Ay, let me wither like a riven branch, And shake Time's shifting sands beneath your feet, 1 Realm of idea, of mind, of abstract truth, Material life is short, though stretch'd to doom; Ends but with GOD. O Spirit! thither bend Are manifest. If 'tis permitted, thither "Tis not for naught we suffer what we feel; The poet ceased; and down the clamorous brook I heard his footfall faint and fainter grow. I turn'd me home; yet, all the way, that man And his strange song perplex'd my tangled thoughts. I pictured him a home, and rank, and wealth, A gentle, loving wife, and children fairFame, and all else which man on earth desires; And over these I spread the curse of song, And wither'd them to naught! What mental pain, What sickness past all cure, what thirsting thoughts, That come, like beggars pale, relief to ask At the closed portals of eternity, Must he endure who framed that troubled song! Then thank'd I Heaven, and bless'd the bounteous ONE Who, in my keeping, gave not power enough To shield from jealous Time my humble name. TO-DAY the good ship sails, Are blowing swift and free; A richer prize we seek than they, Who goes with us? who quits the tiresome shore, Small are the profits of our tedious trade; The countless wealth the wide domain confines, Sprinkles the mountain-streams with golden sands, And calls the adventurer to exhaustless mines. Come, then, with us! what are the charms of home, What are the ties of friends or kindred worth? Thither, oh thither, let our footsteps roam There is the Eden of our fallen earth! Well do we hold the fee of those broad lands Wrested from feebler hands, By our own sword and spear; To-day the good ship sails, Blow out the northern gales. A twelvemonth more, and we Our homeward course shall hold, With richer freight within than theirs, Alas! for honest labour from honest ends averted; Brightly the bubble glitters; bright in the distance But ah, the phantom fortunes of existence THE INCOGNITA OF RAPHAEL.* LONG has the summer sunlight shone On the fair form, the quaint costume; Fairer for this! no shadows cast Their blight upon her perfect lot; Whate'er her future, or her past, In this bright moment matters not. No record of her high descent There needs, nor memory of her name: To give her features deathless fame! As at the earliest, even now. "Tis not the ecstasy that glows In all the rapt CECILIA's grace; He painted on the Virgin's face. And grown beneath Italian skies. What mortal thoughts, and cares, and dreams, What hopes, and fears, and longings rest, Where falls the folded veil, or gleams The golden necklace on her breast. What mockery of the painted glow May shade the secret soul within; What griefs from passion's overflow, What shame that follows after sin! Yet calm as heaven's serenest deeps Are those pure eyes, those glances pure; And queenly is the state she keeps, In beauty's lofty trust secure. And who has stray'd, by happy chance, Through all those grand and pictured halls, Nor felt the magic of her glance, As when a voice of music calls? Not soon shall I forget the day- The light of that delicious clime I mark'd the matchless colours wreathed The blessings that they could not speak. The portrait to which these verses refer is in the Pitti Palace at Florence. It is one of the gems of that admirable collection. Oh, fit companionship of thought; Oh, happy memories, shrined apart; The rapture that the painter wrought, The kindred rapture of the heart! UHLAND. Ir is the poet UHLAND, from whose wreathings His is the poetry of sweet expression, Of clear, unfaltering tune, serene and strong; Where gentlest thoughts and words, in soft procession, Move to the even measures of his song. Delighting ever in his own calm fancies, He sees much beauty where most men see naught, Looking at Nature with familiar glances, And weaving garlands in the groves of thought. He sings of youth, and hope, and high endeavour, He sings of love-O crown of poesy !— Of fate, and sorrow, and the grave, forever The end of strife, the goal of destiny. He sings of fatherland, the minstrel's glory, High theme of memory and hope divine, Twining its fame with gems of antique story, In Suabian songs and legends of the Rhine; In ballads breathing many a dim tradition, Nourish'd in long belief or minstrel rhymes, Fruit of the old Romance, whose gentle mission Pass'd from the earth before our wiser times. Well do they know his name among the mountains, And plains, and valleys, of his native land; Part of their nature are the sparkling fountains Of his clear, thought, with rainbow fancies spann'd. His simple lays oft sings the mother cheerful O precious gift! O wondrous inspiration! Wide is its magic world-divided neither BAYARD TAYLOR. [Born, 1.825.] BAYARD TAYLOR was born on the eleventh of January, 1825, at Kennet Square, near the Brandywine, in Pennsylvania, and in that rural and classical region he lived until his departure for Europe in the summer of 1844. Having passed two years in Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and France, he returned to the United States, and after publishing an account of his travels, under the title of "Views a-Foot," he settled in New York, where he has since been occupied as one of the editors of "The Tribune," a journal which has derived much advantage from his fine taste in literature and large knowledge of affairs. Though not egotistical, there is scarcely an author more easily detected in his works. And this is not from any of those tricks of style in which alone consists the individuality of so many; but his sincere, frank, and enthusiastic spirit, grateful while aspiring, calm while struggling, and humble while attaining; and his life, which moves in order in the crowd and jar of society, in the solitude where Nature is seen with reverence, "up heights of rough ascent," and over streams and chasms, by shapely ways constructed by his will and knowledge. We do not remember any book of travels in which an author appears altogether so amiable and interesting as he in his " Views a-Foot." He a'ways lingers in the background, or steps forward modestly but to solicit more earnestly our admiration for what has kindled his own: but undesignedly, or against his design even, he continually engrosses our interest, as if he were the hero of a novel; and as we pass from scene to scene with him, we think of the truth and poetry of each only to sympathize in his surprise, and joy, and wonder. BAYARD TAYLOR's first move in literature was a sma I volume of poems, of which the longest, and the longest he has yet published, was upon an incident in Spanish history. This was written when he was about eighteen years of age, and my acquaintance with him commenced when he arrived in the city with his manuscripts. We read "Ximena" together; and, while negotiations were in progress for its publication, discussed the subject of Americanism in letters. I urged upon his consideration the themes I thought best adapted to the development and illustration of his genius. Here was a young author, born and nurtured in one of the most characteristic and beautiful of our rural districts, so removed from the associations that vitiate the national feeling and manner, and altogether of a growth so indigenous, that he was one of the fittest types of our people, selecting the materials for his first production from scenes and actions which are more picturesque, more romantic, or in any way more suitable for the purposes of art, only as they have been made so by art, and are seen through the media of art, in preference to the fresh valleys and mountains and forests, and lakes and rivers and cataracts, and high resolve, and bold adventure, and brave endurance, which have more distinctly marked, and varied, and ennobled our history than all other histories, in events crowding so fast upon each other, that our annals seem but a rehearsal of all that had been before, with years for centuries-divided by the Declaration of Independence, which is our gospel-beyond which the colonies are ancient nations, and this side of which our states have swept, with steamboats, and railroads, and telegraphs, the whole breadth of Time; and ere the startled empires are aware, are standing before them all, beckoning them to the last and best condition, which is the fulfilment of farthest-reaching prophecy. In such a choice, he had not only to enter into a competition with the greatest geniuses of the countries and ages he invaded, but, worse than this, to be a parasite of their inspiration, or to animate old forms, disciplined to a mere routine, with the new life to which he was born-sacrificing altogether his native strength, or attempting its exhibition in fetters. Genius creates, but not like the Divine energy, from nothing. Genius creates from knowledge; and the fullness of knowledge necessary to its uses can be acquired, not from any second-hand glimpses through books, or pictures, or discourse, but from experience in the midst of its subjects, the respiration of their atmosphere, a daily contact with their forms, and a constant sympathy with their nature. This pervading intelligence gives no transient tone to the feelings, but enters into the essence of character, and becomes a part of life. He who would set aside the spirit of his age and country, to take upon himself another being, must approach his task with extraordinary powers and an indomitable will, or he will fail utterly. It is undoubtedly true that, to be American, it is not needful in all cases to select subjects which are so geographically; but this admission does not justify an indiscriminate use of foreign life, or a reckless invasion or assumption of foreign sentiment. There must be some relationship of condition and aspiration. Of all writers who have yet written, MILTON was the most American. All the works of CHANNING embrace less that is national to us than a page of the "Defence of the People of England;" and a library larger than that which was at Alexandria, of such books as IRVING's, would not contain as much Americanism as a paragraph of the "Areopagitica." But the Genius of America was born in England, and his strength was put forth in those conflicts of the commonwealth which ended in the exile of the young Hercules. During the Cromwellian era, England offers almost as ap propriate a field for illustration by the American as Massachusetts under HUTCHINSON, except in the accessories of nature, which should enter into the compositions of art. Not so Spain or Russia, at the extremes of Europe, without affinities with each other or with us. There is very little in the life or nature, or past or present or future, of either of these nations, with which the American can have any real sympathy; and for an American author, whose heart keeps time with his country's, to attempt the illustration of any character from either, while his own domain, far more rich in suggestion and material, lies waste, is a thing scarcely possible to the apprehension of a common understanding. In a remote and shadowy antiquity, like that of Egypt, or in such a darkness as envelops Mexico or Peru, or our own continent before its last discovery, the case is different: we are at liberty, with conditions, to make these the scenes of our conventionalities, because there is scarcely a record to contradict the suggestions of the imagination. Mr. TAYLOR happily went abroad just after the publication of his story of the Sierra Morena, and though he had then travelled but little in his native country, and Europe, "seen with a staff and knapsack," opened all her gates before him with circumstances to produce the most vivid and profound impressions, his love of home grew stronger, and he felt at length the truth which might never have come to him if he had remained here, that for him the holiest land for the intellect, as well as the affections, was that in which he was born. The fables of genius and the records of history may kindle the fancy and give activity to the imagination, but they cannot rouse the passions, which must best dispose the illustrations of fancy, and can alone give vitality and attractive beauty to the fruits of a creative energy. In all his later writings the influence of the inspirations which belong to his country and his age are more and more apparent, and in his volume entitled "Rhymes of Travel, Ballads, and other Poems," published in New York in 1848, the most spirited, natural, and altogether successful compositions, are those which were suggested by the popular impulses and the peculiar adventure which have distinguished the recent life of the republic. "El Canalo," The Bison Track," and "The Fight of Paso del Mar," belong entirely to the years in which they were written, but the inspiration of which they are fruits was not more genuine than that from which we have "The Continents," "In Italy," or "The Requiem in the North." The finest and most sustained specimens of Mr. TAYLOR's imagination and passion are "Ariel in the Cloven Pine," and the "Ode to SHELLEY," both of which have been written since the appearance of his "Rhymes of Travel." The latter is conceived in a spirit and expressed in a sounding rhythm worthy of the sublime intelligence to whom it is addressed. His mastery of the harmonies of the English language is perhaps best exhibited, however, in some of his translations from the German and Italian, particularly in a version of his friend FREILIGRATH's splendid appeal of "The Dead to the Living," a lyric which has been historical from the day on which it first startled the Prussians, and which he reproduced for the columns of "The Tribune" in a manner worthy of the original. A REQUIEM IN THE NORTH. SPEED Swifter, Night!-wild northern Night, Whose feet the arctic islands know, When stiffening breakers, sharp and white, Gird the complaining shores of snow, Send all thy winds to sweep the wold And howl in mountain-passes far, And hang thy banners, red and cold, Against the shield of every star! For what have I to do with morn, Or summer's glory in the valesWith the blithe ring of forest-horn, Or beckoning gleam of snowy sails? Art THOU not gone, in whose blue eye The fleeting summer dawn'd to me?Gone, like the echo of a sigh Beside the loud, resounding sea! Oh, brief that time of song and flowers, Which blest, through thee, the Northern Land! I pine amid its leafless bowers And on the black and lonely strand. And nevermore shall battling pines Chimes wilder with my own despair! The leaden twilight, cold and long, The numb earth lies in icy rest; Of burning grief, within my breast. Life's darken'd orb shall wheel no more To Love's rejoicing summer back; My spirit walks a wintry shore, With not a star to light its track. Speed swifter, Night! thy gloom and frost Are free to spoil and ravage here; This last wild requiem for the lost, I pour in thy unheeding ear! |