THE LOSS OF PROFESSOR FISHER. Grazing the tender herb, were interposed, Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread her store, 249 ON THE LOSS OF PROFESSOR FISHER, OF YALE COLLEGE. THE breath of air that stirs the harp's soft string, Ere night, is sporting in the lightning's flash; So science whispered in thy charmed ear, Beam of thy morning promised a bright day. And they have wrecked thee! But there is a shore Where storms are hushed, where tempests never rage; Where angry skies and blackening seas no more With gusty strength their roaring warfare wage. By thee its peaceful margin shall be trod— Thy home is Heaven, and thy friend is God. THE WORLD DANGEROUS TO VIR. TUE. VIRTUE, forever frail and fair below, Unthought before, or fix a former flaw. Nor is it strange; light, motion, concourse, noise, All scatter us abroad. Thought, outward-bound, Neglectful of our home-affairs, flies off In fume and dissipation, quits her charge, THE RAINBOW. SYMBOL of peace! lo, there the ethereal bow! FORWARDNESS.-SONNET. 251 Where grass, leaf, flower, are sparkling in the light- FORWARDNESS. NOTHING, perhaps, is more unbecoming to young persons, than the assumption of consequence before men of age, wisdom, and experience. The advice, therefore, of Parmenio, the Grecian general, to his son, was worthy of him to give, and worthy of every man of sense to adopt: "My son," says he, "would you be great, you must be less." The modest deportment of really wise men, when contrasted to the assuming air of the young and ignorant, may be compared to the different appearances of wheat; which, while its ear is empty, holds up its head proudly, but as it is filled with grain, bends modestly down, and withdraws from observation. SONNET. As slow I climb the cliff's ascending side, Much musing on the track of terror past, When o'er the dark wave rode the howling blast, Pleased I look back, and view the tranquil tide That laves the pebbled shores; and now the beam Of evening smiles on the gray battlement, And yon forsaken tower that time has rent! Is touched, and the hushed billows seem to sleep. THE EVENING CLOUD. A CLOUD lay cradled near the setting sun, SONNET. GIVE me a cottage on some Cambrian wild, Where, far from cities, I may spend my days, And by the beauties of the scene beguiled, May pity man's pursuits, and shun his ways. While on the rock I mark the browsing goat, List to the mountain-torrent's distant noise, COUSIN MARY. Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note, I shall not want the world's delusive joys! 253 Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more; COUSIN MARY. ABOUT four years ago, passing a few days with the highly educated daughters of some friends in this neighborhood, I found, domesticated in the family, a young lady, whom I shall call as they called her, Cousin Mary. She was about eighteen, not beautiful perhaps, but lovely certainly to the full extent of that loveliest word; as fresh as a rose; as fair as a lily; with lips like winter berries, dimpled, smiling lips, and eyes of which nobody could tell the color, they danced so incessantly in their own gay light. Her figure was tall, round, and slender; exquisitely well proportioned it must have been, for in all attitudes, (and in her innocent gayety she was scarcely ever two minutes in the same,) she was grace itself. She was, in short, the very picture of youth, health, and happiness. No one could see her without being prepossessed in her favor. I took a fancy to her the moment she entered the room; and it increased every hour in spite of, or rather perhaps for, certain deficiencies, which caused poor Cousin Mary to be held exceedingly cheap by her accomplished relatives. She was the youngest daughter of an officer of rank, dead long ago; and his sickly widow having lost by |