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LINES TO THE DEAD.

Friends! I would crave like boon

When laid within death's vaults;
Speak of me often, though it be

Only to tell my faults:

For better that some hearts be taught

Ev'n of my follies than of nought.

Oh! yes, remember me

In gentleness and love:

Let not the chasm be early filled
That tracks my last remove.

But grant me still that little spot ;

Friends! dearest friends! forget me not.

TO *

BY FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

THE world is bright before thee,
Its summer flowers are thine,

Its calm blue sky is o'er thee,

Thy bosom Pleasure's shrine; And thine the sunbeam given

To Nature's morning hour, Pure, warm, as when from heaven It burst on Eden's bower.

There is a song of sorrow,

The death-dirge of the gay,

That tells, ere dawn of morrow,
These charms may melt away,
That sun's bright beam be shaded,
That sky be blue no more,
The summer flowers be faded,

And youth's warm promise o'er.

X

Believe it not-though lonely

Thy evening home may be;
Though Beauty's bark can only

Float on a summer sea;

Though Time thy bloom is stealing,
There's still beyond his art

The wild-flower wreath of feeling,

The sunbeam of the heart.

THE LOST HUNTER.

BY ALFRED B. STREET.

NUMBED by the piercing, freezing air,
And burthened by his game,
The Hunter, struggling with despair,
Dragged on his shivering frame;

The rifle he had shouldered late

Was trailed along, a weary weight,

His pouch was void of food,

The hours were speeding in their flight, And soon the long, keen, winter night Would wrap the solitude.

Oft did he stoop a listening ear,
Sweep round an anxious eye,-
No bark or ax-blow could he hear,
No human trace descry.

His sinuous path, by blazes, wound

232

THE LOST HUNTER.

Among trunks grouped in myriads round;—
Through naked boughs, between
Whose tangled architecture, fraught

With many a shape grotesquely wrought,

The hemlock's spire was seen.

An antlered dweller of the wild

Had met his eager gaze,

And far his wandering steps beguiled

Within an unknown maze;

Stream, rock, and run-way, he had crossed
Unheeding, till the marks were lost
By which he used to roam;

And now, deep swamp and wild ravine,
And rugged mountain, were between
The Hunter and his home.

A dusky haze, which slow had crept
On high, now darkened there,
And a few snow-flakes fluttering swept

Athwart the thick gray air

Faster and faster, till between

The trunks and boughs, a mottled screen

Of glimmering motes was spread,
That ticked against each object round
With gentle and continuous sound

Like brook o'er pebbled bed.