And so I came to think on Loss

I never much could think on GainA poet oft will woo a cross

On whom a crown is pressed in vain.

I came to think-I know not how

Perchance through sense of Indian wrongOf losses of my own, that now

Broke for the first time into song.

A fluttering strain of feeble words

That scarcely dared to leave my breast;
But, like a brood of fledgling birds,
Kept hovering round their natal nest.

"O loss!" I sang, "O early loss!

O blight that nipped the buds of spring!
O spell that turned the gold to dross!
O steel that clipped the untried wing

"I mourn all days, as sorrows he

Whom once they called a merchant-prince, Over the ships he sent to sea,

And never, never, heard of since.

"To ye, O woods, the annual May
Restores the leaves ye lost before;
The tide that now forsakes the bay,
This night will wash the widowed shore.

"But I shall never see again

The shape that smiled upon my youth; A misty sorrow veils my brain,

And dimly looms the light of Truth.

"She faded, fading woods, like you!
And fleeting shone with sweeter grace,
And as she died the colors grew

To softer splendors in her face.

"Until one day the hectic flush

Was veiled with death's eternal snow;

She swept from earth amid a hush,
And I was left alone below!"

While thus I moaned, I heard a peal
Of laughter through the meadows flow,
I saw the farm-boys at their meal,
I saw the cider circling go.

And still the mountain calmly slept,
His feet with valley-vapors wet;
And slowly circling, upward crept

The smoke from out his calumet.

Mine was the sole discordant breath
That marred this dream of peace below;
"O God," I cried, "give, give me death,
Or give me grace to bear thy blow!"

ELISHA KENT KANE.

(Died February 15, 1857.)

Aloft upon an old basaltic crag,

Which, scalped by keen winds that defend the Pole, Gazes with dead face on the seas that roll

Around the secret of the mystic zone,

A mighty nation's star-bespangled flag,
Flutters alone.

And underneath, upon the lifeless front
Of that drear cliff, a simple name is traced :
Fit type of him who, famishing and gaunt,
But with a rocky purpose in his soul,
Breasted the gathering snows,

Clung to the drifting floes,

By want beleaguered, and by winter chased,
Seeking the brother lost amid that frozen waste.

Not many months ago we greeted him,
Crowned with the icy honors of the North.
Across the land his hard-won fame went forth :
And Maine's deep woods were shaken limb by limb;
And his own mild Keystone State, sedate and prim,
Burst from its decorous quiet as he came ;
Hot Southern lips, with eloquence aflame,
Sounded his triumph; Texas, wild and grim,
Proffered its horny hand; the large-lunged West,
From out its giant breast,

Yelled its frank welcome. And from main to main,

Jubilant to the sky,

Thundered the mighty cry,

"Honor to Kane!"

In vain-in vain beneath his feet we flung
The reddening roses! All in vain we poured
The golden wine, and round the shining board
Sent the toast circling till the rafters rung
With the thrice-tripled honors of the feast!
Scarce the buds wilted and the voices ceased,
Ere the pure light that sparkled in his eyes,
Bright as auroral fires in Southern skies,
Faded and faded. And the brave young heart
That the relentless Arctic winds had robbed
Of all its vital heat, in that long quest
For the lost Captain, now within his breast
More and more faintly throbbed.
His was the victory; but, as his grasp
Closed on the laurel crown with eager clasp,
Death launched a whistling dart;

And ere the thunders of applause were done
His bright eyes closed forever on the sun!
Too late, too late the splendid prize he won
In the Olympic race of Science and of Art!

Like to some shattered being that, pale and lone,
Drifts from the white North to a Tropic zone,
And, in the burning day

Wastes, peak by peak, away,

Till on some rosy even

It dies with sunlight blessing it; so he
Tranquilly floated to a southern sea,

And melted into Heaven!

He needs no tears, who lived a noble life.
We will not weep for him who died so well

But we will gather round the hearth, and tell
The story of his life :-

Such homage suits him well,

Better than funeral pomp or passing bell.

What tale of peril and self-sacrifice!

Prisoned amidst the fastnesses of ice,

With hunger howling o'er the wastes of snow; Night lengthening into months; the ravenous floe Crunching the massive ships, as the white bear Crunches his prey; the insufficient share

Of loathsome food;

The lethargy of famine, the despair
Urging to labor, nervously pursued ;

Toil done with skinny arms, and faces hued
Like pallid masks, while dolefully behind
Glimmered the fading embers of a mind!

That awful hour, when through the prostrate band
Delirium stalked, laying his burning hand
Upon the ghastly foreheads of the crew;
The whispers of rebellion-faint and few
At first, but deepening ever till they grew
Into black thoughts of murder :-such the throng
Of horrors round the Hero. High the song
Should be that hymns the noble part he played!
Sinking himself, yet ministering aid

To all around him. By a mighty will
Living defiant of the wants that kill,

Because his death would seal his comrades' fate!

Cheering with ceaseless and inventive skill

Those Polar winters, dark and desolate,

Equal to every trial-every fate

He stands, until spring, tardy with relief,

Unlocks the icy gate,

And the pale prisoners thread the world once more, To the steep cliffs of Greenland's pastoral shore, Bearing their dying chief.

Time was when he should gain his spurs

of gold

From royal hands, who wooed the knightly state:
The knell of old formalities is tolled,

And the world's knights are now self-consecrate.
No grander episode does chivalry hold
In all its annals, back to Charlemagne,
Than that long vigil of unceasing pain,

Faithfully kept, through hunger and through cold,
By the good Christian Knight, Elisha Kane!

OEHLENSCHLÄGER, ADAM GOTTLOB, a Danish dramatist and poet, born at Vesterbro, near Copenhagen, November 14, 1779; died there, January 20, 1850. His father was steward of the royal palace at Fredericksburg, where the son passed his early life. At the age of twelve he began to write dramatic pieces, which were performed by himself and his school-mates. In 1803 he published a volume of poems. This was followed by his drama of Aladdin, which gained for him a travelling stipend from the Government. He thoroughly mastered the German language, into which he translated those of his works which were originally written in Danish. He went to Italy, where he became intimate with the Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen. Returning to Denmark in 1810, he was made Professor of Esthetics in the University of Copenhagen. His Works, which include dramas, poems, novels, and translations, fill forty-one volumes in German and twenty-one in Danish. He is best known by his dramas, twentyfour in all, of which nineteen are upon Scandinavian subjects. Many of them have been translated into English by Theodore Martin and others. Among the best of his works are Aladdin, Hakon Jarl, Palnatoke, Axel and Valborg, Correg gio, Canute the Great, The Varangians in Constantinople, Land Found and Lost, based upon the early