human eyes, Nor lay more liquid stars along more heavenly skies. I dream of thee, fairest of fairy streams, Sweet Hudson! Float we on thy summer breast, Who views thy enchanted windings ever deems Thy banks, of mortal shores, the loveliest! Hail to thy shelving slopes, with verdure dress'd,

Author of "Norman Leslie," "The Countess Ida," etc., and now Secretary of Legation at Berlin. He is a native of New York.

Bright break thy waves the varied beach upon; Soft rise thy hills, by amorous clouds caress'd; Clear flow thy waters, laughing in the sunWould through such peaceful scenes my life might gently run!

And, lo! the Catskills print the distant sky,
And o'er their airy tops the faint clouds driven,
So softly blending, that the cheated eye
Forgets or which is earth or which is heaven,—
Sometimes, like thunder-clouds, they shade the
even,

Till, as you nearer draw, each wooded height
Puts off the azure hues by distance given;
And slowly break upon the enamour'd sight
Ravine, crag, field, and wood, in colours true and
bright.

Mount to the cloud-kiss'd summit. Far below Spreads the vast champaign like a shoreless sea. Mark yonder narrow streamlet feebly flow, Like idle brook that creeps ingloriously; Can that the lovely, lordly Hudson be, Stealing by town and mountain? Who beholds, At break of day this scene, when, silently, Its map of field, wood, hamlet, is unroll'd, While, in the east, the sun uprears his locks of gold,

Till earth receive him never can forget? Even when return'd amid the city's roar, The fairy vision haunts his memory yet, As in the sailor's fancy shines the shore. Imagination cons the moment o'er, When first-discover'd, awe-struck and amazed, Scarce loftier JOVE-whom men and gods adoreOn the extended earth beneath him gazed, Temple, and tower, and town, by human insect

Nor clouds in heaven, nor billows in the deep, More graceful shapes did ever heave or roll, Nor came such pictures to a painter's sleep, Nor beam'd such visions on a poet's soul! The pent-up flood, impatient of control, In ages past here broke its granite bound, Then to the sea in broad meanders stole, While ponderous ruins strew'd the broken ground, And these gigantic hills forever closed around.

And ever-wakeful echo here doth dwell, The nymph of sportive mockery, that still Hides behind every rock, in every dell, And softly glides, unseen, from hill to hill, No sound doth rise but mimic it she will,The sturgeon's splash repeating from the shore, Aping the boy's voice with a voice as shrill, The bird's low warble, and the thunder's roar, Always she watches there, each murmur telling o'er.

Awake, my lyre, with other themes inspired.
Where yon bold point repels the crystal tide,
The Briton youth, lamented and admired,
His country's hope, her ornament and pride,
A traitor's death ingloriously died,
On freedom's altar offer'd; in the sight
Of Gon, by men who will their act abide,

On the great day, and hold their deed aright,

To stop the breath would quench young freedom's holy light.

But see the broadening river deeper flows,
Its tribute floods intent to reach the sea,
While, from the west, the fading sunlight throws
Its softening hues on stream, and field, and tree;
All silent nature bathing, wondrously,

In charms that soothe the heart with sweet desires,
And thoughts of friends we ne'er again may see,
Till, lo! ahead Manhatta's bristling spires,
Above her thousand roofs red with day's dying fires.
May greet the wanderer of Columbia's shore,
Proud Venice of the west! no lovelier scene.
Of thy vast throngs now faintly comes the roar,
Though late like beating ocean surf I ween,-
And everywhere thy various barks are seen,
Cleaving the limpid floods that round thee flow,
Encircled by thy banks of sunny green,—
The panting steamer plying to and fro,
Or the tall sea-bound ship abroad on wings of snow.
And radiantly upon the glittering mass
The god of day his parting glances sends,
As some warm soul, from earth about to pass,
Back on its fading scenes and mourning friends
Deep words of love and looks of rapture bends,
More bright and bright, as near their end they be.
On, on, great orb! to earth's remotest ends,
Each land irradiate, and every sea-

But O, my native land, not one, not one like thee!

Tais semblance of your parent's time-worn face
Is but a sad bequest, my children dear:
Its youth and freshness gone, and in their place
The lines of care, the tracks of many a tear!

Amid life's wreck, we struggle to secure

Some floating fragment from oblivion's wave: We pant for something that may still endure, And snatch at least a shadow from the grave. Poor, weak, and transient mortals! why so vain Of manly vigour, or of beauty's bloom? An empty shade for ages may remain

When we have moulder'd in the silent tomb. But no! it is not we who moulder there,

We, of essential light that ever burns; We take our way through untried fields of air, When to the earth this earth-born frame returns.

CLEMENT C. MOORE, formerly one of the professors in Columbia College, resides in New York. Most of his poems were composed many years ago.

And 'tis the glory of the master's art.

Some radiance of this inward light to find, Some touch that to his canvass may impart

A breath, a sparkle of the immortal mind. Alas! the pencil's noblest power can show

But some faint shadow of a transient thought, Some waken'd feeling's momentary glow, Some swift impression in its passage caught. O that the artist's pencil could portray

A father's inward bosom to your eyes, What hopes, and fears, and doubts perplex his way, What aspirations for your welfare rise. Then might this unsubstantial image prove, When I am gone, a guardian of your youth, A friend for ever urging you to move In paths of honour, holiness, and truth. Let fond imagination's power supply

The void that baffles all the painter's art; And when those mimic features meet your eye, Then fancy that they speak a parent's heart. Think that you still can trace within those eyes The kindling of affection's fervid beam, The searching glance that every fault espies, The fond anticipation's pleasing dream. Fancy those lips still utter sounds of praise,

Or kind reproof that checks each wayward will, The warning voice, or precepts that may raise Your thoughts above this treacherous world of ill. And thus shall Art attain her loftiest power; To noblest purpose shall her efforts tend: Not the companion of an idle hour, But Virtue's handmaid and Religion's friend.

F. S. KEY.*

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

O! SAY, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming;

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore,dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence

reposes,

What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep

As it fitfully blows, half-conceals, half-discloses ? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam; Its full glory reflected now shines on the stream; 'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

FRANCIS S. KEY is a native of Baltimore. This song is supposed to have been written by a prisoner on board the British fleet, on the morning after the unsuccessful bombardment of Fort McHenry.