THE SPIRIT OF POETRY. THERE is a quiet spirit in these woods, Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve, And frequent, on the everlasting hills, And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth, The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way, Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds,The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes,— Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in, Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale, The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees, In many a lazy syllable, repeating Their old poetic legends to the wind. And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill The world; and, in these wayward days of youth, My busy fancy oft embodies it, As a bright image of the light and beauty That dwell in nature, of the heavenly forms We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues That stain the wild bird's wing, and flush the clouds When the sun sets. Within her eye The heaven of April, with its changing light, And when it wears the blue of May, is hung, When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek Blushes the richness of an autumn sky, As, from the morning's dewy flowers, it comes To have it round us, and her silver voice Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence. BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK. ON sunny slope and beechen swell, The shadowed light of evening fell; And where the maple's leaf was brown, With soft and silent lapse came down The glory, that the wood receives, At sunset, in its brazen leaves. Far upward in the mellow light Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, |