The healthful odor of the flowering trees
And bright-eyed violets;-but most of all,
When I beheld mild slumbering Innocence,
And on that young maternal brow the smile
Of those affections which do purify
And renovate the soul, I turned me back
In gladness, and with added strength, to run
My weary race-lifting a thankful prayer

To Him, who showed me some bright tints of Heaven
Here on the earth, that I might safer walk

And firmer combat sin, and surer rise
From earth to Heaven.

pp. 51, 52.

ON THE DEATH OF A MOTHER, SOON AFTER HER INFANT SON.

There's a cry from that cradle-bed,

The voice of an infant's woe;

Hark! hark! to the mother's rushing tread-
In her bosom's fold she hath hid his head,
And his wild tears cease to flow.
Yet he must weep again,
And when his eye shall know
The burning brine of manhood's pain
Or youth's unuttered woe,
That mother fair

With her full tide of sympathies, alas! may not be there.
On earth the tree of weeping grows

Fast by man's side where'er he goes,

And o'er his brightest joys, its bitterest essence flows.

But she, from her sweet home

So lately fled away,

She for whose buried smile the fond heart mourns this day,
Hath tasted rapture undefiled;

She hath gone to her child-she hath gone to her child,
Where sorrow may never come.

He was the precious one,
The prayed for, the adored-
And from each rising sun,

Till Night her balmy cup of silence poured,
For him the paths of knowledge she explored,
Feeding his eager mind with seraph's bread,
Till intellectual light o'er his fair features spread.
But ah! he bowed to die,

Strange darkness sealed his eye,

And there he lay like marble in his shroud;
He, at whose infant might even trembling Love was proud.
Yet she who bore him shrank not 'neath the rod,
Laying her chastened soul low at the feet of God.
Now is her victory won,

Her strife of battle o'er.

She hath found her son-she hath found her son,
Where Death is a king no more.

She hath gone to see how bright doth shine
In eternity's sphere that lamp divine,

Which here 'mid the storms of earth severe
She tenderly nursed with a mother's fear:

Forgotten are all her toils,

The pang hath left no trace,

When Memory hoardeth in Heaven its spoils,
These have no place.

Mothers! whose speechless care,
Whose unrequited sigh,

Weary arm and sleepless eye,

Change the fresh rose-bud on the cheek to paleness and despair,
Look up! look up to the bountiful sky,

Earth may not pay your debt, your record is on high.

Ye have gazed in doubt on the plants that drew
From your gentle hand their nightly dew-
Ye have given with trembling your morning kiss,
Ye have sown in pain-ye shall reap in bliss ;
The mother's tear, the mother's prayer,

In faith for her offering given,

Shall be counted as pearls at the judgment-bar,

And win the gold of heaven.

pp. 121-123.

Beautiful and pure, both in thought and poetry, as are both of these truly American passages, we give a decided preference to "Alice," and to "The Dying Philosopher"-the former one of the most spirited and strongest effusions we have ever read, and the latter fraught with the musings of a mind, sound in its judgment of man, and right-hearted towards God.

ALICE.

A very interesting daughter of the late Dr. Cogswell, who was deprived of the powers of hearing and speech, cherished so ardent an affection for her father, that, after his death, she said, in her strong language of gesture, that "her heart had so grown to his, it could not be separated." By the Providence of the Almighty she was called in a few days to follow him; and from the abodes of bliss, where we trust she has obtained a mansion, may we not imagine her as thus addressing the objects of her fondest earthly affections?

Her broken harmony,

That thus the melodies of heaven might roll,

And whelm in deeper tides of bliss, my rapt, my wondering soul?
Joy!-I am mute no more,

My sad and silent years,

With all their loneliness, are o'er,

Sweet sisters! dry your tears:

Listen at hush of eve-listen at dawn of day-
List at the hour of prayer-can ye not hear my lay?
Untaught, unchecked it came,

As light from chaos beamed,
Praising his everlasting name,

Whose blood from Calvary streamed-

And still it swells that highest strain, the song of the redeemed.

Brother!--my only one!

Beloved from childhood's hours,

With whom, beneath the vernal sun,
I wandered when our task was done,
And gathered early flowers;

VOL. IV.

I cannot come to thee,

Though 'twas so sweet to rest

Upon thy gently guiding arm--thy sympathizing breast:
'Tis better here to be.
No disappointments shroud
These angel-bowers of joy,
Our knowledge hath no cloud,
Our pleasures no alloy.
The fearful word-lo part,
Is never heard above,
Heaven hath no broken heart-
Call me not hence, my love.

Oh, mother!-He is here

To whom my soul so grew,
That when death's fatal spear
Stretched him upon his bier,
I fain must follow too.

His smile my infant griefs restrained-
His image in my childish dream
And o'er my young affections reigned,

With gratitude unuttered and supreme.

But yet till these refulgent skies burst forth in radiant glow
I knew not half the unmeasured debt a daughter's heart doth owe.
Ask ye, if still his heart retains its ardent glow?
Ask ye, if filial love
Unbodied spirits prove?

'Tis but a little space, and thou shalt rise to know.
I bend to soothe thy woes,

How near-thou canst not see

I watch thy lone repose,

Alice doth comfort thee;

To welcome thee I wait-blest mother! come to me.

pp. 157--159.

THE DYING PHILOSOPHER.

I have crept forth to die among the trees,
They have sweet voices that I love to hear,
Sweet, lutetlike voices. They have been as friends
In my adversity-when sick and faint

I stretched me in their shadow all day long;
They were not weary of ine. They sent down
Soft summer breezes fraught with pitying sighs
To fan my blanching cheek. Their lofty boughs
Pointed with thousand fingers to the sky,
And round their trunks the wild vine fondly clung,
Nursing her clusters, and they did not check
Her clasping tendrils, nor deceive her trust,
Nor blight her blossoms, and go towering up
In their cold stateliness, while on the earth
She sank to die.

But thou, rejoicing bird,

Why pourest thou such a rich and mellow lay
On my dull ear? Poor bird!-I gave thee crumbs,
And fed thy nested little ones; so thou

(Unlike to man!) thou dost remember it.

O mine own race!--how often have ye sate
Gathered around my table, shared my cup,
And worn my raiment, yea! far more than this,
Been sheltered in my bosom, but to turn
And lift the heel against me, and cast out
My bleeding heart in morsels to the world,
Like catering cannibals.

36

Take me not back
To these imprisoned curtains, broidered thick
With pains, beneath whose sleepy canopy
I've pined away so long. The purchased care,
The practised sympathy, the fawning tone
Of him who on my vesture casteth lots,
The weariness, the secret measuring
How long I have to live, the guise of grief
So coarsely worn--I could not longer brook
Such torturing ministry. Let me die here,
'Tis but a little while. Let me die here.
Have patience, Nature, with thy feeble son,
So soon forgot, and from thine arms,
Thou gentle mother, from thy true embrace,
Let my freed spirit pass.

Alas! how vain

The wreath that Fame would bind around our tomb--
The winds shall waste it, and the worms destroy,

While from its home of bliss the disrobed soul

Looks not upon its greenness, nor deplores

Its withering loss. Ye who have toiled to earn
The fickle praise of far posterity,

Come, weigh it at the grave's brink, here with me,
If ye can weigh a dream.

Hail, holy stars!
Heaven's stainless watchers o'er a world of woe,
Look down once more upon me. When again,
In solemn night's dark regency, ye ope
Your searching eyes, me shall ye not behold
Among the living. Let me join the song,
With which ye sweep along your glorious way;

Teach me your hymn of praise. What have I said?

I will not learn of you, for ye shall fall.

Lo! with swift wing I mount above your sphere,
To see the Invisible, to know the Unknown,
To love the Uncreated!-Earth, farewell!

pp. 214, 215.

The lines entitled "Indian Names" are also among our especial favorites, and we are only prevented from giving them a place in our pages, by the consideration that they have appeared, within the year we believe, in a sister periodical; and that we are on that account averse to inserting them, as it might be imagined that we were endeavoring to secure to ourselves an advantage intended for another. In their peculiar style they are unsurpassed a word could not be altered without detracting from their beauty. Our notice of this little volume has hitherto exclusively consisted of praise, and in order to preserve our character for impartiality, and to prove that our praise is genuine, we will proceed to notice a few imperfections, the scarcity of which will do far more to prove the excellence of Mrs. Sigourney's poems, than the highest applause that could be lavished on them. There are not half a dozen articles in the whole book, in which the keenest criticism could find aught to censure. The poem entitled "Flora's Party" is incorrect, and inharmonious in its versification, owing to numerous false accents in the botanical names of plants, with the true pronunciation of which, as being of Latin origin, it is not perhaps so wonderful as it is to be regretted, that our author should be unacquainted. The spirited little poem entitled "Diem Perdida" is in like manner faulty; in the first place, because there is no such word as perdida-which should be written per

didi-making nonsense of the whole piece; and secondly, because the accent is laid on the second syllable, as perdida, whereas it should be on the first, as pérdidi. Of the same nature is another error in some beautiful lines on the battle of Zama, wherein the celebrated sentence of Cato, Delenda est Carthago is perverted into Delendo,&c. These are, it may be said, small mistakes after all, and not coming exactly under the head of poetical faults; they occur, moreover, in Latin words, with which, as we have stated above, a lady is not expected to be acquainted; if, however, she choose to introduce words of a language she does not understand, she is not entirely free from blame, if she neglect to procure the advice of persons better qualified than herself. There are, however, no faults of this or indeed any other kind, in the two sweet extracts with which we shall close our observations.

The former of these two passages, although by no means the most beautiful of the scripture sketches, we have preferred to "Methuselah,” and others of superior merit; inasmuch as though worthy of nearly as much admiration as the others, they have not been so widely circulated through the columns of the public press. "The Sea" has the great merit of originality, a quality scarcely to be looked for on a subject so thoroughly hackneyed by every poet, from Homer to Byron inclusive.

PAUL BEFORE AGRIPPA.

The son of Herod sate in regal state

Fast by his sister-queen-and 'mid the throng
Of supple courtiers, and of Roman guards,
Gave solemn audience. Summoned to his bar
A prisoner came,-who with no flattering tone
Brought incense to a mortal. Every eye
Questioned his brow, with scowling eagerness,
As there he stood in bonds. But when he spoke
With such majestic earnestness, such grace
Of simple courtesy-with fervent zeal
So boldly reasoned for the truth of God,
The ardor of his heaven-taught eloquence
Wrought in the royal bosom, till its pulse
Responsive trembled with the new-born hope
"Almost to be a Christian."

So, he rose,

And with the courtly train swept forth in pomp.
"Almost ;"-and was this all,-thou Jewish prince?
Thou listener to the ambassador of Heaven-

"Almost persuaded!"-Ah! hadst thou exchanged
Thy trappings and thy purple, for his bonds

Who stood before thee-hadst thou drawn his hope
Into thy bosom even with the spear

Of martyrdom--how great had been thy gain.

And ye, who linger while the call of God

Bears witness to your conscience, and would fain
Like king Agrippa follow,-yet draw back

Awhile into the vortex of the world

Perchance to swell the hoard, which Death shall sweep
Like driven chaff away, 'mid stranger hands,
Perchance by Pleasure's deadening opiate lulled
To false security-or by the fear

Of man constrained-or moved to give your sins
A little longer scope, beware!-beware!-

Lest that dread "almost" shut you out from heaven.

pp. 80, 81.