THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

Thomas Buchanan Read, whose ambition it was to be an artist, is now better remembered by his poems. Read was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1822. He studied, first in the large cities of this country, then in the galleries of Florence and Rome. Read died in New York, May II, 1872. In Read's poetry, which contains traces of his artistic sense, he has excelled in several different styles. Sheridan's Ride is famous; Drifting and The Closing Scene are hardly less so. Others are almost as good: The Song of the Alpine Guide, The Closing Scene, or the sonnet I Have Looked on a Face, should all be read in order to fill out that idea of Read's capability which is only partly revealed through the two former.

SONG OF THE ALPINE GUIDE.

On Zurich's' spires, with rosy light,
The mountains smile at morn and eve,
And Zurich's waters, blue and bright,
The glories of those hills receive.

1 Zurich, a beautiful city of Switzerland.

12

And there my sister trims her sail,
That like a wayward swallow flies;
But I would rather meet the gale,

That fans the eagle in the skies.

She sings in Zurich's chapel choir,
Where rolls the organ on the air,
And bells proclaim from spire to spire
Their universal call to prayer.
But let me hear the mountain rills,

And old Saint Bernard's' storm-bell toll,
And, 'mid these great cathedral hills,
The thundering avalanches roll.

My brother wears a martial plume,
And serves within a distant land,—
The flowers that on his bosom bloom

Are placed there by a stranger hand.
Love greets him but in foreign eyes,

And greets him in a foreign speech,

But she who to my heart replies

Must speak the tongue these mountains teach.

The warrior's trumpet o'er him swells,
The triumph which it only hath ;
But let me hear the mule-worn bells
Speak peace in every mountain heath.
His spear is ever 'gainst a foe,

Where waves the hostile flag abroad;
My pike-staff only clears the snow,
My banner the blue sky of God.

1 Saint Bernard, the well-known hospice of Saint Bernard.

On Zurich's side my mother sits,
And to her whirling spindle sings;
Through Zurich's waves my father's nets
Sweep daily with their filmy wings,
To that beloved voice I list;

And view that father's toil with pride;
But like a low and vale-born mist,
My spirit climbs the mountain side.

And I would ever hear the stir

And turmoil of the singing winds, Whose viewless wheels around me whirr, Whose distaffs are the swaying pines, And on some snowy mountain's head, The deepest joy to me is given, Where, net-like, the great storm is spread To sweep the azure lake of Heaven.

Then since the vale delights me not,
And Zurich wooes in vain below,

And it hath been my joy and lot

To scale these Alpine crags of snowAnd since in life I loved them well, Let me in death lie down with them, And let the pines and tempests swell Around me their great requiem.

GUY HUMPHREYS MCMASTER.

The poem, The Old Continentals, or, as it has also been aptly called, Carmen Bellicosum, should, as well as the name of the author, be kept from oblivion. Judge Guy Humphreys McMaster was born at Clyde, N. Y., January 31, 1829. He wrote the poem at nineteen years of age, and it appeared soon after in the Knickerbocker Magazine of February, 1849, over the signature" John MacGrom." The piece is the best extant imaginative description of the Revolutionary soldier, with his quaint garb covering a grim determination. McMaster died at Bath, N. Y., in September, 1887.1

CARMEN BELLICOSUM.

In their ragged regimentals,
Stood the old Continentals,

Yielding not,

When the Grenadiers were lunging,

And like hail fell the plunging

1 I am indebted for these facts to a notice in the New York Critic, vol. viii., p. 203 (erroneously given vol. xi., in Poole's Index), including extracts from a letter by Mr. E. C. Stedman.

Cannon-shot;

When the files

Of the isles,

From the smoky night encampment,
Bore the banner of the rampant

Unicorn,

And grummer, grummer, grummer,
Rolled the roll of the drummer
Through the morn!

Then with eyes to the front all,
And with guns horizontal,
Stood our sires;

And the balls whistled deadly,
And in streams flashing redly

Blazed the fires;

As the roar

On the shore,

Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green-sodded

acres

Of the plain :

And louder, louder, louder,
Cracked the black gunpowder,
Cracking amain !

Now like smiths at their forges
Worked the red St. George's
Cannoniers,

And the "villainous saltpetre

Rang a fierce discordant metre

Round their ears;

As the swift

Storm-drift,