VI.

The moonlight music of the waves

In storms is heard no more,

When the living lightning mocks the wrek At midnight on the shore,

And the mariner's song of home has ceased,
His corse is on the sea-

And music ceases when it rains
In Scudder's balcony,

ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE

The good die first,

And they, whose hearts are dry as summer dust, Burn to the socket.

WORDSWORTH.

Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Tears fell, when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long where thou art lying,

Will tears the cold turf steep.
When hearts, whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,

There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth,

And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine:

It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
Bnt I've in vain essayed it,

And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply

That mourns a man like thee.

MARCO POZZARIS.

At midnight, in his guarded tent,

The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power:

In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror;

In dreams his song of triumph heard: Then wore his monarch's signet ring: Then pressed that monarch's throne-a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,

As Eden's garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades,
Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,

True as the steel of their tried blades,

Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood
On old Platen's day;

And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike, and soul to dare,

As quick, as far as they.

An hour passed on-the Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,

"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
He woke to die 'midst flame, and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre stroke,
And death shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain cloud;

And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:

"Strike-till the lust armed foe expires;
Strike-for your altars and your fires;
Strike-for the green graves of your sires;
God—and your native land!”

They fought-like brave men, long and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain,
They conquered-but Bozzaris fell,

Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw

His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,

Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels,
For the first time, her first-born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song, and dance, and wine;
And thou art terrible-the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear

Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword

Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard

The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come, when his task of fame is wrought-
Come, with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought-
Come in her crowning hour-and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men : Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas. Bozzaris! with the storied brave

Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee-there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud elime.

She wore no funeral weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,

The heartless luxury of the tomb But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch and cottage bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. And she, the mother of thy boys, Though in her eye and faded cheek

A lady asks the Minstrel's rhyme."

A lady asks? There was a time
When, musical as play-bell's chime
To wearied boy,

That sound would summon dreams sublime
Of pride and joy.

But now the spell hath lost its sway,
Life's first-born fancies first decay,
Gone are the plumes and pennons gay
Of young romance;

There linger but her ruins gray,
And broken lance.

'Tis a new world—no more to maid,
Warrior, or bard, is homage paid;
The bay-tree's, laurel's, myrtle's shade,
Men's thoughts resign;

Heaven placed us here to vote and trade,
Twin tasks divine!

""Tis youth, 'tis beauty asks; the green
And growing leaves of seventeen
Are round her; and, half hid, half seen,
A violet flower,
Nursed by the virtues she hath been
From childhood's hour."

Blind passion's picture-yet for this
We woo the life-long bridal kiss,
And blend our every hope of bliss
With her's we love;
Unmindful of the serpent's hiss

In Eden's grove.

Beauty-the fading rainbow's pride,
Youth 'twas the charm of her who died
At dawn, and by her coffin's side
A grandsire stands,

Age-strengthened, like the oak storm-tried
Of mountain lands.

Youth's coffin-hush the tale it tells!
Be silent, memory's funeral bells!
Lone in one heart, her home, it dwells
Untold till death,

And where the grave-mound greenly swells
O'er buried faith.

"But what if hers are rank and power,
Armies her train, a throne her bower,
A kingdom's gold her marriage dower,
Broad seas and lands?

What if from bannered hall and tower
A queen commands?"

A queen? Earth's regal moons have set.
Where perished Marie Antoinette?

Where's Bordeaux's mother? Where the jet-
Black Haytian dame?

And Lusitania's coronet?
And Angoulême ?

Empires to-day are upside down,
The castle kneels before the town,
The monarch fears a printer's frown,
A brickbat's range;
Give me, in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change.

"But her who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these hath brought her;
She is your kinswoman in song,
A Poet's daughter."

A Poet's daughter? Could I claim
The consanguinity of fame,
Veins of my intellectual frame!
Your blood would glow
Proudly to sing that gentlest name
Of aught below.

A Poet's daughter?-dearer word
Lip hath not spoke nor listener heard,
Fit theme for song of bee and bird
From morn till even,

And wind harp by the breathing stirred
Of star-lit heaven.

My spirit's wings are weak, the fire
Poetic comes but to expire,

Her name needs not my humble lyre
To bid it live;

She hath already from her sire
All bard can give.

V.

Or wandering through the southern countries, teaching

The A B C from Webster's spelling-book; Gallant and godly, making love and preaching,

And gaining by what they call "hook and crook," And what the moralists call over-reaching,

A decent living. The Virginians look Upon them with as favorable eyes

As Gabriel on the devil in paradise.

VI.

But these are but their outcasts. View them near At home, where all their worth and pride is placed;

And there their hospitable fires burn clear,

And there the lowliest farm-house hearth is graced

With manly hearts, in piety sincere,

Faithful in love, in honor stern and chaste, In friendship warm and true, in danger brave, Beloved in life, and sainted in the grave.

VII.

And minds have there been nurtured, whose control

Is felt even in their nation's destiny; Men who swayed senates with a statesman's soul, And looked on armies with a leader's eye; Names that adorn and dignify the scroll,

Whose leaves contain their country's history, And tales of love and war-listen to one Of the Green-Mountaineer-the Stark of Bennington.

VIII.

When on that field his band the Hessians fought,
Briefly he spoke before the fight began:
"Soldiers! those German gentlemen are bought
For four pounds eight and sevenpence per man,
By England's king; a bargain, as is thought.
Are we worth more ? Let's prove it now we

can;

For we must beat them, boys, ere set of sun, OR MARY STARK'S A WIDOW." It was done.

IX.

Hers are not Tempe's nor Arcadia's spring,
Nor the long summer of Cathayan vales,
The vines, the flowers, the air, the skies, that fling
Such wild enchantment o'er Boccaccio's tales

Of Florence and the Arno; yet the wing

Of life's best angel, Health, is on her gales Through sun and snow; and in the autumn time Earth has no purer and no lovelier clime.

X.

Her clear, warm heaven at noon-the mist that shrouds

Her twilight hills-her cool and starry eves,
The glorious splendor of her sunset clouds,
The rainbow beauty of her forest leaves,
Come o'er the eye, in solitude and crowds,

Where'er his web of song her poet weaves;
And his mind's brightest vision but displays
The autumn scenery of his boyhood's days.

XL

And when you dream of woman, and her love;
Her truth, her tenderness, her gentle power;
The maiden listening in the moonlight grove,
The mother smiling in her infant's bower;
Forms, features, worshipped while we breathe or

move,

Be by some spirit of your dreaming hour Borne, like Loretto's chapel, through the air To the green land I sing, then wake, you'll find them

there.

JAMES G. PERCIVAL

JAMES GATES PERCIVAL was born in Kensington, Connecticut, a town of which his ancestors had been among the earliest inhabitants, on the 15th of September, 1795. He was the second son of Dr. James Percival, a physician of the place, who, dying in 1807, left his three sons to their mother's

care.

An anecdote is related of his early childhood, indicative of strength of mind and purpose. He had just begun to spell, when a book, in compliance with the custom of the district school to which he belonged, was lent to him on Saturday, to be returned on the following Monday. He found, by spelling through its first sentences, that a portion of it related to astronomy. This so excited his interest, that he sat diligently to work, and, by dint of hard study, with the aid of the family, was able to read the portion he desired on the Monday morning with fluency. This achievement seemed to give him confidence in his powers, and he advanced so rapidly in his studies, that he soon compassed the limited resources of the school. At the age of sixteen he entered Yale College, and during his course frequently excited the commendation and interest of President Dwight. He was at the head of his class in 1815, and his tragedy of Zamor, afterwards published in his works, formed part of the Commencement exercises. He had previously begun his poetical career by the composition of a few fugitive verses during his college course, and yet earlier, it is said, had written a satire in his fourteenth year. In 1820 he published his first volume, containing the first part of Prometheus, a poem in the Spenserian stanza, and a few minor pieces. It was well received. In the same year, having been admitted to the practice of medicine,

and the Idle Man. It was made up mostly of verse, to which a few essays were added. Α second part followed, entirely of verse, and was succeeded, in 1822, by the first and second parts of Clio, a miscellany of prose and verse.

Dr. Percival was appointed, in 1824, an assistant-surgeon in the United States ariny, and Professor of Chemistry at the Military Academy at West Point. Finding a greater portion of his time occupied in the performance of its duties than he had anticipated, he resigned after a few months, and was appointed a surgeon in connexion with the recruiting service at Boston. In the same year a collected edition of his principal poems appeared in New York in two volumes, and was reprinted in London. In 1827 he published in New York the third part of Clio, and was closely engaged in the two following years in assisting in the preparation of the first quarto edition of Webster's Dictionary, a service for which he was well qualified by his philological acquirements. He next commenced the translation of Malte-Brun's Geography, and published the last part of his version in 1813.

While in college he was inferior to none of his classmates in the mathematics, yet his inclinations led him rather into the fields of classical literature. While engaged in the study of medicine, he also applied himself to botany with ardor, and made himself acquainted with natural history in general. Being necessarily much abroad and fond of exploring nature, he became a geologist, and as such has served privately and publicly. In 1835 he was appointed to make, in conjunction with Professor C. U. Shepard, a survey of the mineralogy and geology of Connecticut. In 1842 he published his Report on the Geology of the State of Connecticut. This work, of nearly five hundred pages, contains the results of a very minute survey of the rock formations of the state, and abounds with minute and carefully systematized details.

In the summer of 1854 he received from the governor a commission as State Geologist of Wisconsin, and he entered at once upon the work. His first annual report was published at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1855.* He is still engaged in this survey.

Dr. Percival is an eminent linguistic scholar, and has a critical knowledge of most of the languages of Modern Europe. As a specimen of his readiness, it may be mentioned that when Ole Bull was in New Haven in 1844 or 1845, he addressed to him a poem of four or five stanzas in the Danish language. This was printed in a New Haven paper of the day.t

The poems of Percival have spirit, freshness, and a certain youthful force of expression as the

author harangues of love and liberty. The deliverance of oppressed nations; the yearnings and eloquence of the young heart ready to rejoice or mourn with a Byronic enthusiasm; the hour of exaltation in the triumph of love, and of gloom as some vision of the betrayal of innocence or the inroads of disease came before his mind: these were his prominent themes. There is the inner light of poetry in the idyllic sketch of Maria, the Village Girl, where nature and the reality of life in the "long-drawn-out sweetness" of the imagery assume a visionary aspect.

In those days he struck the lyre with no hesitating hand. There is the first spring of life and passion in his verse. It would have been better, sometimes, if the author had waited for slow reflection and patient elaboration—since fancy is never so vigorous as to sustain a long journey alone. Percival, however, has much of the true heat. His productions have been widely popular, and perhaps better meet the generally received notion of a poet than the well filed compositions of many others who deserve more consideration at the hands of the judicious and critical.

THE SPIRIT OF POETRY-FROM CLIO.

The world is full of Poetry-the air
Is living with its spirit; and the waves
Dance to the music of its melodies,
And sparkle in its brightness-Earth is veiled,
And mantled with its beauty; and the walls,
That close the universe, with crystal, in,
Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim
The unseen glories of immensity,

For aught, but beings of celestial mould,
In harmonies, too perfect, and too high
And speak to man, in one eternal hymn,
Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.

The year leads round the seasons, in a choir
For ever charming, and for ever new,
Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay,
The mournful, and the tender, in one strain,
Which steals into the heart, like sounds, that rise
Far off, in moonlight evenings, on the shore
Of the wide ocean resting after storms;
Or tones, that wind around the vaulted roof,
And pointed arches, and retiring aisles
Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand,
Skilful, and moved with passionate love of art,
Plays o'er the higher keys, and bears aloft
The peal of bursting thunder, and then calls,
By mellow touches, from the softer tubes,
Voices of melting tenderness, that blend
With pure and gentle musings, till the soul,
Commingling with the melody, is borne,
Rapt, and dissolved in ecstasy, to heaven.
'Tis not the chime and flow of words, that move
In measured file, and metrical array;
"Tis not the union of returning sounds,
Nor all the pleasing artifice of rhyme,
And quantity, and accent, that can give
This all-pervading spirit to the ear,
Or blend it with the movings of the soul.
'Tis a mysterious feeling, which combines
Man with the world around him, in a chain
Woven of flowers, and dipped in sweetness, till
He taste the high communion of his thoughts,
With all existences, in earth and heaven,
That meet him in the charm of grace and power.
'Tis not the noisy babbler, who displays,
In studied phrase, and ornate epithet,
And rounded period, poor and vapid thoughts,

Which peep from out the cuinbrous ornaments,
That overload their littleness.-Its words
Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break
Fresh from the fount of feeling, and are full
Of all that passion, which, on Carmel, fired
The holy prophet, when his lips were coals,
His language winged with terror, as when bolts
Leap from the brooding tempest, armed with wrath,
Commissioned to affright us, and destroy.

A PLATONIC BACCHANAL SONG.

Fill high the bowl of life for me

Let roses mantle round its brim,
While heart is warm, and thought is free,
Ere beauty's light is waning din-
Fill high with brightest draughts of soul,
And let it flow with feeling o'er,
And love, the sparkling cup, he stole

From Heaven, to give it briskness, pour.
O! fill the bowl of life for me,

And wreathe its dripping brim with flowers, And I will drink, as lightly flee

Our early, unreturning hours.

Fill high the bowl of life with wine,

That swelled the grape of Eden's grove, Ere human life, in its decline,

Had strowed with thorns the path of lov Fill high from virtue's crystal fount,

That springs beneath the throne of Heaven, And sparkles brightly o'er the mount,

From which our fallen souls were driven. O! fill the bowl of life with wine,

The wine, that charmed the gods above, And round its brim a garland twine,

That blossomed in the bower of love. Fill high the bowl of life with spirit,

Drawn from the living sun of soul,
And let the wing of genius bear it,

Deep-glowing, like a kindled coal-
Fill high from that ethereal treasure,
And let me quaff the flowing fire,
And know awhile the boundless pleasure,
That Heaven lit fancy can inspire.
O! fill the bowl of life with spirit,
And give it brimming o'er to me.
And as I quaff, I seem to inherit
The glow of immortality.

Fill high the bowl of life with thought
From that unfathomable well,
Which sages long and long have sought
To sound, but none its depths can tell-
Fill high from that dark stainless wave,
Which mounts and flows for ever on,
And rising proudly o'er the grave,

There finds its noblest course begun.
O! fill the bowl of life with thought,
And I will drink the bumper up,
And find, whate'er my wish had sought,
In that, the purest, sweetest cup.

THE SERENADE.

Softly the moonlight

Is shed on the lake,

Cool is the summer nightWake! O awake! Faintly the curfew

Is heard from afar,

List ye! O list!

To the lively guitar.

Trees cast a mellow shade
Over the vale,
Sweetly the serenade
Breathes in the gale,

Softly and tenderly

Over the lake,
Gaily and cheerily-
Wake! O awake!
See the light pinnace
Draws nigh to the shore,
Swiftly it glides

At the heave of the oar,
Cheerily plays

On its buoyant car, Nearer and nearer

The lively guitar.
Now the wind rises
And ruffles the pine,
Ripples foam-crested

Like diamonds shine,
They flash, where the waters
The white pebbles lave,

In the wake of the moon,
As it crosses the wave.
Bounding from billow

To billow, the boat
Like a wild swan is seen,
On the waters to float;
And the light dipping on s
Bear it smoothly along
In time to the air

Of the Gondolier's song.

And high on the stern

Stands the young and the brave, As love-led he crosses

The star-spangled wave,
And blends with the murmur
Of water and grove
The tones of the night,
That are sacred to love.
His gold-hilted sword

At his bright belt is hung,
His mantle of silk

On his shoulder is flung,
And high waves the feather,
That dances and plays
On his cap where the buckle
And rosary blaze.

The maid from her lattice

Looks down on the lake, To see the foam sparkle,

The bright billow break, And to hear in his boat,

Where he shines like a star, Her lover so tenderly

Touch his guitar.

She opens her lattice,

And sits in the glow
Of the moonlight and starlight,
A statue of snow;
And she sings in a voice,

That is broken with sighs,
And she darts on her lover
The light of her eyes.
His love-speaking pantomime
Tells her his soul-

How wild in that sunny clime
Hearts and eyes roll.

She waves with her white hand
Her white fazzolet,

And her burning thoughts flash
From her eyes' living jet.

The moonlight is hid

In a vapor of snow; Her voice and his rebeck Alternately flow;