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That it was now his winding-sheet and grave,

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,

Nor sung, 'twixt tears and smiles, our requiem for the And the voice of the nightingale never is mute; brave.

I say, the muse shall quite forget to sound
The chord whose music is undying, if

She do not strike it when Sam Patch is drowned.
Leander dived for love. Leucadia's cliff
The Lesbian Sappho leaped from in a mift,
To punish Phaon; Icarus went dead,

Because the wax did not continue stiff;
And, had he minded what his father said,

He had not given a name unto his watery bed.

And Helle's case was all an accident,

As everybody knows. Why sing of these? Nor would I rank with Sam that man who went Down into Ætna's womb-Empedocles

I think he called himself. Themselves to please, Or else unwillingly, they made their springs;

For glory in the abstract, Sam made his,
To prove to all men, commons, lords, and kings,
That "some things may be done as well as other
things."

But ere he leaped, he begged of those who made
Money by his dread venture, that if he
Should perish, such collection should be paid

As might be picked up from the "company"
To his mother. This, his last request, shall be-
Though she who bore him ne'er his fate should know-
An iris glittering o'er his memory,

When all the streams have worn their barriers low,
And, by the sea drunk up, forever cease to flow.

Therefore it is considered, that Sam Patch

Shall never be forgot in prose or rhyme; His name shall be a portion in the batch

Of the heroic dough, which baking time Kneads for consuming ages-and the chime Of fame's old bells, long as they truly ring,

Shall tell of him: he dived for the sublime, And found it. Thou, who with the eagle's wing, Being a goose-wouldst fly-dream not of such a thing!

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Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky,
In color though varied, in beauty may vie,

And the purple of ocean is deepest in die;
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?

'T is the clime of the East; 't is the land of the SunCan he smile on such deeds as his children have done? , wild as the accents of lover's farewell

Are the hearts which they bear and the tales which they tell!

LORD BYRON.

LIBERTY TO ATHENS.

HE flag of freedom floats once more
Around the lofty Parthenon;

It waves, as waved the palm of yore
In days departed long and gone;

As bright a glory, from the skies,

Pours down its light around those towers, And once again the Greeks arise,

As in their country's noblest hours; Their swords are girt in virtue's cause, Minerva's sacred hill is free

Oh, may she keep her equal laws,

While man shall live, and time shall be.

The pride of all her shrines went down ;
The Goth, the Frank, the Turk, had reft
The laurel from her civic crown;

Her helm by many a sword was cleft:
She lay among her ruins low-

Where grew the palm, the cypress rose,
And, crushed and bruised by many a blow,
She cowered beneath her savage foes:
But now again she springs from earth,
Her loud, awakening trumpet speaks;
She rises in a brighter birth,

And sounds redemption to the Greeks.
JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

JERUSALEM BEFORE THE SIEGE OF TITUS.

ITUS.-It must be

And yet it moves me, Romans! It confound
The counsel of my firm philosophy,
That ruin's merciless ploughshare must pass
o'er,

And barren salt be sown on yon proud city.
As on our olive-crowned hill we stand,
Where Kedron at our feet its scanty waters

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever Distils from stone to stone with gentle motion, shine;

As through a valley sacred to sweet peace,

Where the light wings of zephyr, oppressed with per- How boldly doth it front us! how majestically! fume,

Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gúl in her bloom?

Like a luxurious vineyard, the hill-side
Is hung with marble fabrics, line o'er line,

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Terrace o'er terrace, nearer still, and nearer
To the blue heavens. There bright and sumptuous
palaces,

With cool and verdant gardens interspersed ;
There towers of war that frown in massy strength;
While over all hangs the rich purple eve,
As conscious of its being her last farewell
Of light and glory to that fated city.

And, as our clouds of battle, dust and smoke,
Are melted into air, behold the temple
In undisturbed and lone serenity,
Finding itself a solemn sanctuary

In the profound of heaven! It stands before us
A mount of snow, fretted with golden pinnacles!
The very sun, as though he worshipped there,
Lingers upon the gilded cedar roofs,
And down the long and branching porticoes,
On every flowery-sculptured capital,
Glitters the homage of his parting beams.
By Hercules! the sight might almost win
The offended majesty of Rome to mercy.

HENRY HART MILMAN.
SUNNY ITALY.

NOWEST thou the land which lovers ought to
the
choose?

KON

Like blessings there descend the sparkling dews;

In gleaming streams the crystal rivers run,

The purple vintage clusters in the sun;

Odors of flowers haunt the balmy breeze,

Rich fruits hang high upon the verdant trees;

And vivid blossoms gem the shady groves,

Where bright-plumed birds discourse their careless

loves.

Beloved!-speed we from this sullen strand,

Until thy light feet press that green shore's yellow sand.

Look seaward thence, and naught shall meet thine eye
But fairy isles, like paintings on the sky;
And, flying fast and free before the gale,
The gaudy vessel with its glancing sail;
And waters glittering in the glare of noon,

Or touched with silver by the stars and moon,
Or flecked with broken lines of crimson light,
When the far fisher's fire affronts the night.
Lovely as loved! toward that smiling shore
Bear we our household gods, to fix forever more.

It looks a dimple on the face of earth,
The seal of beauty, and the shrine of mirth:
Nature is delicate and graceful there,
The place's genius, feminine and fair;
The winds are awed, nor dare to breathe aloud;
The air seems never to have borne a cloud,
Save where volcanoes send to heaven their curled
And solemn smokes, like altars of the world,
Thrice beautiful to that delightful spot
Carry our married hearts, and be all pain forgot.

There art, too, shows, when nature's beauty palls,
Her sculptured marbles, and her pictured walls;
And there are forms in which they both conspire
To whisper themes that know not how to tire ;
The speaking ruins in that gentle clime
Have but been hallowed by the hand of time,
And each can mutely prompt some thought of flame :
The meanest stone is not without a name.
Then come, beloved!-hasten o'er the sea,
To build our happy hearth in blooming Italy.
EDWARD C. PINKNEY.

THE MOUNTAINS OF SWITZERLAND.

HE stranger wandering in the Switzer's land, Before its awful mountain-tops afraidWho yet, with patient toil, has gained his stand On the bare summit where all life is stayedSees far, far down beneath his blood-dimmed eyes, Another country, golden to the shore, Where a new passion and new hopes arise, Where southern blooms unfold forevermore. And I, lone sitting by the twilight blaze,

Think of another wanderer in the snows,
And on more perilous mountain-tops I gaze
Than ever frowned above the vine and rose.

Yet courage, soul! nor hold thy strength in vain,
In hope o'ercome the steeps God set for thee,
For past the Alpine summits of great pain
Lieth thine Italy.

B

ROSE TERRY COOKE.

PALESTINE.

LEST land of Judea! thrice hallowed of song, Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng;

In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy

sea,

On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee.
With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore,
Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before;
With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod
Made bright by the steps of the angels of God.

Lo, Bethlehem's hill side before me is seen,
With the mountains around and the valleys between;
There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there
The song of the angels rose sweet on the air.

Oh, here with His flock the sad wanderer came-
These hills He toiled over in grief, are the same-
The founts where He drank by the wayside still flow,
And the same airs are blowing which breathed on His
brow!

And what if my feet may not tread where He stool, Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's flood,

Nor my eyes see the cross which He bowed him to bear,

Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden of prayer.

Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near
To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here;
And the voice of Thy love is the same even now,
As at Bethany's tomb, or on Olivet's brow.

Oh, the outward hath gone?-but, in glory and power'
The Spirit surviveth the things of an hour;
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame
On the heart's secret altar is burning the same!
JOHN GREENLeaf Whittier.

GREECE.

AND of the brave! where lie inurned
The shrouded forms of mortal clay,
In whom the fire of valor burned,
And blazed upon the battle's fray:
Land where the gallant Spartan few
Bled the Thermopylæ of yore,
When death his purple garment threw
On Helle's consecrated shore!

Land of the Muse! within thy bowers
Her soul-entrancing echoes rung,
While on their course the rapid hours
Paused at the melody she sung-
Till every grove and every hill,
And every stream that flowed along,
From morn to night repeated still
The winning harmony of song.
Land of dead heroes, living slaves!
Shall glory gild thy clime no more?
Her banner float above the waves
Where proudly it hath swept before?
Hath not remembrance then a charm
To break the fetters and the chain,
To bid thy children nerve the arm,

And strike for freedom once again?
No! coward souls, the light which shone
On Leuctra's war-empurpled day,
The light which beamed on Marathon

Hath lost its splendor, ceased to play;
And thou art but a shadow now,

With helmet shattered-spear in rustThy honor but a dream-and thou

Despised-degraded in the dust! Where sleeps the spirit that of old

Dashed down to earth the Persian plume, When the loud chant of triumph told

How fatal was the despot's doom?— The bold three hundred-where are they, Who died on battle's gory breast? Tyrants have trampled on the clay

Where death hath hushed them into rest.

Yet, Ida, yet upon thy hill
A glory shines of ages fled;
And fame her light is pouring still,
Not on the living, but the dead!
But 'tis the dim, sepulchral light,

Which sheds a faint and feeble ray,
As moonbeams on the brow of night,
When tempests sweep upon their way.
Greece! yet awake thee from thy trance,
Behold, thy banner waves afar;
Behold, the glittering weapons glance
Along the gleaming front of war!
A gallant chief, of high emprize,
Is urging foremost in the field,
Who calls upon thee to arise

In might-in majesty revealed.

In vain, in vain the hero calls-
In vain he sounds the trumpet loud!
His banner totters-see! it falls

In ruin, freedom's battle-shroud:
Thy children have no soul to dare
Such deeds as glorified their sires;
Their valor's but a meteor's glare,

Which gleams a moment, and expires. Lost land! where genius made his reign, And reared his golden arch on high; Where science raised her sacred fane, Its summits peering to the sky; Upon thy clime the midnight deep

Of ignorance hath brooded long, And in the tomb, forgotten, sleep

The sons of science and of song.

Thy sun hath set-the evening storm
Hath passed in giant fury by,
To blast the beauty of thy form,

And spread its pall upon the sky!
Gone is thy glory's diadem,

And freedom never more shall cease To pour her mournful requiem

O'er blighted, lost, degraded Greece ! JAMES G. BROoks.

NAPLES.

'HIS region, surely, is not the earth.
Was it not dropt from heaven? Not a grove,
Citron or pine or cedar, not a grot

Sea-worn and mantled with the gadding vine,
But breathes enchantment. Not a cliff but flings
On the clear wave some image of delight,
Some cabin-roof glowing with crimson flowers,
Some ruined temple or fallen monument,
To muse on as the bark is gliding by,
And be it mine to muse there, mine to glide,
From daybreak, when the mountain pales his fire
Yet more and more, and from the mountain-top,

Till then invisible, a smoke ascends,
Solemn and slow, as erst from Ararat,
When he, the patriarch, who escaped the flood,
Was with his household sacrificing there—
From daybreak to that hour, the last and best,
When, one by one, the fishing-boats come forth,
Each with its glimmering lantern at the prow,
And, when the nets are thrown, the evening hymn
Steals o'er the trembling waters.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

MELROSE ABBEY.

HE moon on the east oriel shone,

Through slender shafts of shapely stone,

By foliaged tracery combined;

much music at a Russian festivity. Then swings were put up for the younger folk, and the Russian swing is different from ours: each swing hung by two ropes from a pole, which crossed a board transversely when the swingers either stood or sat between the two ropes opposite to, and swinging, one another. Dogs had come to the fête too, and some such hungrylooking ones that they were invited indoors before they went away again, to a good repast. There was a pretty view of the nearest church from the lawn.

In the evening to prolong the fête, a good many of the same people assembled outside the largest izbá in the village, belonging also to one of her oldest inhabitants. He himself, dear old man, was a wonderful dancer, and his son sang very pretty songs to the

Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand Russian lute. He danced the Tressaka very well in'Twixt poplars straight the ozier wand,

In many a freakish knot, had twined;
Then framed a spell, when the work was done,
And changed the willow wreaths to stone.

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The silver light, so pale and faint,
Showed many a prophet and many a saint;
Whose image on the glass was dyed;
Full in the midst, his cross of red
Triumphant Michael brandishèd,

And trampled the apostate's pride.
The moonbeam kissed the holy vane,
And threw on the pavement a bloody stain.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.

FESTIVAL IN A RUSSIAN VILLAGE.

TRAVELER gives the following interesting description of a fête he witnessed in Russia. The day before the fête an old Jew pedlar appeared in the village street selling very gaudy handkerchiefs, for which he found several purchasers. Little children were there too with their kopecks, or pennies, running along barefooted, or in lapti, their large shoes which many of them had made for themselves out of birch-bark, to buy a picture-book or some toy that the pedlar had for sale. An eager purchaser had bought some beads for the approaching fête, and was looking for something else to match. Another, a girl, had purchased an ornament for her forehead for to-morrow, and putting it on at once climbed on to a wall to see what other treasures the pedlar would disclose. One little would-be purchaser, who had no money wherewith to buy anything, resignedly looked on, just wishing that some day he too might have the good fortune to be a pedlar, to make all that money and have all those beautiful things besides.

There was plenty of dancing on that fête-day, and the company enjoyed themselves immensely. The tambourine is the usual musical accompaniment to a village dance, also the balalaïka (a guitar of three strings), and "sepovka" and "sopel," pipes or flutes, were also used a good deal to-day. There is always |

deed, to the admiration of all the bystanders, and in it he had to balance himself on each leg in turn. His son also performed another Russian dance still more cleverly, in which he had to stoop down to the ground as he changed the position of his legs. As they danced, the bystanders sang a song with a refrain, The old man's very heart and soul seemed to be in his dance, and everybody passed a very pleasant evening.

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THEBES.

ND Thebes, how fallen now! Her storied gates
Resistless all! Where sweeps the Nile's
swift wave,

Relentless sands embattling, she awaits
Her final sepulture and gathering grave :-
For Lybia there her wide dominion brings,
More powerful than Severus to entomb,
And vaster than the sculptured place of kings,
That pierces far the mountain's inmost womb,
Her moral breathes from out a sterner wilder gloom.
The city rose where wandering paths were traced-
Man in his virtue took her from the waste,
Robed by the graces, she came forth a queen ;—

Man in his wrath turned her to waste again;
He conquered whilst his passions were aflame,
But he became relentless 'mid the glare
Of his wild conquests, and his conquerors came;
All that he worshipped perished-all that were
Of his, swept through the rapid tideway of despair.
Methinks I see her serried legions march,
And hear the cadent tramp of many feet;
Proud banners wave upon the sculptured arch ;
The drum's stern tempest and its stirring beat
Invoke to ardor where the fearless meet.
The fierce steed prances to the trumpet's note
With flushing nostrils and disdainful feet,

And tossing mane and battle-breathing throat,
To make the poet's theme, and history's pen pro-
voke.

And here, where ruin peers, the lover wooed

And won his bride-brave men and beauteous maids Trod proudly through the vestibules-here stood

In stern command, within the pillared shades,
Imperious monarchs, whose ensanguined blades
Defied the gods—and here remorseless war,
‚Sedition's rage, inexpiable deeds,

And conquering crime, made her the servitor

Of baseness-she became the handmaid of the boor.

And now she is a lone, deserted one

The tears of Niobe are hers, for she
Has lost her children-fate they could not shun,
Or from the shafts of stern Latona flee.
Wrapt in her griefs, she owns the dark decree,

And bows where Amphion left his bloody stains;
Requiting gods from thraldom do not free,

No tides of life swell through her pulse less veins, Where she was turned to stone in gloom she still remains.

She was a city of a thousand years

Ere Homer harped his wars, yet on her plain, Crumbling, the riven monument appears,

To mourn that glory ne'er returns again : Her front of graven epics vainly tells

How long she conquered-lonely musings bound
The storied place—where deep ranks gathered, swells,
Of fallen architraves, the saddening mound,
And many a worshipped pile bestrews the silent
ground.

She dreams no dream of greatness now, doth mourn
No dim remembered past-dominion, hope,
And conquest's ardor long have ceased to burn
Where ruthless Cambyses her warriors smote;
Her horsemen, columns, gates, together lie,
And moulder into elemental clay;

Yet who shall tread her grave without a sigh,
Nor wish to breathe her being into day—
Upon her fields revive great Carnac's bold array!
Why hath she fallen? Men die but to yield
To others all their legacies of thought;
Sires give to sons the palace and the field,

The muniments by ripened vigor wrought!
Ages in all their bright success have taught
To brave the whelming torrent of events;
And fading centuries gather not for nought;—
Yet where the architraves and pediments
Appear and linger still, I mark but wasting rents.
Why hath she fallen? Who the tale shall tell?
When Saturn's golden age was wrapt in story,
Ere time revenged and ruin wove her spell,
Existence was computed by her glory!

Why, when her towers with crowning years were hoary, And peerless forms and queenly graces shone, Should she be doomed to night and cerement gory, And dim remembrance linger at her tomb

A voiceless phantom 'mid the cold and pulseless gloom?

Not that her legions through her hundred gates
Went out to conquer—not that virtue rose
To guard her from the shafts of venomed fates,
And save her from the wrath of leaguered foes.
Her stormy memories light her dull repose,

And warning voices linger through her shades; Her vices were the parents of her woes

The gods in justice turned her sweeping blades
To her own bosom, ending thus her masquerades.

Forever and forever flows the river,

Forever and forever looms the plain;
Forever shall the pale stars o'er them quiver,
But never shall her past return again!
Hyperion dawns but light her frieze in vain,
And moons peer sadly through her columned way :
The mid-day glares on what doth yet remain
Of faded glory, with a mocking play-
Thus passeth into shadow man's imperious sway!

What recks it that Sesostris dared to thrall
His fellow kings, and haughty Cheops raised
The everlasting pyramid! the pall

Of night now hangs where distant glories blazed!
How shall fame last when all her monuments
Are in the dust?-the same blue bending sky
Serenely smiles through time's despairing rents,
And lengthened colonnades the storm defy-
But there's no sceptre now, or kingly footfall nigh.
WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.

THE ISLES OF GREECE.

HE isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung.
Where grew the arts of war and peace—
Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung !
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse,

The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse;
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."
The mountains look on Marathon-
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For standing on the Persian's grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sat on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;-all were his!
He counted them at break of day-
And when the sun set, where were they?

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