177

STANZAS.

BY ALBERT G. GREENE.

OH think not that the bosom's light
Must dimly shine, its fire be low,
Because it doth not all invite

To feel its warmth and share its glow.
The altar's strong and steady blaze
On all around may coldly shine,
But only genial warmth conveys

To those who gather near the shrine.
The lamp within the festal hall

Doth not more clear and brightly burn, Than that, which shrouded by the pall, Lights but the cold funereal urn.

The fire which lives through one brief hour,
More sudden heat perchance reveals,
Than that, whose tenfold strength and power
Its own unmeasured depth conceals.

Brightly the summer cloud may glide
But bear no heat within its breast,
Though all its gorgeous folds are dyed
In the full glories of the West:
'T is that which through the darkened sky,
Surrounded by no radiance, sweeps,

In which, concealed from every eye,
The wild and vivid lightning sleeps.

Do the dull flint, the rigid steel,
Which thou within thy hand may'st hold.
Unto thy sight or touch reveal

The hidden power which they enfold?
But take those cold, unyielding things,
And beat their edges till you tire,-
And every atom forth that springs,
Is a bright spark of living fire:
Each particle, so dull and cold

Until the blow that woke it came,
Did still within it slumbering hold

A power to wrap the world in flame.

What is there, when thy sight is turned.
To the volcano's icy crest,

By which the fire can be discerned
That rages in its silent breast ;
Which hidden deep, but quenchless still,
Is at its work of sure decay,

And will not cease to burn, until
It wears its giant heart away.
The mountain's side upholds in pride

Its head amid the realms of snow,

And gives its bosom depth to hide

The burning mass which lies below.

While thus in things of sense alone,

Such truths from sense lie still concealed,

How can the living heart be known,

Its secret, inmost depths revealed.
Oh, many an overburdened soul

Has been at last to madness wrought,
While proudly struggling to control

Its burning and consuming thought;
When it had sought communion long,

And had been doomed in vain to seek,
For feelings far too deep and strong

For heart to bear or tongue to speak.

RHODE ISLAND DURING THE REVOLUTION.

BY THE HON. WILLIAM HUNTER.

THE first blows struck in our Revolution in an obscure village of a remote, and almost unknown country, seem to have been heard all over the world. The inhabitants of Europe seemed roused as from the trance of ages, and soon from anxious spectators, became generous and animated actors. We had as our friends, and fellow combatants, the patriotic and chivalrous spirits of Poland-Pulaski and Kosciusko. The gallant and accomplished Fersen, of Sweden. The tacticians and disciplinarians of Austria and Prussia, De Kalb and Steuben. We mustered in our train the flower of the French nobility. The mind of Europe was with us; and

we received from every philosopher, poet, or patriot of the day, cheerings of gratulation. They wept at our disasters, they rejoiced in our victories. They felt it as their own triumph, when, for the first time in the annals of man, the parent and the sovereign power acknowledged by the treaty of 1783, the rightful independence of the reproached, rebellious child, and the rightful establishment, in full sovereignty, of a new empire.

But let ns withdraw our dazzled gaze from the extended epic painting of National glory and prowess crowded with personages, lighted by the volcanic blaze of battles, and shaded by darkening clouds of sorrow and disaster, and look with endeared emotions of tenderness and love, at the MINIATURE of the parent state.

Men of Rhode Island, you are the descendants of those who were twice pilgrims; the descendants of the victims of a double persecution. This fact of your origin has shaped your whole political character, influenced all your political movements, from the time of your feeble association, in the depths of the forests of this then houseless land, to the present moment; and may God grant it always may so influence, and direct you. You are the descendants, equally with those who take pride

from this descent, of those puritans and independents, who fled from religious persecution in England, in the hope of enjoying religious freedom here. Why your forefathers did not, could not, enjoy it, is a dark passage in the history of a sister state, which we would gladly expunge, if it were not a record necessary to prove your genealogy and birthright.

The basis of your political institution, was not merely toleration, but a perfect freedom in matters of religious concernment. No nice exceptions, no insulting indulgencies, which, while they allow the exercise of voluntary worship, deny the right, and pretend to confer a favor-deface the consistent beauty of our plan. Every aspirant to Almighty favor, in the sincerity of his devotion, has a perfect, unobstructed, inobstructible right, to seek it in the way he thinks fit. He may choose the simplest or the richest form.

He may drink the waters of life, in rude simplicity, from the palm of his hand, from the crystal cup of reformed episcopacy, or from the embossed and enchased golden chalice of papal gorgeousness. Your ancestors announced this opinion and enjoyed its legal exercise, long before the able and amiable Roman Catholic Lord Baltimore, or the sagacious and benevolent Quaker William Penn, adopted and