The Poets and Poetry of America

ON SEEING AN EAGLE PASS NEAR ME IN AUTUMN TWILIGHT.

SAIL

on, thou lone, imperial bird,

Of quenchless eye and tireless wing;
How is thy distant coming heard,

As the night's breezes round thee ring!
Thy course was 'gainst the burning sun
In his extremest glory. How!
Is thy unequall'd daring done,

Thou stoop'st to earth so lowly now?
Or hast thou left thy rocking dome,
Thy roaring crag, thy lightning pine,
To find some secret, meaner home,
Less stormy and unsafe than thine?
Else why thy dusky pinions bend

So closely to this shadowy world,
And round thy searching glances send,
As wishing thy broad pens were furl'd?

Yet lonely is thy shatter'd nest,

Thy eyry desolate, though high;
And lonely thou, alike at rest,

Or soaring in the upper sky.
The golden light that bathes thy plumes
On thine interminable flight,

Falls cheerless on earth's desert tombs,
And makes the north's ice-mountains bright.

So come the eagle-hearted down,

So come the high and proud to earth,
When life's night-gathering tempests frown
Over their glory and their mirth:
So quails the mind's undying eye,

That bore, unveil'd, fame's noontide sun;
So man seeks solitude, to die,

His high place left, his triumphs done.

So, round the residence of power,

A cold and joyless lustre shines, And on life's pinnacles will lower

Clouds, dark as bathe the eagle's pines. But, O, the mellow light that pours

From Gon's pure throne-the light that saves! It warms the spirit as it soars,

And sheds deep radiance round our graves.

THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA.

ITALIA'S vales and fountains,
Though beautiful ye be,

I love my soaring mountains

And forests more than ye; And though a dreamy greatness rise From out your cloudy years, Like hills on distant stormy skies,

Seem dim through Nature's tears, Still, tell me not of years of old,

Of ancient heart and clime; Ours is the land and age of gold, And ours the hallow'd time!

The jewell'd crown and sceptre
Of Greece have pass'd away;
And none, of all who wept her,
Could bid her splendour stay.
The world has shaken with the tread
Of iron-sandall'd crime-
And, lo! o'ershadowing all the dead,
The conqueror stalks sublime!
Then ask I not for crown and plume
To nod above my land;
The victor's footsteps point to doom,
Graves open round his hand!

Rome! with thy pillar'd palaces,

And sculptured heroes all,
Snatch'd, in their warm, triumphal days,
To Art's high festival;

Rome! with thy giant sons of power,
Whose pathway was on thrones,
Who built their kingdoms of an hour
On yet unburied bones,—

I would not have my land like thee,
So lofty-yet so cold!

Be hers a lowlier majesty,

In yet a nobler mould.

Thy marbles-works of wonder!
In thy victorious days,
Whose lips did seem to sunder

Before the astonish'd gaze;
When statue glared on statue there,
The living on the dead,-
And men as silent pilgrims were
Before some sainted head!
O, not for faultless marbles yet
Would I the light forego
That beams when other lights have set,
And Art herself lies low!

O, ours a holier hope shall be
Than consecrated bust,
Some loftier mean of memory

To snatch us from the dust.
And ours a sterner art than this,

Shall fix our image here,— The spirit's mould of loveliness—

A nobler BELVIDERE!

Then let them bind with bloomless flowers The busts and urns of old,

A fairer heritage be ours,

A sacrifice less cold!

Give honour to the great and good,
And wreathe the living brow,
Kindling with Virtue's mantling blood,
And pay the tribute now!

So, when the good and great go down,
Their statues shall arise,

To crowd those temples of our own,
Our fadeless memories!

And when the sculptured marble falls,
And Art goes in to die,
Our forms shall live in holier halls,
The Pantheon of the sky!

GEORGE HILL.

[Born, 1800.]

GEORGE HILL is a native of Guilford, on Long | greeing with him, he returned to Washington; Island Sound, near New Haven. He was ad

and he is now attached again to one of the bureaus in the Department of State.

mitted to Yale College in his fifteenth year, and, when he graduated, took the Berkeleian prize, as The style of Mr. Hill's poetry is severe, and somethe best classic. He was subsequently attached times so elliptical as to embarrass his meaning; this to the navy, as Professor of Mathematics; and is especially true of his more elaborate production, visited in this capacity the Mediterranean, its storied "The Ruins of Athens," written in the Spenserian islands, and classic shores. After his return, he stanza. He is most successful in his lyrics, where was appointed librarian to the State Department, he has more freedom, without a loss of energy. at Washington: a situation which he at length His "Titania," a dramatic piece, is perhaps the resigned on account of ill health, and was ap- most original of his productions. It is wild and pointed Consul of the United States for the south-fanciful, and graced with images of much beauty western portion of Asia Minor. The climate disa

and freshness.

FROM "THE RUINS OF ATHENS."

THE daylight fades o'er old Cyllene's hill,
And broad and dun the mountain shadows fall;
The stars are up and sparkling, as if still
Smiling upon their altars; but the tall,
Dark cypress, gently, as a mourner, bends-
Wet with the drops of evening as with tears-
Alike o'er shrine and worshipper, and blends,
All dim and lonely, with the wrecks of years,
As of a world gone by no coming morning cheers.
There sits the queen of temples-gray and lone.
She, like the last of an imperial line,
Has seen her sister structures, one by one,
To Time their gods and worshippers resign;
And the stars twinkle through the weeds that twine
Their roofless capitals; and, through the night,
Heard the hoarse drum and the exploding mine,
The clash of arms and hymns of uncouth rite,
From their dismantled shrines the guardian powers
affright.

Go! thou from whose forsaken heart are reft
The ties of home; and, where a dwelling-place
Not JOVE himself the elements have left,
The grass-grown, undefined arena pace! [hear
Look on its rent, though tower-like shafts, and
The loud winds thunder in their aged face;
Then slowly turn thine eye, where moulders near
A CESAR'S arch, and the blue depth of space
Vaults like a sepulchre the wrecks of a past race.

Is it not better with the Eremite,

Where the weeds rustle o'er his airy cave, Perch'd on their summit, through the long, still night

To sit and watch their shadows slowly wave

While oft some fragment, sapp'd by dull decay,
In thunder breaks the silence, and the fowl
Of Ruin hoots-and turn in scorn away
Of all man builds, time levels, and the cowl
Awards her moping sage in common with the owl?

Or, where the palm, at twilight's holy hour,
By THESEUS' fane her lonely vigil keeps:
Gone are her sisters of the leaf and flower,
With them the living crop earth sows and reaps,
But these revive not: the weed with them sleeps,
But clothes herself in beauty from their clay,
And leaves them to their slumber; o'er them

weeps

Vainly the Spring her quickening dews away, And Love as vainly mourns, and mourns, alas! for aye.

Or, more remote, on Nature's haunts intrude,
Where, since creation, she has slept on flowers,
Wet with the noonday forest-dew, and woo'd
By untamed choristers in unpruned bowers:
By pathless thicket, rock that time-worn towers
O'er dells untrodden by the hunter, piled
Ere by its shadow measured were the hours
To human eye, the rampart of the wild,
Whose banner is the cloud, by carnage undefiled.
The weary spirit that forsaken plods
The world's wide wilderness, a home may find
Here, mid the dwellings of long-banish'd gods,
And thoughts they bring, the mourners of the

mind;

The spectres that no spell has power to bind,
The loved, but lost, whose soul's life is in ours,
As incense in sepulchral urns, enshrined,
The sense of blighted or of wasted powers,
The hopes whose promised fruits have perish'd

with their flowers.

There is a small, low cape-there, where the moon
Breaks o'er the shatter'd and now shapeless stone;
The waters, as a rude but fitting boon,
Weeds and small shells have, like a garland,
thrown

Upon it, and the wind's and wave's low moan,
And sighing grass, and cricket's plaint, are heard
To steal upon the stillness, like a tone
Remember'd. Here, by human foot unstirr'd,
Its seed the thistle sheds, and builds the ocean-bird.
Lurks the foul toad, the lizard basks secure
Within the sepulchre of him whose name
Had scatter'd navies like the whirlwind. Sure,
If aught ambition's fiery wing may tame,
"Tis here; the web the spider weaves where Fame
Planted her proud but sunken shaft, should be
To it a fetter, still it springs the same,
Glory's fool-worshipper! here bend thy knee!
The tomb thine altar-stone, thine idol Mockery:
A small, gray elf, all sprinkled o'er with dust
Of crumbling catacomb, and mouldering shred
Of banner and embroider'd pall, and rust
Of arms, time-worn monuments, that shed
A canker'd gleam on dim escutcheons, where
The groping antiquary pores to spy-

A what? a name-perchance ne'er graven there; At whom the urchin, with his mimic eye, Sits peering through a skull, and laughs continually.

THE MOUNTAIN-GIRL.

THE clouds, that upward curling from
Nevada's summit fly,

Melt into air: gone are the showers,
And, deck'd, as 't were with bridal flowers,
Earth seems to wed the sky.

All hearts are by the spirit that

Breathes in the sunshine stirr'd;
And there's a girl that, up and down,
A merry vagrant, through the town,
Goes singing like a bird.

A thing all lightness, life, and glee;
One of the shapes we seem
To meet in visions of the night;
And, should they greet our waking sight,
Imagine that we dream.

With glossy ringlet, brow that is
As falling snow-flake white,
Half-hidden by its jetty braid,
And eye like dewdrop in the shade,

At once both dark and bright;
And cheek whereon the sunny clime
Its brown tint gently throws,
Gently, as it reluctant were
To leave its print on thing so fair-
A shadow on a rose.

She stops, looks up-what does she see?
A flower of crimson dye,
Whose vase, the work of Moorish hands,
A lady sprinkles, as it stands

Upon a balcony:

High, leaning from a window forth,
From curtains that half-shroud
Her maiden form with tress of gold,
And brow that mocks their snow-white fold,
Like DIAN from a cloud.

Nor flower, nor lady fair she sees

That mountain-girl-but dumb
And motionless she stands, with eye
That seems communing with the sky:
Her visions are of home.

That flower to her is as a tone

Of some forgotten song,

One of a slumbering thousand, struck
From an old harp-string; but, once woke,
It brings the rest along.

She sees beside the mountain-brook,
Beneath the old cork tree

And toppling crag, a vine-thatch'd shed,
Perch'd, like the eagle, high o'erhead,

The home of liberty;

The rivulet, the olive shade,

The grassy plot, the flock;
Nor does her simple thought forget,
Haply, the little violet,

That springs beneath the rock.

Sister and mate, they may not from

Her dreaming eye depart;

And one, the source of gentler fears, More dear than all, for whom she wears The token at her heart.

And hence her eye is dim, her cheek

Has lost its livelier glow;
Her song has ceased, and motionless
She stands, an image of distress :-
Strange, what a flower can do!

THE FALL OF THE OAK.

A GLORIOUS tree is the old gray oak: He has stood for a thousand years, Has stood and frown'd

On the trees around,

Like a king among his peers;
As round their king they stand, so now,
When the flowers their pale leaves fold,
The tall trees round him stand, array'd
In their robes of purple and gold.

He has stood like a tower
Through sun and shower,
And dared the winds to battle;
He has heard the hail,

As from plates of mail,

From his own limbs shaken, rattle;

He has toss'd them about, and shorn the tops
(When the storm had roused his might)
Of the forest trees, as a strong man doth
The heads of his foes in fight.

The autumn sun looks kindly down,
But the frost is on the lea,

And sprinkles the horn

Of the owl at morn,

As she hies to the old oak tree.

Not a leaf is stirr'd;

Not a sound is heard

But the thump of the thresher's flail,
The low wind's sigh,

Or the distant cry

Of the hound on the fox's trail.

The forester he has whistling plunged With his axe, in the deep wood's gloom, That shrouds the hill,

Where few and chill

The sunbeams struggling come: His brawny arm he has bared, and laid His axe at the root of the tree,

The gray old oak,

And, with lusty stroke,

He wields it merrily:-

With lusty stroke,

And the old gray oak,

Through the folds of his gorgeous vest
You may see him shake,
And the night-owl break
From her perch in his leafy crest.

She will come but to find him gone from where
He stood at the break of day;

Like a cloud that peals as it melts to air,
He has pass'd, with a crash, away.

Though the spring in the bloom and the frost in gold
No more his limbs attire,

On the stormy wave

He shall float, and brave The blast and the battle-fire!

Shall spread his white wings to the wind,

And thunder on the deep,

As he thunder'd when
His bough was green,

On the high and stormy steep.

LIBERTY.

THERE is a spirit working in the world,
Like to a silent subterranean fire;
Yet, ever and anon, some monarch hurl'd
Aghast and pale, attests its fearful ire.

The dungeon'd nations now once more respire The keen and stirring air of Liberty. The struggling giant wakes, and feels he's free.

By Delphi's fountain-cave, that ancient choir Resume their song; the Greek astonish'd hears, And the old altar of his worship rears.

Sound on, fair sisters! sound your boldest lyre,Peal your old harmonies as from the spheres. Unto strange gods too long we've bent the knee, The trembling mind, too long and patiently.

TO A YOUNG MOTHER.

WHAT things of thee may yield a semblance meet,
And him, thy fairy portraiture? a flower
And bud, moon and attending star, a sweet

Voice and its sweeter echo. Time has small power O'er features the mind moulds; and such are thine, Imperishably lovely. Roses, where

They once have bloom'd, a fragrance leave behind; And harmony will linger on the wind;

And suns continue to light up the air, When set; and music from the broken shrine

Breathes, it is said, around whose altar-stone His flower the votary has ceased to twine :

Types of the beauty that, when youth is gone, Beams from the soul whose brightness mocks decline.

SPRING.

Now Heaven seems one bright, rejoicing eye,
And Earth her sleeping vesture flings aside,
And with a blush awakes as does a bride;
And Nature speaks, like thee, in melody.
The forest, sunward, glistens, green and high;
The ground each moment, as some blossom
springs,

Puts forth, as does thy cheek, a lovelier dye,

And each new morning some new songster brings. And, hark! the brooks their rocky prisons break, And echo calls on echo to awake,

Like nymph to nymph. The air is rife with wings, Rustling through wood or dripping over lake.

Herb, bud, and bird return-but not to me With song or beauty, since they bring not thee.

NOBILITY.

Go, then, to heroes, sages if allied,

Go! trace the scroll, but not with eye of pride, Where Truth depicts their glories as they shone, And leaves a blank where should have been your

own.

Mark the pure beam on yon dark wave impress'd; So shines the star on that degenerate breastEach twinkling orb,that burns with borrow'd fires,-So ye reflect the glory of your sires.

JAMES G. BROOKS.

[Born, 1801. Died, 1841.]

THE late JAMES GORDON BROOKs was born at Red Hook, near the city of New York, on the third day of September, 1801. His father was an officer in the revolutionary army, and, after the achievement of our independence, a member of the national House of Representatives. Our author was educated at Union College, in Schenectady, and was graduated in 1819. In the following year he commenced studying the law with Mr. Justice EMOTT, of Poughkeepsie; but, though he devoted six or seven years to the acquisition of legal knowledge, he never sought admission to the bar. In 1823, he removed to New York, where he was for several years an editor of the Morning Courier, one of the most able and influential journals in this country.

Mr. BROOKS began to write for the press in 1817. Two years afterward he adopted the signature of "Florio," by which his contributions to the periodicals were from that time known. In 1828, he was married. His wife, under the signature of "Norna," had been for several years a

writer for the literary journals, and, in 1829, a collection of the poetry of both was published, entitled "The Rivals of Este, and other Poems, by James G. and Mary E. Brooks." The poem which gave its title to the volume was by Mrs. BROOKS. The longest of the pieces by her hus band was one entitled "Genius," which he had delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, in 1827. He wrote but little poetry after the appearance of this work.

In 1830 or 1831, he removed to Winchester, in Virginia, where, for four or five years, he edited a political and literary gazette. He returned to the state of New York, in 1838, and established himself in Albany, where he remained until the 20th day of February, 1841, when he died.

The poems of Mr. BROOKS are spirited and smoothly versified, but diffuse and carelessly written. He was imaginative, and composed with remarkable ease and rapidity; but was too indif ferent in regard to his reputation ever to rewrite or revise his productions.

GREECE-1832.

LAND of the brave! where lie inurn'd
The shrouded forms of mortal clay,
In whom the fire of valour burn'd,

And blazed upon the battle's fray:
Land, where the gallant Spartan few
Bled at Thermopyla of yore,
When death his purple garment threw
On Helle's consecrated shore !

Land of the Muse! within thy bowers

Her soul-entrancing echoes rung,
While on their course the rapid hours
Paused at the melody she sung-
Till every grove and every hill,

And every stream that flow'd along,
From morn to night repeated still
The winning harmony of song.
Land of dead heroes! living slaves!

Shall glory gild thy clime no more?
Her banner float above thy waves

Where proudly it hath swept before? Hath not remembrance then a charm

To break the fetters and the chain, To bid thy children nerve the arm,

And strike for freedom once again? No! coward souls, the light which shone On Leuctra's war-empurpled day, The light which beam'd on Marathon

Hath lost its splendour, ceased to play;

And thou art but a shadow now,

With helmet shatter'd-spear in rustThy honour but a dream-and thou Despised-degraded in the dust!

Where sleeps the spirit, that of old Dash'd down to earth the Persian plume, When the loud chant of triumph told

How fatal was the despot's doom ?— The bold three hundred-where are they, Who died on battle's gory breast! Tyrants have trampled on the clay

Where death hath hush'd them into rest.

Yet, Ida, yet upon thy hill

A glory shines of ages fled; And fame her light is pouring still, Not on the living, but the dead! But 'tis the dim, sepulchral light,

Which sheds a faint and feeble ray, As moonbeams on the brow of night, When tempests sweep upon their way.

Greece! yet awake thee from thy trance,
Behold, thy banner waves afar;
Behold, the glittering weapons glance
Along the gleaming front of war!
A gallant chief, of high emprize,
Is urging foremost in the field,
Who calls upon thee to arise
In might-in majesty reveal'd.

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The Poets and Poetry of America: To the Middle of the Nineteenth Century