The Poets and Poetry of America

THE DEATH-BED OF BEAUTY.

SHE sleeps in beauty, like the dying rose
By the warm skies and winds of June forsaken;
Or like the sun, when dimm'd with clouds it goes
To its clear ocean-bed, by light winds shaken:
Or like the moon, when through its robes of snow
It smiles with angel meekness-or like sorrow
When it is soothed by resignation's glow,

Or like herself,-she will be dead to-morrow.

How still she sleeps! The young and sinless girl! And the faint breath upon her red lips trembles! Waving, almost in death, the raven curl

That floats around her; and she most resembles The fall of night upon the ocean foam,

Wherefrom the sun-light hath not yet departed; And where the winds are faint. She stealeth home, Unsullied girl! an angel broken-hearted!

O, bitter world! that hadst so cold an eye
To look upon so fair a type of heaven;
She could not dwell beneath a winter sky,

And her heart-strings were frozen here and riven, And now she lies in ruins-look and weep!

How lightly leans her cheek upon the pillow! And how the bloom of her fair face doth keep Changed, like a stricken dolphin on the billow.

TO THE ICE-MOUNTAIN.

GRAVE of waters gone to rest!
Jewel, dazzling all the main!
Father of the silver crest!

Wandering on the trackless plain,
Sleeping mid the wavy roar,

Sailing mid the angry storm, Ploughing ocean's oozy floor,

Piling to the clouds thy form!
Wandering monument of rain,
Prison'd by the sullen north!
But to melt thy hated chain,

Is it that thou comest forth?
Wend thee to the sunny south,
To the glassy summer sea,
And the breathings of her mouth
Shall unchain and gladden thee!

Roamer in the hidden path,

'Neath the green and clouded wave! Trampling in thy reckless wrath,

On the lost, but cherish'd brave; Parting love's death-link'd embraceCrushing beauty's skeletonTell us what the hidden race

With our mourned lost have done!

Floating isle, which in the sun

Art an icy coronal;
And beneath the viewless dun,
Throw'st o'er barks a wavy pall;
Shining death upon the sea!

Wend thee to the southern main; Warm skies wait to welcome thee! Mingle with the wave again!

THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

WHEN the summer sun was in the west,

Its crimson radiance fell,

Some on the blue and changeful sea,

And some in the prisoner's cell.

And then his eye with a smile would beam, And the blood would leave his brain, And the verdure of his soul return,

Like sere grass after rain!

But when the tempest wreathed and spread A mantle o'er the sun,

He gather'd back his woes again,

And brooded thereupon;

And thus he lived, till Time one day
Led Death to break his chain:
And then the prisoner went away,
And he was free again!

TO A WAVE.

LIST! thou child of wind and sea,
Tell me of the far-off deep,
Where the tempest's breath is free,
And the waters never sleep!
Thou perchance the storm hast aided,
In its work of stern despair,
Or perchance thy hand hath braided,
In deep caves, the mermaid's hair.

Wave! now on the golden sands,
Silent as thou art, and broken,
Bear'st thou not from distant strands
To my heart some pleasant token?
Tales of mountains of the south,
Spangles of the ore of silver;
Which, with playful singing mouth,

Thou hast leap'd on high to pilfer?
Mournful wave! I deem'd thy song

Was telling of a floating prison, Which, when tempests swept along, And the mighty winds were risen, Founder'd in the ocean's grasp.

While the brave and fair were dying. Wave! didst mark a white hand clasp In thy folds, as thou wert flying?

Hast thou seen the hallow'd rock

Where the pride of kings reposes, Crown'd with many a misty lock, Wreathed with sapphire, green, and roses

Or with joyous, playful leap,

Hast thou been a tribute flinging,

Up that bold and jutty steep,

Pearls upon the south wind stringing!

Faded Wave! a joy to thee,

Now thy flight and toil are over! O, may my departure be

Calm as thine, thou ocean-rover! When this soul's last pain or mirth On the shore of time is driven, Be its lot like thine on earth.

To be lost away in heaven!

MICAH P. FLINT.

[Born about 1807. Died 1830.]

MICAH P. FLINT, a son of the Reverend TIMO- | forests, during intervals of professional studies THY FLINT, the well-known author of "Francis Berrian," was born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts; at an early age accompanied his father to the valley of the Mississippi; studied the law, and was admitted to the bar at Alexandria; and had hopes of a successful professional career, when arrested by the illness which ended in his early death. He published in Boston, in 1826, "The Hunter, and other Poems," which are described in the preface as the productions of a very young man, and results of lonely meditations in the southwestern

"The Hunter" is a narrative, in three cantos, of "adventures in the pathless woods." The situations and incidents are poetical, but the work is, upon the whole, feebly executed. "Sorotaphian," an argument for urn-burial, subsequently reprinted with some improvements in "The Western Monthly Magazine," lines "On Passing the Grave of My Sister," and several other poems, illustrated the growth of the author's mind, and justified the sanguine hopes of his father that he would become the pride of his family."

ON PASSING THE GRAVE OF MY SISTER.

Ox yonder shore, on yonder shore,

Now verdant with the depths of shade,
Beneath the white-arm'd sycamore,

There is a little infant laid.
Forgive this tear.-A brother weeps.-
"T is there the faded floweret sleeps.
She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone,

And summer's forests o'er her wave;
And sighing winds at autumn moan

Around the little stranger's grave,
As though they murmur'd at the fate
Of one so lone and desolate.

In sounds that seems like sorrow's own,
Their funeral dirges faintly creep;
Then deepening to an organ tone,
In all their solemn cadence sweep,
And pour, unheard, along the wild,
Their desert anthem o'er a child.

She came, and pass'd. Can I forget,

How we whose hearts had hailed her birth,
Ere three autumnal suns had set,

Consign'd her to her mother earth!
Joys and their memories pass away;
But griefs are deeper plough'd than they.
We laid her in her narrow cell,

We heap'd the soft mould on her breast;
And parting tears, like rain-drops, fell

Upon her lonely place of rest.
May angels guard it; may they bless
Her slumbers in the wilderness.
She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone;

For all unheard, on yonder shore,
The sweeping flood, with torrent moan,
At evening lifts its solemn roar,
As in one broad, eternal tide,
The rolling waters onward glide.
There is no marble monument,

There is no stone with graven lie,

To tell of love and virtue blent

In one almost too good to die.
We needed no such useless trace
To point us to her resting-place.
She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone;

But midst the tears of April showers,
The genius of the wild hath strown

His germs of fruits, his fairest flowers,
And cast his robes of vernal bloom
In guardian fondness o'er her tomb.
She sleeps alone, she sleeps alone;

Yet yearly is her grave-turf dress'd,
And still the summer vines are thrown,
In annual wreaths across her breast,
And still the sighing autumn grieves,
And strews the hallow'd spot with leaves.

AFTER A STORM.

THERE was a milder azure spread
Around the distant mountain's head;
And every hue of that fair bow,

Whose beauteous arch had risen there
Now sank beneath a brighter glow,
And melted into ambient air.
The tempest which had just gone by,
Still hung along the eastern sky,
And threatened, as it rolled away.
The birds, from every dripping spray,
Were pouring forth their joyous mirth;
The torrent, with its waters brown,
From rock to rock came rushing down,
While, from among the smoky hills,
The voices of a thousand rills

Were heard exulting at its birth.

A breeze came whispering through the wood
And, from its thousand tresses, shook
The big round drops that trembling stood,
Like pearls, in every leafy nook.

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