For the Emerald. ODE TO HOPE. POETRY. ANGEL of Light! why hast thou fled, Once friendship's joys extatic beam, preme, But now the sad reverse I see, How oft by visionary schemes, How oft the clouds of sorrow low'r, Round his devoted head. Thus once, each throbbing transport fill'd My heart, by faithless friendship chill'd, As down the stream of life we sail, With borrow'd light to shine :- "The oracle had demanded a virgin victim of the blood-royal, as the price of Messenia's safety. The lot had fallen on the daughter of Lycurgus, who fled with her. Stimulated by ambition, Aristodemus voluntarily offered his child: her betrothed husband, to save her life, asserted she was pregnant; Aristodemus immediately stabbed her, and bade the priest convince himself of the falsehood of this evasion. He obtained the crown; but the reflection, how he had obtained it, never could be obliterated; and, at length, he slew himself upon his daughter's tomb." YET once again-again at this dread hour, When nature slumbers in serene repose, And only murderers wake :-I come to pause [come. O'er thy cold grave my child! again I Worn out with anguish, and the keenest pangs [dreadful shades! That frenzying Memory knows. Ye By riches favour'd, and by friends ca- Ye sullen monumental groves of death! Oh say, ye, who by Fortune blest, ress'd; What is thy human part? When your connexions feel distress, From various fates and ill success Wounding the feeling heart. To you I come; escap'd the wearing cares Of empire, and its loathsome pageantry, Sunk to the father, comes the wretched king. 1 O thou cold clay-once moulded by | Earine! Androcles! look on me! the hand Of lavish Nature to perfection's formOnce animate with life, and youth, and love ; view Once my Earine! Again I come Behold me in the autumn of my days, Light'nings come Of beauty cast away the ties of man-Rush round my head-annihilate my And murdered my dear child! Oh, she was dear! I loved her how I loved her, witness Health blossom'd in her cheek, and in woes! [thou come ! Thou fearful spectre, wherefore dost Where dost thou beckon? Spirit of my child, Now I can praise thy falsehood, when" hour fearful eyes [clasp'd hands Look'd up to me for aid, though her "The secret I told, it is true ;— But if it's so precious you cannot but say, "Three guardians are better than two." Bad and Worse. Clung round my knees for safety. I" My wife's so very bad," cried Will, (grasp beheld Her livid cheek convulse-I felt her My knees, in life's last struggle-I be held "I fear she ne'er will hold it,— "She keeps her bed!”—“Mine's worse' said Phil, [thousands round"The jade has just now sold it.” Her starting eye-balls;-calm when the priest The best Nobility. [was calm-That I was noble born, allow you must; Chaste was my mother, and my father just Started, and shriek'd with horror-I But the hand Boston, Mass.) Published No. 70, State Street. SIR, SEMPER REFULGET. No. 44. Boston, Saturday, February 28, 1807. ORIGINAL PAPERS. FOR THE EMERALD. THE WANDERER, No. 68. = TO THE WANDERER. Province House, Feb. 27, 1807. You will doubtless feel surprise at seeing my signature to a communication dated in this metropolis, when you recollect the opinion I have already expressed of your city and its manners.* Be assured, sir, that necessity, not inclination, brought me again within your limúts, and every moment I am confined here is rendered unpleasant by my being obliged to witness your fashionable follies. Friendship and affinity require me to associate with the H. family, of which I gave you some account in my former letter, and a few evenings since I was dragged into a tea-party by them, under the assurance that the visitants would be very select and all of the first sort, and that I could not but enjoy myself. You shall hear the result. I waited till eight o'clock at my lodgings, notwithstanding the din of political war which raged round the fire-side, naturally concluding that the evening was half spent; but I found on being ushered into the See Wanderer No. 38. 1 1 drawing room, that the female part of the company was but just assembled, and tea not yet served up, as the gentlemen had not arrived.— You may be sure my situation was not very pleasant. Placed between two ladies whom I had never before seen, I was condemned to listen to dissertations on dress, critiques on theatrical performances, and com. parisons of the merits of Labottiere and Cipriani, who sport on light fantastic toe. I therefore looked forward with impatience for the coming of the beaux, confident that their presence would give life to the conversation and enable me to reap the promised enjoyment. But alas, sir, I was wofully disappointed.— The same unmeaning observations were reiterated by them, and the only alteration experienced by their arrival was overcrouding the already uncomfortably crouded room.One of my fair cousins regretted deeply that there was no room for card tables, and observed to me in a half whisper that her father was so unfashionable that he had forbidden her to introduce play, though she always joined the card parties abroad, and last night only had won twenty dollars. Loudly exclaiming against the practice, I found all eyes upon me, and overheard a young coxcomb ask my friend's son, "who that cursed boor was," and also had the mortification to hear him reply, «O an old quiz of a relation we are obliged to endure, as we expect by and by to finger his cash." I was 1 next obliged to listen to a vile thuming on the piano-forte, the music of which I observed had no other effect, than causing all the company to talk louder than before in order to be heard, for I was the only person who took the trouble to attend to the musician. I will not relate to you any part of the conversation, for truly there was nothing spoken worthy of record, but will not omit to observe that one half the company appeared totally unacquainted with the other half, but distributed in little clumps about the room, poured out their streams of volubility, unmindful whom they overwhelmed, experiencing no other in-ply. Such parties as the one desterruption than occasional remarks P. S. I have related the adventure to one of the three representa-, tives who come from our town, and though I supposed my young cousin was bantering when she mentioned her winnings, he assures me that a card party should not be attended without money, for he was recently in company at Mrs.'s, daugli. ter to the deacon of our parish, who has but lately been established herr and lust more money than his pay during the whole session will a mount to. from a few gem'men who holding no seats were compelled to stroll from one side to the other. Glad was I when escaped from this jar gon of folly, from the mountains of plumb-cake, fruit and jellies, and the oceans of whipt sylabubs, lemonade and liqueur which were continually introduced, In short I have no hesitancy in declaring my preference of the noisy colloquies of enraged politicians, the rattling of a winter storm, or the rumbling of a To Mr. Homebred's inquiries the Wanderer cannot offer a prolix re cribed he is sorry to declare are frequent, and most appropriately are denominated Jams; but he is yet to learn what kind of pleasure will be infinitely obliged to any one they are calculated to afford, and of his fashionable readers who can for supposing they are capable of furnish him with a plausible reason bestowing any. FOR THE EMERALD. Z. foaming cataract, to the confused When IGNORANGE is bliss, 'tis folly to be WISE. tumult of your fashionable tea parties, the unmeaning laughter of the THE man of a bold and vigorous beaux, the tittering conversation of imagination has a source of happithe belles, and the flippant imperti-ness, which is entirely unknown to nence of both. Do sir, inform me the slow and sober calculator of whether these suffocating parties chances, who plods on in the beaten are frequent and what pleasure those path of reason without daring to expect who collect, what those cal- look beyond its bounds. In this culate on who attend them. Ex- world of vicissitude however, when cuse my apparent ignorance, but innumerable circumstances conspire really I have been so long out of to perplex and disturb; where the the great world, that I am not only best planned schemes are often ununacquainted with the mode of be- successful, and the most virtuous ing pleased, but am unable to dis- exertions deprived of their reward,. cover the causes which produce he may be considered a very fortuhappiness in others. With increas-nate being, who looks beyond the ed regard, I am, sir, your humble circumference of this narrow sphere servant, JONATHAN HOMEBRED. and enjoys in a world of his own creation whatever soothes his sor-compare fact with fact, and the cool rows and increases his delight. Imagination was purposely formed to destroy the little evils of life, to give a spirit and enthusiasm which should overbear misfortune, and hold out the promise of better times. He who should keep his mind restrained to the dull moments of present difficulty, who could not pierce the cloud, and find the darkness a momentary gloom and not the total extinguishment of the sun, might yield to the first impressions of despair, and submit without a struggle to the appearance of necessity. But while reason would confine him to this dreadful situation, the mind is furnished with higher powers, whose great prerogative it is, to step forth and to save at the moment of danger. reasoner will instantly determine that the object of your wishes will never be realized; but Hope says it will. Hope persuades you that your senses, your experience, your reason is deceptive. If she takes you not into security, she at least conceals from you the circumstances of danger. This deception is often happiness itself. What are the sleeping visions of the night?— the moving landscape of the brain? At a distance from friends, uncertain of their welfare and anxious for their health, this lovely deceiver destroys the faculties of reason:~ Imagination places us in their loved society-we hear, we see them— we wake to reason and to melancholy. Imagination is the poor man's only treasure; it offers a sacred recess from the world's oppression. It has a wand that deceives him into By imagination we mean those powers of the mind, which move not exactly by the principles that in common concerns influence the ac-power, and he seems to have the tions A something in the mind, which inspires confidence, in opposition to evidence, and leads one to anticipate scenes which would otherwise be clouded by despair. world at command; it deceives him into wealth and he has the treasures of Croesus at his will-she persuades him she is Reason herselfhe takes her at her word, and she rewards his credulity with multiplied favors. As fertility and beauty sprang beneath the footsteps of the fabled Ceres so hilarity and pleasure rise at the breath of Imagination. She sits like Calypso on her island and her votary is the beloved Telemachus. The enchant Imagination has been called a delusion of the mind. But if ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be vise. We are certain of nothing, say philosophers. The eye and the ear are sometimes of doubtful credit, but a want of demonstration does not diminish from their use. But if happiness be the great design of existing empire over which she reigns ence, the object of enquiry would be not whether these mental powers were deceptive, but whether they were injurious. It is sometimes innocent to deceive, and man with all his boasted reason is often like a child whom it is necessary to allure and charm away from danger by ingenuity and artifice. Hope is often a fraud upon reason. Calmly no storms disturb, no tempest ever darkens. Flowers bloom on every side-the rose has no thorn and the bramble no where appears. It is an Eden without any tree forbidden, a paradise in which death never enters. Her reign is indeed short and her kingdom insecure. The stream of time seems gradually to "wash away its dissoluble fabric." |