He sleeps alone: the mountain cloud
That night hangs round him, and the breath
Of morning scatters, is the shroud

That wraps his martial form in death.

High is his couch: the ocean flood
Far, far below by storms is curl'd,
As round him heaved, while high he stood,
A stormy and inconstant world.

Hark! Comes there from the Pyramids,
And from Siberia's wastes of snow,
And Europe's fields, a voice that bids

The world he awed to mourn him? No:

The only, the perpetual dirge

That's heard there is the seabird's cry, The mournful murmur of the surge,

The cloud's deep voice, the wind's low sigh.

HER CHOSEN SPOT.

WHILE yet she lived, she walk'd alone
Among these shades. A voice divine
Whisper'd, "This spot shall be thine own;
Here shall thy wasting form recline,
Beneath the shadow of this pine."

"Thy will be done!" the sufferer said.
This spot was hallow'd from that hour;
And, in her eyes, the evening's shade
And morning's dew this green spot made
More lovely than her bridal bower.

By the pale moon-herself more pale
And spirit-like-these walks she trod;
And, while no voice, from swell or vale,
Was heard, she knelt upon this sod
And gave her spirit back to God.

That spirit, with an angel's wings,

Went up from the young mother's bed. So, heavenward, soars the lark and sings; She's lost to earth and earthly things; But "weep not, for she is not dead,

She sleepeth!" Yea, she sleepeth here,
The first that in these grounds hath slept.
This grave, first water'd with the tear
That child or widow'd man hath wept,
Shall be by heavenly watchmen kept.

The babe that lay on her cold breast

A rosebud dropp'd on drifted snowIts young hand in its father's press'd, Shall learn that she, who first caress'd Its infant cheek, now sleeps below.

And often shall he come alone,

When not a sound but evening's sigh
Is heard, and, bowing by the stone
That bears his mother's name, with none
But God and guardian angels nigh,

Shall say, "This was my mother's choice For her own grave: oh, be it mine! Even now, methinks, I hear her voice Calling me hence, in the divine

And mournful whisper of this pine."

FOR THE CHARLESTOWN CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

Two hundred years! two hundred years! How much of human power and pride, What glorious hopes, what gloomy fears, Have sunk beneath their noiseless tide!

The red man at his horrid rite,

Seen by the stars at night's cold noon, His bark canoe, its track of light

Left on the wave beneath the moon;

His dance, his yell, his council-fire,
The altar where his victim lay,
His death-song, and his funeral pyre,
That still, strong tide hath borne away.

And that pale Pilgrim band is gone,

That on this shore with trembling trod, Ready to faint, yet bearing on

The ark of freedom and of God.

And war-that since o'er ocean came,
And thunder'd loud from yonder hill,
And wrapp'd its foot in sheets of flame,
To blast that ark-its storm is still.

Chief, sachem, sage, bards, heroes, seers, That live in story and in song,

Time, for the last two hundred years,

Has raised, and shown, and swept along.

"Tis like a dream when one awakes, This vision of the scenes of old; "Tis like the moon when morning breaks, "Tis like a tale round watchfires told.

Then what are we? then what are we?
Yes, when two hundred years have roll'd
O'er our green graves, our names shall be
A morning dream, a tale that's told.

God of our fathers, in whose sight
The thousand years that sweep away

Man and the traces of his might
Are but the break and close of day,

Q

Grant us that love of truth sublime,
That love of goodness and of thee,
That makes thy children, in all time,
To share thine own eternity.

GEORGE HILL.

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!
Look on its rent, though tower-like shafts, and,
The loud winds thunder in their aged face;

[hear

Then slowly turn thine eye, where moulders near A Cæsar'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 wooed 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;