Whole villages of sand-roofed tents, That rise like golden domes Above the cavernous and secret homes Of wandering and nomadic tribes of ants. Ah, cruel little Tamerlane, Who, with thy'dreadful reign, Dost persecute and overwhelm These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm! What! tired already! with those suppliant looks, And voice more beautiful than a poet's books, Or murmuring sound of water as it flows, Thou comest back to parley with repose ! This rustic seat in the old apple-tree, With its o'erhanging golden canopy Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues, And shining with the argent light of dews, Shall for a season be our place of rest. Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest, From which the laughing birds have taken wing, By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing. Dream-like the waters of the river gleam; A sailless vessel drops adown the stream, And like it, to a sea as wide and deep, Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep. O child! O new-born denizen Of life's great city! on thy head The glory of the morn is shed, Like a celestial benison ! Here at the portal thou dost stand, And with thy little hand Thou openest the mysterious gate Into the future's undiscovered land, I see its valves expand, As at the touch of Fate! Into those realms of love and hate, Into that darkness blank and drear, By some prophetic feeling taught, I launch the bold, adventurous thought, Freighted with hope and fear; As upon subterranean streams, In caverns unexplored and dark, Men sometimes launch a fragile bark, Laden with flickering fire, And watch its swift-receding beams, Until at length they disappear, And in the distant dark expire. By what astrology of fear or hope Dare I to cast thy horoscope !

Like the new moon thy life appears ;
A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward intu night
The shadowy disk of future years;
And yet upon its outer rim,
A luminous circle, faint and dim,
And scarcely visible to us here,
Rounds and completes the perfect sphere;
A prophecy and intimation,
A pale and feeble adumbration,
Of the great world of light, that lies
Behind all human destinies.
Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught
Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil,
To struggle with imperious thought,
Until the overburdened brain,
Neary with labour, faint with pain,
Like a jarred pendulum, retain
Only its motion, not its power,
Remember, in that perilous hour,
When most afflicted and oppressed,
From labour there shall come forth rest.
And if a more auspicious fate
On thy advancing steps await,
Still let it ever be thy pride
To linger by the labourer's side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
Of the great army of the poor,
O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous mocr.
Nor to thyself the task shall be
Without reward; for thou shalt learn
The wisdom early to discern
True beauty in utility;
As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire,
And formed the seven-chorded lyre.
Enough! I will not play the Seer;
I will no longer strive to ope
The mystic volume, where appear
The herald Hope, forerunning Fear,
And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.

Thy destiny remains untold;
For, like Acestes' shaft of old,
The swift thought kindles as it flies,
And burns to ashes in the skies.

THE OCCULTATION OF ORION.

I saw, as in a dream sublime,

Scattered across the midnight air
The balance in the hand of Time. The golden radiance of its hair.
O'er East and West its beam im.
pended;

The moon was pallid, but not faint, And day, with all its hours of light, And beautiful as some fair saint, Was slowly sinking out of sight,

Serenely moving on her way While, opposite, the scale of night In hours of trial and dismay Silently with the stars ascended. As if she heard the voice of God,

Unharmed with naked feet she trod Like the astrologers of eld,

Upon the hot and burning stars, In that bright vision I bebeld

As on the glowing coals and bars Greater and deeper mysteries.

That were to prove her strength, and try I saw, with its celestial keys,

Her holiness and her purity.
Its chords of air, its frets of fire,
The Samian's great Æolian lyre,

Thus moving on, with silent pace, Rising through all its sevenfold bars, And triumph in her sweet, pale face, From earth unto the fixed stars.

She reached the station of Orion. And through the dewy atmosphere, | Agbast he stood in strange alarm ! Not only could I see, but hear,

And suddenly from his outstretched arm Its wondrous and harmonious strings, Down fell the red skin of the lion Its sweet vibration, sphere by sphere, Into the river at his feet. From Dian's circle light and near, His mighty club no longer beat Onward to vaster and wider rings, The forehead of the bull; but he Where, chanting through his beard of Reeled as of yore beside the sea, Snows,

When, blinded by Enopion, Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes, He sought the blacksmith at his forge, And down the sunless realms of space And, climbing up the mountain gorge, Reverberates the thunder of his bass. Fixed bis blank eyes upon the sun.

Beneath the sky's triumphal arch
This music sounded like a march,
And with its chorus seemed to be
Preluding some great tragedy.
Sirius was rising in the east;
And, slow ascending one by one,
The kindling constellations shone.
Begirt with many a blazing star,
Stood the great giant Algebar,
Orion, hunter of the beast !
His sword hung gleaming by his side.
And, on his arm, the lion's hide

Then, through the silence overhead,
An angel with a trumpet said,
“For evermore, for evermore,
The reign of violence is o'er!”
And like an instrument that flings
Its music on another's strings,
The trumpet of the angel cast
Upon the heavenly !yre its blast,
And on from sphere to sphere the words
Re-echoed down the burning chords, –
“For evermore, for evermore,
The reign of violence is o'er !"

TO THE DRIVING CLOUD.

GLOOMY and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas;
Gloomy and dark, as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast taken?
Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the city's
Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers
Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their footprints.
What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the footprints ?

How canst thou walk these streets, who hast trod the green turf of

the prairies? How canst thou breathe this air, who hast breathed the sweet air of

the mountains ? Ah ! 'tis vain that with lordly looks of disdain thon dost challenge Looks of disdain in return, and question these walls and these pave

ments, Claiming the soil for thy hunting-grounds, while down-trodden millions Starve in the garrets of Europe, and cry from its caverns that they, too, Have been created heirs of the earth, and claim its division!

Back, then, back to thy woods in the regions west of the Wabash!
There as a monarch thou reignest. In autumn the leaves of the maple
Pave the floors of thy palace-halls with gold, and in summer
Pine-trees waft through its chambers the odorous breath of their

branches.
There thou art strong and great, a hero, a tamer of horses !
There thou chasest the stately stag on the banks of the Elk-horn,
Or by the roar of the Running-Water, or where the Omaha
Calls thee, and leaps through the wild ravine like a brave of the Black

feet!

Hark! what murmurs arise from the heart of those mountainous

deserts ? Is it the cry of the Foxes and Crows, or the mighty Behemoth, Who, unharmed, on his tusks once caught the bolts of the thunder, And now lurks in his lair to destroy the race of the red man? Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the Crows and the Foxes, Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the tread of Behemoth, Lo! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri's Merciless current! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the camp-fires Gleam through the night; and the cloud of dust in the gray of the

daybreak Marks not the buffalo's track, nor the Mandan's dexterous horse-race; It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches ! Ha! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of the

east-wind, Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams!

THE BRIDGE.

I STOOD on the bridge at midnight, Would bear me away on its bosom

As the clocks were striking the hour, O'er the ocean wild and wide! And the moon rose o'er the city,

For my heart was hot and restless, Behind the dark church-tower.

And my life was full of care, I saw her bright reflection

And the burden laid upon me In the waters under me,

Seemed greater than I could bear. Like a golden goblet falling

But now it has fallen from me, And sinking into the sea.

It is buried in the sea ; And far in the hazy distance

And only the sorrow of others Of that lovely night in June,

Throws its shadow over me. The blaze of the flaming furnace

Yet whenever I cross the river, Gleamed redder than the moon.

On its bridge with wooden piers, Among the long, black rafters

Like the odour of brine from the ocean The wavering shadows lay,

Comes the thought of other years. And the current that came from the ocean

can And I think how many thousands Seemed to lift and bear them away ;

Of care-encumbered men, As, sweeping and eddying through them, Each bearing his burden of sorrow, Rose the belated tide,

Have crossed the bridge since then! And, streaming into the moonlight,

I see the long procession The sea-weed floated wide.

Still passing to and fro, And like those waters rushing

The young heart hot and restless, Among the wooden piers,

And the old subdued and slow. A flood of thoughts came o'er me

And for ever and for ever, That filled my eyes with tears.

As long as the river flows, How often, oh, how often,

As long as the heart has passions, In the days that had gone by,

As long as life has woes ; I had stood on that bridge at midnight,

The moon and its broken reflection And gazed on that wave and sky!

And its shadows shall appear, How often, oh, how often,

As the symbol of love in heaven, I had wished that the ebbing tide ! And its wavering image here.

EXCELSIOR.

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner, with the strange device,

Excelsior!
His brow was sad ; his eye beneath
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,

Excelsior !