Hark! I hear the traveller's song,
As he winds the woods along,
Christian! 'tis the song of fear;
Wolves are round thee, night is near,
And the wild thou dar'st to roam-
Oh! 'twas once the Indian's home!*
Hither, sprites, who love to harm,
Wheresoe'er you work your charm,
By the creeks, or by the brakes,
Where the pale witch feeds her snakes,
And he cayman+ loves to creep,
Torpid, to his wintry sleep:
Where the bird of carrion flits,

And the shuddering murderer sits,‡

"The Five Confederated Nations (of Indians) were settled along the banks of the Susquehannah and the adjacent country, until the year 1779, when General Sullivan, with an army of 4000 men, drove them from their country to Niagara, where being obliged to live on salted provisions, to which they were unaccustomed, great numbers of them died. Two hundred of them, it is said, were buried in one grave, where they had encamped." Morse's American Geography.

The alligator, who is supposed to lie in a torpici state all the winter, in the bank of some creek or pond, having previously swallowed a large number of pine-knots, which are his only sustenance during the time.

This was the mode of punishment for murder (as Father Charlevoix tells us among the Hurons. "They laid the dead body upon poles at the top of a cabin, and the murderer was obliged to rema in several days together, and to receive all that dropged from the carcass, not only on himself but on his food."

Lone beneath a roof of blood,
While upon his poison'd food,
From the corpse of him he slew
Irops the chill and gory dew!

Hither bend you, turn you hither
Eyes that blast and wings that wither
Cross the wandering Christian's way,
Lead him, ere the glimpse of day,
Many a mile of madd'ning error
Through the maze of night and terror,
Till the morn behold him lying
O'er the damp earth, pale and dying!
Mock him, when his eager sight
Seeks the cordial cottage-light;
Gleam then, like the lightning-bug,
Tempt him to the den that's dug
For the foul and famish'd brood
Of the she-wolf, gaunt for blood!
Or, unto the dangerous pass
O'er the deep and dark morass,
Where the trembling Indian brings
Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings,
Tributes, to be hung in air
To the Fiend presiding there!*

"We find also collars of porcelain, tobacco, ears of maize, skins, etc. by the side of difficult and dangerous ways, on rocks, or by the side of the falls; and these are so many offerings made to the spirits which preside in these places," See Charlevoix's Letter on the Traditions and the Religion of the Savages of Canada.

Father Hennepin too mentions this ceremony; he also says, "We took notice of one barbarian,

Then, when night's long labour past,
Wilder'd, faint he falls at last,

Sinking where the causeway's edge
Moulders in the slimy sedge,
There let every noxious thing
Trail its filth and fix its sting;
Let the bull-toad taint him over,
Round him let musquitoes hover,
In his ears and eye-balls tingling,
With his blood their poison mingling,
Till, beneath the solar fires,
Rankling all, the wretch expires!

TELL me the witching tale again,
For never has my heart or ear
Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,
So pure to feel, so sweet to hear!

1802.

Say, Love in all thy spring of fame,
When the high heaven itself was thine;
When piety confess'd the flame,

And even thy errors were divine!

who made a kind of sacrifice upon an oak at the Cascade of St. Antony of Padua, upon the river Mississippi." See Hennepin's Voyage into North America.

Did ever Muse's hand, so fair,
A glory round thy temple spread ?
Did ever lip's ambrosial air

Such perfume o'er thy altars shed?

One maid there was, who round her lyre
The mystic myrtle wildly wreath'd--
But all her sighs were sighs of fire,
The myrtle wither'd, as she breath'd!

Oh! you that love's celestial dream,
In all its purity, would know,
Let not the senses' ardent beam,
Too strongly through the vision glow

Love's sweetest lies, conceal'd in night,
The night where Heaven has bid him lie;
Oh! shed not there unhallow'd light,
Or PSYCHE knows, the boy will fly !*

See the story in Apuleius. With respect to this beautiful allegory of Love and Psyche, there is an ingenious idea suggested by the senator Buonarotti, in his 16 Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi." He thinks the fable is taken from some very occult mysteries, which had long been eelebrated in honour of Love and he accounts, upon this supposition for the silence of the more ancient authors upon the subject, as it was not till towards the decline of pagan superstition, that writers could venture to reveal or discuss such ceremo nies; accordingly, he observes we find Lucian and Plutarch treating, without reserve, of the Dea Syria, and Isis and Osiris and Apuleius, who has given us the story of Cupid and Psyche, has also detailed some of the mysteries of Isis See the Giornale di Litterati d'Italia, Tom xxvii. articol. 1. See also the Observations upon the ancient Gems in the Mu seum Florentinum, Vol. i, p. 156.

Dear PSYCHE! many a charmed hour,
Through many a wild and magic waste,
To the fair fount and blissful bower*
Thy mazy foot my soul hath trac'd!

Where'er thy joys are number'd now,
Beneath whatever shades of rest,
The Genius of the starry brow†

Hath chain'd thee to thy Cupid's breast ;

Whether above the horizon dim,

Along whose verge our spirits stray,
(Half sunk within the shadowy brim,
Half brighten'd by the eternal ray. )‡

Thou risest to a cloudless pole !
Or, lingering here, dost love to mark
The twillight walk of many a soul
Through sunny good and evil dark;

I cannot avoid remarking here an error into which the French Encyclopédistes have been led by M. Spon, in their article Psyche. They say, "Petron fait un récit de la pompe nuptiale de ces deux amans (Amour et Psyché) Déjá, dit il," etc. etc. The Psyche of Petronius, however, is a servantmaid, and the marriage which he describes is that of the young Pannychis See Spon's Recherches curieuses, etc. Dissertat. 5.

* Allusions to Mrs. T-ghe's poem.
+ Constancy.

By this image the Platonists expressed the middle state of the soul between sensible and intellec tual existence.