245

POETRY.

THE SMILE THAT WE LOVE IN OUR OWN DEAR HOME.

Addressed to a Young Lady at

WHEN the business of life compels us to roam
From the smile that we love in our own dear home,
From husband or wife, from brother or friend,
More distancing still, as our footsteps bend;
Oh! is it not sweet, for the eye to trace
That welcoming smile on a stranger's face,
And, sweet to the heart the encouraging tone,
That assures us we are not quite alone;
For that friends, though formed but of yesterday,
Will try every art that can wile away

The grief we must feel, when compelled to roam
From the smile that we love in our own dear home.

Such welcoming smile, such encouraging tone,
'Twas mine to trace-to feel-shall be mine to own:
For when hither, from southern plains I came,
A stranger--known only at least by name,—
I found-how kindly found, from yours and you,
Welcome warm-hearted, unaffected, true.
And often since then, as the Queen of the Night
Thrice waxes and wanes in her silvery light,
My round returns-I return but to find
A kindness, that well might dispel from the mind
The grief we must feel, when compelled to roam
From the smile that we love in our own dear home.

And for kindness like this, what thanks I pray,
Fair lady, can recreant minstrel pay?

A minstrel, Oh yes! I must love the name,

Though years have rolled by since the minstrel flame,
So dimly that burned in the morning of life,
Was quenched in the turmoils of legal strife.

I can but try my rude hand to fling

Across my forsaken harp's breaking string,

To wake for thee, fair one, a parting strain,

From chords that my finger may touch not again;

For sad would their notes be, while their master must roam From the smile that he loves in his own dear home.

And but faintly they wake, whilst endeavouring to give
Words to the wish, in his heart that must live,
Whilst vibrates its pulse-that for yours
and for you,

Kind sylphs (if there be such), or angels may strew

A pathway of flowers :-as cloudless a sky,

"Twere vain that I wished; may the clouds swiftly pass by,
And the sun shine in splendour, though tempered its ray,
Bright-brightening still, to the perfection of day.
Whilst for yours, and for you, and for all that you love,
May the wish of the minstrel prophetical prove,
For the kindest of welcomes, whenever you roam
From the smile that you love in your own dear home.

B.

LINES WRITTEN IN WALES.

Mouldering thy once honoured bard's flying finger,
Cambria! thy wild mountain harp I would wake;
If yet around thee one spirit should linger,

Blest be that spirit-that harp for thy sake.

Torrents of foam to the summer-sun gleaming,
Valleys of shade to that harp have replied,

When thy bold prophets had burst from their dreaming,
And hurled the bold music o'er those that had died.

Years have rolled by since the breath of false glory,
With war's sullen trumpet, has startled thy glen;
Long may it be ere thy record of story

Is hung with the cypress of murder again.

I passed by thy once splendid castle,* where title
And beauty, and mirth held their festal-but o'er
Its gate hung the funeral scutcheon--and idle,

The echo that flung back the anthem of yore.

I passed by thy Abbey;+ the cowl and the mitre
Had mingled their dust with the haughty ones there;
But its time-fretted arch in the sunset grew brighter,
And the chill weed of ruin swayed sweetly in air.

I passed by thy pillar,‡ firm-planted to waken

Late memory of friends who in battle had sunk; But its rooting the visit of thunders had shaken, And a voice of the mountains had shattered its trunk. ↑ Pillar of Eliseg.

Chirk Castle. > + Abbey Valle Crucis.

I crossed in its gladness thy Dee's druid water,
All fresh in the fulness of years it flowed on;

But the hearts that once worshipped were perished in slaughter, The patriot-the chieftain-the harper were gone.

Too like the lone column, worn, blank, and degraded,

Which proudly to Heaven raised its rich sculptured head; Man blossoms to-day, and to-morrow lies faded,

All blasted, his triumphs, his glories all fled.

Alone, in unchangeable bloom o'er his ashes,
Wild nature lives on,-undeprest and elate;
Yet the mountain still towers,-yet the broad river dashes,
Unsullied by storms, and unstooping to fate.

But countless and pure as the rain-drop that gathers
On thy hills, when the red sheet of lightnings is furled,
Thy sons shall inspire the renown of their fathers,

And be all that their fathers have been to the world.

W.

GRATITUDE.

LINES WRITTEN ON PLANTING SLIPS OF GERANIUM AND CONSTANCY, NEAR THE GRAVE OF A VENERABLE FRIEND.

From "Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse, by LYDIA HUNTLEY," of Hartford, Connecticut.

Little plant of slender form,

Fair, and shrinking from the storm,

Lift thou here thine infant head,

Bloom in this uncultured bed.
Thou, of firmer spirit too,
Stronger texture, deeper hue,
Dreading not the winds that cast
Cold snows o'er the frozen waste,
Rise, and shield it from the blast.

Shrink not from the awful shade,
Where the bones of men are laid:
Short like thine their transient date,
Keen has been the scythe of fate.
Forth like plants in glory drest
They came upon the green earth's breast,
Sent forth their roots to reach the stream,
Their buds to meet the rising beam,
They drank the morning's balmy breath,

And sunk at eve in withering death.

Rest here, meek plants, for few intrude
To trouble this deep solitude;
But should the giddy footstep tread
Upon the ashes of the dead,

Still let the hand of rashness spare
These little plants of love to tear,
Since fond affection with a tear,
Has placed them for an offering here.
Adorn the grave of her who sleeps
Unconscious, while remembrance weeps,
Though ever, ever did she feel,

And mourn those pangs she could not heal.

Seven times the sun, with swift career,
Has marked the circle of the year,
Since first she pressed her lowly bier;
And seven times, sorrowing have I come,
Alone, and wandering through the gloom,
To pour my lays upon her tomb:
And I have sighed to see her bed
With brambles and with thorns o'erspread.

For surely round her place of rest,

I should not let the coarse weed twine, Who so the couch of pain has blest, The path of want so freely drest,

And scattered such perfumes on mine.
It is not meet that she should be
Forgotten or unblest by me.

Ye plants, that in your hallowed beds,
Like strangers, lift your trembling heads,
Drink the pure dew that evening sheds,
And meet the morning's earliest ray,
And catch the sunbeams as they play;
And when your buds are moist with rain,
Oh shed those drops in tears again;
And if the blast that sweeps the heath,
Too rudely o'er your leaves should breathe
Then sigh for her; and when you bloom,
Scatter your fragrance on her tomb.

But should you, smit with terror, cast
Your infant foliage on the blast,
Or faint beneath the vertic heat,
Or shrink when wintry tempests beat
There is a plant of constant bloom,
And it shall deck this lowly tomb,

Not blanched with frost, or drowned with rain,
Or by the breath of winter slain ;
Or by the sweeping gale annoyed,
Or by the giddy hand destroyed,
But every morn its buds renewed,
Are by the dops of evening dewed,
This is the plant of Gratitude.

ANECDOTE.

INDIAN WIT AND GENEROSITY.

Not many years after the county of Litchfield began to be settled by the English, a stranger Indian came one day into an inn, in the dusk of the evening, and requested the hostess to furnish him with some drink and a supper. At the same time he observed, that he could pay for neither, as he had had no success in hunting; but promised payment as soon as he should meet with better fortune. The hostess refused him both the drink and the supper; called him a lazy, drunken, good-for-nothing fellow; and told him, that she did not work so hard herself, to throw away her earnings upon such creatures as he was. A man who sat by, and observed that the Indian, then turning about to leave so inhospitable a place, shewed by his countenance that he was suffering very severely from want and weariness, directed the hostess to supply him with what he wished, and engaged to pay the bill himself. She did so. When the Indian had finished his supper, he turned to his benefactor, thanked him, and assured him that he should remember his kindness, and, whenever he was able, would faithfully recompense it. For the present, he observed, he could only reward him with a story, which, if the hostess would give him leave, he wished to tell. The hostess, whose complacency had been recalled by the prospect of payment, consented. The Indian, then addressing himself to his benefactor, said, "I suppose you read the Bible." The man assented. "Well," said the Indian, "the Bible say, God made the world, and then he took him, and looked on him, and say, 'It's all very good.' Then he made light, and took him, and looked on him, and say, 'It's all very good.' Then he made dry land and water, and sun and moon, and grass and trees, and took him, and looked on him, and say, 'It's all very good.' Then he made beasts, and birds, and fishes, and took him, and looked on him, and say, 'It's all very good.' Then he made man, and took him, and looked on him, and say, 'It's all very good.' Then he made woman, and took him, and looked on him, and he no dare say one such word." The Indian having told his story, withdrew.

A few years after, the man who had befriended him, had occasion to go some distance into the wilderness between Litchfield (then a frontier settlement) and Albany, where he was taken prisoner by an Indian scout, and carried to Canada. When he arrived at the principal settlement of the tribe, on the southern border of the St. Lawrence, it was proposed by some of the captors that he should be put to death. During the consultation, an old woman demanded