LEVI FRISBIE. [Born 1784. Died 1822.] PROFESSOR FRISBIE was the son of a respectable clergyman at Ipswich, Massachusetts. He entered Harvard University in 1798, and was graduated in 1802. His father, like most of the clergymen of New England, was a poor man, and unable fully to defray the costs of his son's education; and Mr. FRISBIE, while an under-graduate, provided in part for his support by teaching a school during vacations, and by writing as a clerk. His friend and biographer, Professor ANDREWS NORTON, alludes to this fact as a proof of the falsity of the opinion that wealth constitutes the only aristocracy in our country. Talents, united with correct morals, and good manners, pass unquestioned all the artificial barriers of society, and their claim to distinction is recognised more willingly than any other. Soon after leaving the university, Mr. FRISBIE commenced the study of the law; but an affection of the eyes depriving him of their use for the purposes of study, he abandoned his professional pursuits, and accepted the place of Latin tutor in Harvard University. In 1811, he was made Professor of the Latin Language, and in 1817, Professor of Moral Philosophy. The last office he held until he died, on the 19th of July, 1822. He was an excellent scholar, an original thinker, and a | pure-minded man. An octavo volume, containing a memoir, some of his philosophical lectures, and a few poems, was published in 1823. A CASTLE IN THE AIR. In sweet aerial dreams. The rose its blushes need not lend, To captivate my eyes. Its feelings as they rise; Features, where, pensive, more than gay, A form, though not of finest mould, But still her air, her face, each charm And mind inform the whole; With mind her mantling cheek must glow, Ah! could I such a being find, And were her fate to mine but join'd To her myself, my all I'd give, For her alone delighted live, For her consent to die. Whene'er by anxious care oppress'd, My aching head I'd lay; At her sweet smile each care should cease, Her kiss infuse a balmy peace, And drive my griefs away. In turn, I'd soften all her care, Each thought, each wish, each feeling share; Should sickness e'er invade, My voice should soothe each rising sigh, Should gathering clouds our sky deform, My bosom to its bolts I'd bare; Together should our prayers ascend; Thus nothing should our hearts divide, And all to love be given; JOHN PIERPONT. [Born 1785.] THE author of the "Airs of Palestine," is a native of Litchfield, Connecticut, and was born on the sixth of April, 1785. His great-grandfather, the Reverend JAMES PIERPONT, was the second minister of New Haven, and one of the founders of Yale College; his grandfather and his father were men of intelligence and integrity; and his mother, whose maiden name was ELIZABETH COLLINS, had a mind thoroughly imbued with the religious sentiment, and was distinguished for her devotion to maternal duties. In the following lines, from one of his recent poems, he acknowledges the influence of her example and teachings on his own character: "She led me first to God; Her words and prayers were my young spirit's dew. For, when she used to leave The fireside, every eve, I knew it was for prayer that she withdrew. "That dew, that bless'd my youth,Her holy love, her truth, Her spirit of devotion, and the tears That she could not suppress,- My soul, nor will it, through eternal years. "How often has the thought Of my mourn'd mother brought Mother, thou knowest well That thou hast blessed me since thy mortal hour!" Mr. PIERPONT entered Yale College when fifteen years old, and was graduated in the summer of 1804. During a part of 1805, he assisted the Reverend Doctor BACKUS, in an academy of which he was principal previous to his election to the presidency of Hamilton College; and in the autumn of the same year, following the example of many young men of New England, he went to the southern states, and was for nearly four years a private tutor in the family of Colonel WILLIAM ALLSTON, of South Carolina, spending a portion of his time in Charleston, and the remainder on the estate of Colonel ALLSTON, on the Waccamaw, near Georgetown. Here he commenced his legal studies, which he continued after his return to his native state in 1809, in the school of Justices REEVE and GOULD; and in 1812, he was admitted to the bar, in Essex county, Massachusetts. Soon after the commencement of the second war with Great Britain, being appointed to address the Washington Benevolent Society of Newburyport, his place of residence, he delivered and afterward published "The Portrait," the earliest of the poems in the recent edition of his works. In consequence of the general prostration of business in New England during the war, and of his health, which at this time demanded a more active life, he abandoned the profession of law, and became interested in mercantile transactions, first in Boston, and afterward in Baltimore; but these resulting disastrously, in 1816, he sought a solace in literary pursuits, and in the same year published "The Airs of Palestine." The first edition appeared in an octavo volume, at Baltimore; and two other editions were published in Boston, in the following year. The "Airs of Palestine" is a poem of about eight hundred lines, in the heroic measure, in which the influence of music is shown by examples, principally from sacred history. The religious sublimity of the sentiments, the beauty of the language, and the finish of the versification, placed it at once, in the judgment of all competent to form an opinion on the subject, before any poem at that time produced in America. As a work of art, it would be nearly faultless, but for the occasional introduction of double rhymes, a violation of the simple dignity of the ten-syllable verse, induced by the intention of the author to recite it in a public assembly. He says in the preface to the third edition, that he was "aware how difficult even a good speaker finds it to rehearse heroic poetry, for any length of time, without perceiving in his hearers the somniferous effects of a regular cadence," and "the double rhyme was, therefore, occasionally thrown in, like a ledge of rocks in a smoothly gliding river, to break the current, which, without it, might appear sluggish, and to vary the melody, which might otherwise become monotonous." The following passage, descriptive of a moonlight scene in Italy, will give the reader an idea of its manner: "On Arno's bosom, as he calmly flows, Of waveless water, rest her radiant head. From the deep shade, that round the cloister lies, Soon after the publication of the "Airs of Palestine," Mr. PIERPONT entered seriously upon the study of theology, first by himself, in Baltimore, and afterward as a member of the theological school connected with Harvard College. He left that seminary in October, 1818, and in April, 1819, was ordained as minister of the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, in Boston, as successor to the Reverend Doctor HOLLEY, who had recently been elected to the presidency of the Transylvania University, in Kentucky. In 1835 and 1836, in consequence of impaired health, he spent a year abroad, passing through the principal cities in England, France, and Italy, and extending his tour into the East, visiting Smyrna, the ruins of Ephesus, in Asia Minor, Constantinople, and Athens, Corinth, and some of the other cities of Greece; of his travels in which, traces will occasionally be found in some of the short poems which he has written since his return. Mr. PIERPONT has written in almost every metre, and many of his hymns, odes, and other brief poems, are remarkably spirited and melodious. Several of them, distinguished alike for energy of thought and language, were educed by events connected with the moral and religious enterprises of the time, nearly all of which are indebted to his constant and earnest advocacy for much of their prosperity. In the preface to the collection of his poems published in 1840, he says, "It gives a true, though an all too feeble expression of the author's feeling and faith,-of his love of right, of freedom, and man, and of his correspondent and most hearty hatred of every thing that is at war with them; and of his faith in the providence and gracious promises of God. Nay, the book is published as an expression of his faith in man; his faith that every line, written to rebuke high-handed or under-handed wrong, or to keep alive the fires of civil and religious liberty,-written for solace in affliction, for support under trial, or as an expression, or for the excitement of Christian patriotism or devotion; or even with no higher aim than to throw a little sunshine into the chamber of the spirit, while it is going through some of the wearisome passages of life's history,-will be received as a proof of the writer's interest in the welfare of his fellowmen, of his desire to serve them, and consequently of his claim upon them for a charitable judgment, at least, if not even for a respectful and grateful remembrance." "PASSING AWAY." Was it the chime of a tiny bell, That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,— Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear, When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep, She dispensing her silvery light, And he, his notes as silvery quite, While the boatman listens and ships his oar, To catch the music that comes from the shore?Hark! the notes, on my ear that play, Are set to words:-as they float, they say, "Passing away! passing away! But no; it was not a fairy's shell, Striking the hour, that fill'd my ear, O, how bright were the wheels, that told Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow! And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below. And lo! she had changed:-in a few short hours While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade Looking down on a field of blossoming clover. That marched so calmly round above her, Was a little dimm'd,—as when evening steals Upon noon's hot face:-Yet one couldn't but While yet I look'd, what a change there came! Her eye was quench'd, and her cheek was wan: Stooping and staff'd was her wither'd frame, Yet, just as busily, swung she on; The garland beneath her had fallen to dust; The wheels above her were eaten with rust; The hands, that over the dial swept, Grew crooked and tarnish'd, but on they kept, And still there came that silver tone From the shrivell'd lips of the toothless crone,(Let me never forget till my dying day The tone or the burden of her lay,)— "Passing away! passing away! FOR THE CHARLESTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. Two hundred years! two hundred years! How much of human power and pride, What glorious hopes, what gloomy fears Have sunk beneath their noiseless tide! The red man at his horrid rite, Seen by the stars at night's cold noon, His bark canoe, its track of light Left on the wave beneath the moon; His dance, his yell, his council-fire, And that pale pilgrim band is gone, That on this shore with trembling trod, Ready to faint, yet bearing on The ark of freedom and of God. And war-that since o'er ocean came, Has raised, and shown, and swept along. "Tis like a dream when one awakes, This vision of the scenes of old; "Tis like the moon when morning breaks, "T is like a tale round watchfires told. Then what are we? then what are we? Yes, when two hundred years have roll'd O'er our green graves, our names shall be A morning dream, a tale that's told. God of our fathers, in whose sight The thousand years that sweep away Man and the traces of his might Are but the break and close of dayGrant us that love of truth sublime, That love of goodness and of thee, That makes thy children in all time To share thine own eternity. MY CHILD. I CANNOT make him dead! Is ever bounding round my study chair; And, through the open door, I hear a footfall on the chamber stair; And then bethink me that-he is not there! A satchell'd lad I meet, Before the thought comes that he is not there! When, at the cool, gray break Of day, from sleep I wake, With my first breathing of the morning air To Him who gave my boy, Then comes the sad thought that--he is not there! When at the day's calm close, Before we seek repose, I'm with his mother, offering up our prayer, I am, in spirit, praying For our boy's spirit, though-he is not there! Not there!-Where, then, is he? The form I used to see Was but the raiment that he used to wear. The grave, that now doth press Is but his wardrobe lock'd;-he is not there! He lives; nor, to the last, Of seeing him again will I despair; I see it written, "Thou shalt see me there!" Yes, we all live to God! So help us, thine afflicted ones, to bear, Meeting at thy right hand, "T will be our heaven to find that he is there! FOR A CELEBRATION OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MECHANICS' CHARITABLE ASSOCIATION. LOUD o'er thy savage child, O God, the night-wind roar'd, As, houseless, in the wild He bow'd him and adored. Thou saw'st him there, He raised his eye Thine inspiration came! And, grateful for thine aid, He built beneath the shade: Till in a sylvan fane Went up the voice of prayer, Then beam'd a brighter day; On Salem's hill, Along those rocky shores, Along those olive plains, Where pilgrim Genius pores O'er Art's sublime remains, Long colonnades Of snowy white Forth from the quarry stone The marble goddess sprung; The Star of Bethlehem burn'd! No idol fanes To honour thee, dread Power! Our strength and skill combine; And temple, tomb, and tower Attest these gifts divine. A swelling dome For pride they gild, By these our fathers' host Great Source of every art! Our homes, our pictured halls, Our throng'd and busy mart, That lifts its granite walls, And shoots to heaven Its glittering spires, To catch the fires Of morn and even; These, and the breathing forms In countless ways HER CHOSEN SPOT. WHILE yet she lived, she walked alone Among these shades. A voice divine Whisper'd, "This spot shall be thine own; Here shall thy wasting form recline, Beneath the shadow of this pine." "Thy will be done!" the sufferer said. This spot was hallow'd from that hour; And, in her eyes, the evening's shade And morning's dew this green spot made More lovely than her bridal bower. By the pale moon-herself more pale And spirit-like-these walks she trod; Went up from the young mother's bed: She sleepeth!" Yea, she sleepeth here, |