ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND.

GONE in the flush of youth!

Gone ere thy heart had felt earth's withering care; Ere the stern world had soil'd thy spirit's truth, Or sown dark sorrow there.

Fled like a dream away!

But yesterday mid life's auroral bloom-
To-day, sad winter, desolate and gray,

Sighs round thy lonely tomb.

Fond hearts were beating high,

Fond eyes were watching for the loved one gone, And gentle voices, deeming thou wert nigh,

Talk'd of thy glad return.

They watch'd--not all in vain

Thy form once more the wonted threshold pass'd; But choking sobs, and tears like summer-rain, Welcom'd thee home at last.

Friend of my youth, farewell!

To thee, we trust, a happier life is given;
One tie to earth for us hath loosed its spell,
Another form'd for heaven.

OUR COUNTRY.

OUR country!--'t is a glorious land!

With broad arms stretch'd from shore to shore, The proud Pacific chafes her strand,

She hears the dark Atlantic roar;
And, nurtured on her ample breast,

How many a goodly prospect lies
In Nature's wildest grandeur drest,
Enamell'd with her loveliest dyes.
Rich prairies, deck'd with flowers of gold,
Like sunlit oceans roll afar;
Broad lakes her azure heavens behold,
Reflecting clear each trembling star,
And mighty rivers, mountain-born,

Go sweeping onward, dark and deep,
Through forests where the bounding fawn
Beneath their sheltering branches leap.
And, cradled mid her clustering hills,
Sweet vales in dreamlike beauty hide,
Where love the air with music fills;
And calm content and peace abide;
For plenty here her fulness pours

In rich profusion o'er the land,
And, sent to seize her generous store,
There prowls no tyrant's hireling band.
Great Gon! we thank thee for this home--
This bounteous birthland of the free;
Where wanderers from afar may come,
And breathe the air of liberty!--
Still may her flowers untrampled spring,
Her harvests wave, her cities rise;
And yet, till Time shall fold his wing,
Remain Earth's loveliest paradise!

I HEAR THY VOICE, O SPRING!
I HEAR thy voice, O Spring!
Its flute-like tones are floating through the air,
Winning my soul with their wild ravishing,
From earth's heart-wearying care.

Divinely sweet thy song

But yet, methinks, as near the groves I pass,
Low sighs on viewless wings are borne along,
Tears gem the springing grass.

For where are they, the young,
The loved, the beautiful, who, when thy voice,
A year agone, along these valleys rung,
Did hear thee and rejoice!

Thou seek'st for them in vain

No more they'll greet thee in thy joyous round; Calmly they sleep beneath the murmuring main, Or moulder in the ground.

Yet peace, my heart--be still!

Look upward to yon azure sky and know,
To heavenlier music now their bosoms thrill,
Where balmier breezes blow.

For them hath bloom'd a spring,
Whose flowers perennial deck a holier sod,
Whose music is the song that seraphs sing,
Whose light, the smile of God!

I STOOD BESIDE HIS GRAVE.

I STOOD beside the grave of him,
Whose heart with mine had fondly beat,
While memories, from their chambers dim,
Throng'd mournful, yet how sadly sweet!
It was a calm September eve,

The stars stole trembling into sight,
Save where the day, as loth to leave,
Still flush'd the heavens with rosy light.
The crickets in the grass were heard,

The city's murmur softly fell,
And scarce the dewy air was stirr'd,
As faintly toll'd the evening-bell.

O Death! had then thy summons come,
To bid me from this world away,-
How gladly had I hail'd the doom
That stretch'd me by his mouldering clay!
And twilight deepen'd into night,

And night itself grew wild and drear,—
For clouds rose darkly on the sight,

And winds sigh'd mournful on the ear:

And yet I linger'd mid the fern,
Though gleam'd no star the eye to bless-
For, O, 't was agony to turn

And leave him to his loneliness!

THE Reverend Lours LEGRAND NOBLE was born in the valley of the Butternut Creek, in Otsego county, in New York. While he was a youth his father removed to the banks of the Wacamutquiock, now called the Huron, a small river in Michigan, and there, among scenes of remarkable wildness and beauty, he passed most of his time until the commencement of his college-life. In a letter to me, he says: "I was ever under a strong impulse to imbody in language my thoughts, feelings, fancies, as they sprung up in the presence of the rude but

beautiful things around me: the prairies on fire, the sparkling lakes, the park-like forests, Indians on the hunt, guiding their frail canoes amid the rapids, or standing at night in the red light of their festival fires. I breathed the air of poetry." In the same letter he remarks that he is " indebted, for his intellectual and moral culture, to SAMUEL W. DEXTER, of Boston." He was admitted to holy orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, in 1840, and now, I believe, resides in South Carolina.

THE CRIPPLE-BOY.

I.

Upon an Indian rush-mat, spread

Where burr-oak boughs a coolness shed,
Alone he sat, a cripple-child,

With eyes so large, so dark and wild,
And fingers, thin and pale to see,
Locked upon his trembling knee.
A-gathering nuts so blithe and gay,
The children early tripp'd away;
And he his mother had besought
Under the oak to have him brought;-
It was ever his seat when blackbirds sung
The wavy, rustling tops among ;-

They calm'd his pain,--they cheer'd his loneliness--
The gales,-the music of the wilderness.

And yonder see the quiet sheep ;--
Why, now-I wonder why you weep!"—
"Mother, I wish that I could be

A sailor on the breezy sea!"

"A sailor on the stormy sea, my son!

What ails the boy!—what have the breezes done!"

IV.

"I do!-I wish that I could be

A sailor on the rolling sea:
In the shadow of the sails
I would ride and rock all day,
Going whither blow the gales,
As I have heard a seaman say:
I would, I guess, come back again
For my mother now and then ;
And the curling fire so bright,
When the prairie burns at night;
And tell the wonders I had seen
Away upon the ocean green;".

"Hush! hush! talk not about the ocean so; Better at home a hunter hale to go."

V.

Between a tear and sigh he smiled;

And thus spake on the cripple-child :"I would I were a hunter hale, Nimbler than the nimble doe, Bounding lightly down the dale, But that will never be, I know! Behind the house the woodlands lie; A prairie wide and green before; And I have seen them with my eye A thousand times or more; Yet in the woods I never stray'd, Or on the prairie-border play'd ;O, mother dear, that I could only be A sailor-boy upon the rocking sea!"

The boy's it was a bitter lot
She always felt, I trow;
Yet never till then its bitterness
At heart had grieved her so.
Nature had waked the eternal wish;
-Liberty, far and wide!--

And now, to win him health, with joy,
She would that morn have died.

Till noon, she kept the shady door-way chair,
But never a measure of that ancient air.

VII.

Piped the March-wind;-pinch'd and slow
The deer were trooping in the snow;
He saw them out of the cottage-door,
The lame boy sitting upon the floor:
"Mother, mother, how long will it be
Till the prairie go like a waving sea?
Will the bare woods ever be green, and when?
O, will it ever be summer again ?"—
She look'd in silence on her child:
That large eye, ever so dark and wild,
O me, how bright!-it may have been
That he was grown so pale and thin.

It came, the emerald month, and sweetly shed
Beauty for grief, and garlands for the dead.

LOVE AND BEAUTY.

I.

Child! I pray, it be thy lot,
Yet to know as bright a spot:
Pond, or park, no crowned king
Hath so brave as what I sing.

THERE is a lake in the Huron-Land,
Round and deep, with a shining strand;
The swan is queen of the northern air,—
She bathes the snow of her bosom there.

And when she doth her matins sing,
She moveth where the lilies spring;
Like stars beneath her breast asleep
They seem away on the azure deep.
Through root and stalk, that crinkle down
As serpents green to the bottom brown,
Like silent birds, when the woods are dim,
The pickerel, perch, and sun-fish swim.
With many a sweep and elbow-crook,
Steals in at the south a silvery brook;
All to the life like a shining snake,
When a full moon hangs over the lake.
Out of the woods and down the lawns

It coos with the doves and leaps with fawns;
Yet loiters in like a gentle doe
Through rustling reeds in the meadows low.
Waiting on either bank are seen
Such tender tufts of the willow green,
They bend if the faintest breezes pass,
To see themselves in the liquid glass.
And all between is a flush of flowers,
By the rainbow painted in the showers;
After the zephyrs among them play,
With odorous wings they fly away.

II.

Child! I trow there's many a bower
Where does flourish such a flower:
Eyes alone may look, till blind;

Hearts do help such blooms to find.
A spirit-like birth is the young moon's light
In the tender leaves, of an April night;—
The soul of Beauty it loves to mate
With the rare, the pure, and the delicate.
From lofty down to lowly things,
"Tis ever thus, the minstrel sings,
As memory paints again that hour

He found by the brook a wondrous flower.
A rock did cradle it on the brink,
Where come the deer, at dark, to drink;
From sympathy sure it used to dip

In the sweet water its sweeter lip.

Though close around there were fragrant gems

Of many a tint on a thousand stems,
A princess this, and ladies of honour
The courtliest seem'd, to wait upon her.

Or, hath the genius of every place

A castle of might,—a throne of grace,
That rock, in sooth, were an elfin tower,
And the mercy-seat were the wondrous flower.

Or, it were the form of the fay itself,
Transfigured, to startle each smaller elf;
And pour on the humbird's raptured eyes
A glory-gleam of its paradise.

A poet such union of grace had caught,

It would have awaken'd, at sight, the thought Of the blessed Triune Mystery,

The Beauty-the Light of Eternity.

It was pure as the brow of Innocence,

Low bent in the smile of Omnipotence;

And yet, from a warmth in its snow, I guess,
Like an angel it was not passionless.

Ah, no,--I trow, of its delicate heart
To light it was yielding the holiest part,
As it came with a blush at early day,
And stole in the purple of eve away.
But whether it bore to aught beside
A single feeling to love allied,

I know not, save to the listening air
It whisper'd ever a spicy prayer.

And penitence seem'd the crowning grace
Of all that slept in its sweet embrace:

A sinless tear in its bowl is kept,

As ever a dying infant wept.

III.

Child! there's Beauty and there's Love ;-
Both do dwell in heaven above:

Hearts and flowers can tell, I trow,

Both do wander here below.

O, come we hither or cold or blind?

Sweet music, bright visions do follow the mind— Did follow us in from a world of bliss,

Or ever we look'd to love in this.

Nor is it a poet's airy dream,

That things are deeper than what they seem:

He feels they are, if his soul can see
In Nature one token of sympathy.

Now what in that being of vernal birth,
Kindred alone to the cold, dark earth,
Could trouble the lyre which hangs within,
So still, as we pass this world of sin?
Beauty!-from heaven as ever it fell,
A peal it rung on that silvery bell,
That worked to no mortal minstrelsy
This harp in its cell of mortality.

In truth, it was love in its purest feature,
That pour'd its own in that peerless creature:-
Love, and that of the self-same power,
Which carried the knight to his lady's bower.
And whither by prairie or pond I went,
One image all thought and fancy blent,
Till I was too full of the beauteous elf
Longer to keep it alone to myself.

And so, to one it was told, that could
Hear melody soft in the silent wood;
And silence feel where the cataract fell,-
Fair LAURA, maid of the hazle-dell.
One balmy dawn, as its bright eyelash
The Orient prick'd with a rosy flash,
Her favourite hour it was I knew-
We hasten'd off in the heavy dew.
The worth of the jewel it would seek,
The light of her clear, blue eye did speak;
How plain, or ever we reach'd the place,
I caught its blush in her speaking face!
But, ah me! who, save one, that has found
Her darling, miss'd for a moment, drown'd,
The fainting away of my soul can guess,
When I look'd for that creature of loveliness!

There were the pink and the columbine,
The lady-slipper and elegantine;
A bevy of others, unknown before,
To mock the majesty now no more.

Now, what that pitiless deed had wrought
To me was a matter of painful thought,
Until I saw, by the gray rock near,
Rude footprints of the wanton deer.
Alas! the fate of my flower was plain;
The passing creek was a funeral train,
Marching on with a mournful tread
After the bier of the early dead.

A moment:-all but this, I forget-
Looks in mutual sorrow met:

And passionate love-'t was a dear surprise!—
Its fellow found in the other's eyes.

IV.

Child! our love is constant ever;
Beauty bath a burial never ;-

Part they may, when forms do die ;-
All, at last, will meet on high.

Now, whether that was indeed the queen,
Full many a rose will doubt, I ween;
And say that fancy upon the stem
Did put the robe and the diadem.

I dare not cavil, but this may be :
What matter!-my vision it clear'd to see
The mirror of heaven's most holy part
Is ever the deep of the human heart.
And that which plays on its awful motion,
As moon-rays over the rolling ocean,
Is Beauty--the smile of Eternal Love,
Out of the golden gates above.

Beauty-the breath and life of light,
Our spirits catch in the outward sight;
And, whether on cloud, or the emerald sod,
Do know for us that it falls from GOD.

And, if it vanish and flit away,
It meets nor darkness, nor decay;
It only fades in a flower to seek
A livelier youth in a virgin's cheek.

And so, it is an immortal sprite,
Tending up to the Infinite:

When the doors of an after-world unfold,
It follows the saints on the flames of the old.

A LITTLE GREEN ISLE.

A LITTLE green isle in a lonely lake
There is in the cool north-west;

O, the loveliest isle in the month of May!
There the wild birds sleep, and the wild birds wake,
To flutter and sing, as the breezes shake
Their young in each moss-built nest:
O, that lone little isle!

How I loved it the while

I was wild and as merry as they!
The flowers are bright in the velvety grass,
And brighter around the springs :
O, sweetest flowers of the month of May!
As over the waters, as clear as glass,
The snowy swan and her younglings pass,
Her bugle-horn tune she sings:
O, that bright little isle!
How I loved it the while

I was tuneful and roving as they!

A rocking canoe, of the white-wood tree,
I had in that pleasant lake;
A leaf-like bark for the month of May!
Where the running pine and the roses be,
My sisters paddled along with me,
Our coronals gay to make:

O, that dear little isle!
How I loved it the while

I was young and light-hearted as they!

O, little lone isle of the silent lake,

Far off in the cool north-west, My spirit is thine in the month of May ! Thou art beautiful yet, though billows break O'er my light canoe, and the willows shake Their locks where the lovely rest: O, thou sweet, blessed isle!

I will cherish thee while

There are tears for such dear ones as they.