In that moment the copse parted, and an arrow, piercing the monster through and through the neck, bore his head forward to the ground, alongside of the maiden, while his spiral extremities, now unfolding in his own agony, were actually, in part, writhing upon her person. The arrow came from the fugitive Occonestoga, who had fortunately reached the spot, in season, on his way to the Block House. He rushed from the copse as the snake fell, and, with a stick, fearlessly approached him where he lay tossing in agony upon the grass. Seeing him advance, the courageous reptile made an effort to regain his coil, shaking the fearful rattle violently at every evolution which he took for that purpose; but the arrow, completely passing through his neck, opposed an unyielding obstacle to the endeavor; and, finding it hopeless, and seeing the new enemy about to assault him, with something of the spirit of the white man under like circumstances, he turned desperately round, and striking his charged fangs, so that they were riveted in the wound they made, into a susceptible part of his own body, he threw himself over with a single convulsion, and, a moment after, lay dead beside the utterly unconscious maiden.1

SONG OF THE ZEPHYR SPIRIT.

I have come from the deeps where the sea-maiden twines,
In her bowers of amber, her garlands of shells;

For a captive like thee, in her chamber she pines,

And weaves for thy coming the subtlest of spells;

She has breathed on the harp-string that sounds in her cave,
And the strain as it rose hath been murmur'd for thee;
She would win thee from earth for her home in the wave,
And her couch, in the coral-grove, deep in the sea.

Thou hast dream'd in thy boyhood of sea-circled bowers,
Where all may be found that is joyous and bright,-
Where life is a frolic through fancies and flowers,

And the soul lives in dreams of a lasting delight!
Wouldst thou win what thy fancies have taught to thy heart?
Wouldst thou dwell with the maiden now pining for thee?
Flee away from the cares of the earth, and depart
For her mansions of coral, far down in the sea.

Her charms will beguile thee when noonday is nigh,
The song of her nymphs shall persuade thee to sleep,
She will watch o'er thy couch as the storm hurries by,
Nor suffer the sea-snake beside thee to creep;

"The power of the rattlesnake to fascinate is a frequent faith among the superstitious of the Southern country-people. Of this capacity in reference to birds and insects, frogs, and the smaller reptiles, there is indeed little question. Its power over persons is not so well authenticated, although numberless instances of this sort are given by persons of very excellent veracity. The above is almost literally worded after a verbal narrative furnished the author by an old lady, who never dreamed, herself, of doubting the narration."

But still, with a charm which is born of the hours,

Her love shall implore thee to bliss ever free;
Thou wilt rove with delight through her crystalline bowers,
And sleep without care in her home of the sea.

From Atalantis.

HEART ESSENTIAL TO GENIUS.

We are not always equal to our fate

Nor true to our conditions. Doubt and fear
Beset the bravest, in their high career,

At moments when the soul, no more elate
With expectation, sinks beneath the time.

The masters have their weakness. "I would climb,"
Said Raleigh, gazing on the highest hill,-

"But that I tremble with the fear to fall."

Apt was the answer of the high-soul'd queen :-
"If thy heart fail thee, never climb at all!"
The heart! if that be sound, confirms the rest,
Crowns genius with his lion will and mien,
And, from the conscious virtue in the breast,
To trembling nature gives both strength and will.

ISAAC MCLELLAN.

ISAAC MCLELLAN is a native of Portland, Maine, and was born on the 21st of May, 1806. In early life, his father, Isaac McLellan, removed to Boston, where for many years he was a prominent merchant, distinguished for his integrity and success in business. The son, after receiving his degree at Bowdoin College, in 1826, returned to Boston, completed a course of legal study, and was admitted to practice in the courts of that city. But the Muses and general literature had more charms for him than clients and briefs, and for many years he contributed, both in prose and poetry, to several magazines and papers published in the city and vicinity, and had the editorial management of two or three of them. About the year 1840, he went abroad, and passed about two years in Europe. On his return, he gave a description of his journeyings, in a series of letters published in the "Boston Daily Courier." Since that period, he has been engaged chiefly in literary pursuits, and now resides in the city of New York.

Mr. McLellan's published works are, The Fall of the Indian, in 1830; The Year, and other Poems, in 1832; and Mount Auburn, and other Poems, in 1843. Though the Muse of Mr. McLellan aims at no ambitious flight, yet in the middle region of the descriptive and the lyrical in which she delights chiefly to play, she moves with even and graceful wing, bearing such offerings as the following:

NEW ENGLAND'S DEAD.1

New England's dead! New England's dead!
On every hill they lie;

On every field of strife made red

By bloody victory.

Each valley, where the battle pour'd
Its red and awful tide,

Beheld the brave New England sword
With slaughter deeply dyed.

Their bones are on the northern hill,
And on the southern plain,

By brook and river, lake and rill,
And by the roaring main.

The land is holy where they fought,

And holy where they fell;

For by their blood that land was bought,
The land they loved so well.

Then glory to that valiant band,
The honor'd saviours of the land!

Oh, few and weak their numbers were-
A handful of brave men;

But to their God they gave their prayer,
And rush'd to battle then.

The God of battles heard their cry,
And sent to them the victory.

They left the ploughshare in the mould,
Their flocks and herds without a fold,
The sickle in the unshorn grain,
The corn, half garner'd, on the plain,
And muster'd, in their simple dress,
For wrongs to seek a stern redress,

To right those wrongs, come weal, come woe,
To perish, or o'ercome their foe.

And where are ye, O fearless men?
And where are ye to-day?

I call: the hills reply again
That ye have pass'd away;

That on old Bunker's lonely height,

In Trenton, and in Monmouth ground,

The grass grows green, the harvest bright,

Above each soldier's mound.

1 "Mr. President: I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history. The world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State, from New England to Georgia; and there they will remain forever."- Webster's Speech in Reply to Hayne, 1830.

The bugle's wild and warlike blast
Shall muster them no more;
An army now might thunder past,
And they heed not its roar.

The starry flag, 'neath which they fought,

In many a bloody day,

From their old graves shall rouse them not;
For they have pass'd away.

LINES,

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE BY WASHINGTON ALLSTON.

The tender Twilight with a crimson cheek
Leans on the breast of Eve. The wayward Wind
Hath folded her fleet pinions, and gone down
To slumber by the darken'd woods; the herds

Have left their pastures, where the sward grows green
And lofty by the river's sedgy brink,

And slow are winding home. Hark, from afar

Their tinkling bells sound through the dusky glade
And forest-openings, with a pleasant sound;
While answering Echo, from the distant hill,
Sends back the music of the herdsman's horn.
How tenderly the trembling light yet plays
O'er the far-waving foliage! Day's last blush
Still lingers on the billowy waste of leaves,
With a strange beauty-like the yellow flush
That haunts the ocean, when the day goes by.
Methinks, whene'er earth's wearying troubles pass
Like winter shadows o'er the peaceful mind,
"Twere sweet to turn from life, and pass abroad,
With solemn footsteps, into Nature's vast

And happy palaces, and lead a life

Of peace in some green paradise like this.

The brazen trumpet and the loud war-drum

Ne'er startled these green woods:-the raging sword
Hath never gather'd its red harvest here!

The peaceful summer day hath never closed
Around this quiet spot, and caught the gleam
Of War's rude pomp:-the humble dweller here
Hath never left his sickle in the field,

To slay his fellow with unholy hand:

-

The maddening voice of battle, the wild groan,
The thrilling murmuring of the dying man,
And the shrill shriek of mortal agony,

Have never broke its Sabbath solitude.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILL.S.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS was born in Portland, Maine, January 20, 1807.1 After being fitted for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, he entered Yale, at sixteen years of age, and soon distinguished himself as a poet of true genius by writing a series of pieces on scriptural subjects,-pieces which have not been surpassed by any thing he has subsequently written, and which gave him at once a wide-spread and enviable reputation. On leaving college, in 1827, he was engaged by S. G. Goodrich ("Peter Parley") to edit "The Legendary" and "The Token." In 1828, he established the "American Monthly Magazine," which he conducted for two years and a half, when it was merged in the "New York Mirror," and Mr. Willis went to Europe, and travelled through Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Turkey, and England, in which latter country he was married to Mary Leighton Stace, daughter of Commissary-General William Stace, then having charge of the arsenal at Woolwich. The letters he wrote while abroad were first published in the "New York Mirror," under the title of Pencillings by the Way. In 1835, he published Inklings of Adventure, a series of tales which appeared originally in a London magazine. In 1837, he returned home, and retired to a beautiful place on the Susquehanna, near Owego, New York, which he named Glenmary in compliment to his wife. In 1839, he became one of the editors of the "Corsair," a literary gazette in New York City, and towards the close of that year again went to London, where he published Loiterings of Travel, and two tragedies, Tortesa the Usurer and Bianca Visconti, under the united title of Two Ways of Dying for a Husband. In 1840 appeared an illustrated edition of his poems, and Letters from under a Bridge. In 1843, in conjunction with General George P. Morris, he revived the "New York Mirror," but withdrew from it upon the death of his wife in 1844, and again visited England. On his return home the next year, he issued a complete edition of his works, in an imperial octavo of eight hundred pages. In October, 1846, he was married to a daughter of the Hon. Joseph Grinnell, member of Congress from Massachusetts, and removed to his present country home of Idlewild. He is now associated with General Morris as editor of the "Home Journal," a weekly literary paper, which is always enriched, more or less, with pieces from his pen, and which is hailed by its numerous readers, every week, as a genial and instructive fireside companion. Though Mr. Willis's prose writings are full of beauty and wit, of rich paintings of natural scenery, and delicate and humorous touches of the various phases of social life, it is by his poetry, especially by his sacred poetry, that he will be chiefly known and prized by posterity. There is a tenderness, a pathos, and a richness of description in it which give him a rank among the first of American poets.2

1 His father was Nathaniel Willis, who, a few years after the birth of Nathaniel, removed to Boston, and projected and edited the "Boston Recorder," the first religious journal established in this country.

2"No man has appeared in our literature, endowed with a greater variety