A strange and a motley pageant, all:
What seek they? to win for their land a name
The brightest and best in the lists of fame?
The light of Mercy's all-hallowed ray
To look with grief on the culprit's way?
Nay! watch the smile and the flushing brow,
And in that crowd what read ye now?
The daring spirit and purpose high,
The fiery glance of the eagle eye
That marked the Roman's haughty pride,
In the days of yore by the Tiber's side?
The stern resolve of the patriot's breast,
When the warrior's zeal has sunk to rest?
No! Mercy has fled from the hardened heart,
And Justice and Truth in her steps depart,
And the fires of hell rage fierce and warm
Mid the fitful strife of the spirit's storm.
But a wail is borne on the troubled air:
What victim comes those frowns to dare?
'Tis woman's form and woman's eye,
That Time hath passed full lightly by;
The limner's art in vain might trace
The glorious beauty and winning grace
Of that fair girl; youth's sunny day
Flings its radiance over life's changing way:
Why has she left her princely home,
Why to that hall a suppliant come?
Her heart is sad with a deepening gloom,
For Hope has found in her heart a tomb.
With quiv'ring lip, and eye whose light
Is faint as the moon in a cloudy night,
And with cheek as pale as the crimson glow
That the sunset casts on the spotless snow;
Nerved with the strength of wild despair,
Low at their feet she pours her prayer:
'My home! my home! is desolate,
For ye have slain them all,
And cast upon the light of Love
Death's cold and fearful pall.
We knelt in agony to save
My father's silver hair,
Ye would not mark the bitter tears,
Nor list the frantic prayer!
'And then ye took my mother too:
Ye must remember now
The words that lingered on her lip,
The grief upon her brow;
My sister wept in bitter wo--
Her dark and earnest eyes
Asked for the mercy ye will seek
In vain in yonder skies!
'But your hearts were like the flinty rock,
And cold as ocean's foam;
You tore them from my clasping arms,
And bore them from our home:
And now my brothers ye will slay!
But they are proud and high,
And come with spirits brave and true,
Your tortures to defy.
'I will not ask from you their lives,
I will not seek to roll
The clouds of midnight from your hearts;
Ye cannot touch the soul!
But grant my prayer, and I will pray
For you in yonder sky;
Oh, GOD! I ask a little thing--
I ask with them to die!'
But the burning words fell cold and lone,
As the sun's warm rays on a marble stone;
Life was a curse too bitter and wild
For the broken heart of Earth's weary child;
And the stricken one found a self-sought grave
'Neath the crystal light of the foaming wave.
_Shelter-Island._ MARY GARDINER.
THE DEATH BED.
A STRAY LEAF FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A 'COUNTRY DOCTOR.'
BY F. W. SHELTON.
'Bury me in the valley, beneath the willows where I have watched the
rippling waves, among the scenes of beauty which I loved so well, oh! my
friend!' exclaimed the dying youth; and as he grasped my hand his lips
moved tremblingly, tears gushed upon his wan cheeks, and an expression of
very sadness stole upon him. His looks were lingering; such as one flings
back upon some paradise of beauty which he leaves forever; some home which
childhood has endeared to him, and affection has filled with the loves and
graces. Pity touched my soul as I regarded silently that beaming
countenance, alas! so shrunken from the swelling, undulating lines of his
hilarious health; a pity such as one feels whose hopes are too
inexplicably bound up with another's, who shares his very being, and who
knows by all the sympathies of a brother's bosom that the other's
heart-strings are snapping. _Animæ dimidium meæ!_--beautiful expression of
the poet, comprehended less while life unites, than when death severs. It
is only when gazing on the seal which has been set, we inquire 'Where is
the spirit?' and struggle in vain to understand that great difference;
when the smiles which shed their sunshine have rapidly vanished, and the
voice we loved has died away like the music of a harp; when that which was
light, joy, wit, eloquence, has departed with the latest breath; when, in
short, we are awakened from our revery by the clods falling on the coffin,
and the mourners moving away; it is then that the soul, diminished of its
essence, flits away with a strange sense to its unjoyous abode, as a bird
would return to its lonely nest.
There never existed one who more lived and moved, and had his spiritual
being in the affections; a sensitive nature wooed into life by the
kindness of the faintest breath, but killingly crushed by the footsteps of
the thoughtless or the cruel. For such a one, life is well deserving of
the epithet applied to it by the poet Virgil: _dulcis vita_, sweet life.
It is not a vulgar sensuality, a Lethean torpor; the triumph of the
grosser nature over the eternal principle within. It is already a
separation of the carnal from the spiritual; a refinement of fierce
passions; a present divorce from a close and clinging alliance; a
foretaste of the waters of life; in short, the very essence and devotion
of a pure religion. Would it seem strangely inconsistent that a being of
so sweet a character as I shall describe him, my poor young friend
declared, with a gush of the bitterest tears, that he _could_ not go into
the dark valley, for he loved life with an inconceivable, passionate love?
His was the very agony and pathos of the dying Hoffman, when almost with
his latest breath, he alluded to 'the sweet habitude of being.' But it was
only, thanks be to GOD! a short defection, a momentary clouding of that
bright faith which was destined soon to see beyond the vale. His tears
ceased to flow, glistened a moment, and then passed away as if they had
been wiped by some gentle hand.
He leaned upon a soft couch, so very pale and haggard that his hour seemed
very near. Costly books strewed his table; pictures and many exquisite
things were scattered about with lavish hand; for wealth administered to
refined luxury, and affection crowned him with blessings which gold can
never buy. A mother hid from him her bitter tears, and spoke the words of
cheerfulness; sisters pressed around him with the poignant grief an only
brother can inspire; a beautiful betrothed betokened to him in
irrepressible tears her depth and purity of love. Letters came to him
hurried on the wings of friendship, and impressed on all their seals with
sentiments which awakened hope. Youth and beauty hovered around him with
their unintermitted care, and Age sent up its fervent prayers to heaven.
Oh! who but the ungrateful would not love a life so filled with
blandishments and crowned with blessings? Who could see all these receding
without a sigh, or feel the pressure of that kiss of love as pure as if it
had its origin in Heaven? But with the finest organization of intellectual
mind, he had been accustomed to look at all things in the light of poetry.
For one so constituted the pleasures which are in store are as
inexhaustible as the works or mercies of his God. Not an hour which did
not present some new phase of undiscovered beauty. He revelled in the
beams of the morning; the rising sun was never a common object, nor its
grandeur ever lost upon a soul so conscious of the sublime. For all beauty
in nature he found a correspondent passion in the soul; and intoxicated
alike with the music of birds or the perfume of flowers, found no
weariness in a life whose current was like the living spring, pure,
perennial and delightful.
To be so susceptible of pleasure, I would be willing to encounter all the
keenness of pangs suffered by such natures. For such, the rational
delights of a year are crowded into a day, an hour; and the ignorant
reader of their obituary sighs mournfully, computing their lives by a
false reckoning. Yet after all, we have been disposed to regard the death
of the young as something unnatural; the violent rending asunder of soul
and body; the penalty enacted of a life artificial in its modes and
repugnant to nature. As Cicero has beautifully expressed it, it is like
the sudden quenching of a bright flame; but the death of the virtuous Old
is as expected, as free from terror as the sunset; it is the coming of a
gentle sleep after a long and weary day.
Travers was in the very gush and spring-tide of his youth; yet crowned as
he was with blessings, and every attribute for their most perfect
enjoyment, the true secret of his too fond desire to live, was that _he
loved_:
'He loved but one,
And that loved one, alas! could ne'er be his.'
In her the poetry of his life centred; and as a river is swollen by divers
rills, and tributary streams, so all the thoughts and passions of his soul
hurried with a pure and rapid tide to mingle and be lost in one. But
illness, and the long looking at death, and above all, the Christian's
hope, enable us one by one to break off the dearest ties, and to renounce
whatever we most love on earth. And so my young friend in good time
emerged from the cloud which obscured his prospects, and saw clearly
beyond the vale. It is not long since, being well assured that his fate
was inevitable, he expressed a desire, which he carried into execution, to
visit once more his well-loved haunts, and take a solemn farewell of them
all. As one grasps the hand of a friend at parting, he looked his last at
things which were inanimate. He rambled in the deep, dark groves whither
he had so often gone in health, to enjoy their Gothic grandeur, to breathe
the spirit of the religion they inspire, or to murmur in their deepest
shades the accents of his pure and passionate love. He inscribed his name
for the last time upon the smooth bark of a tree; then leaving them
forever, as he emerged into the gay meadows, he turned to me with tears
and said:
'Ye woods, and wilds, whose melancholy gloom
Accords with my soul's sadness, and draws forth
The voice of sorrow from my bursting heart!'
He clambered the steep hill-side, and sinking exhausted beneath a smitten
tree, enjoyed the picturesqueness of the scene; the meadows, the streams,
the pasture-grounds, the dappled herds, the sereneness of the summer
skies, cleft by the wing of the musical lark, in all their purity of blue.
He sat beside the sea-shore, and watched the big billows breaking and
bursting at his feet; and as he looked where the waters and the sky met
together in the far horizon, he exclaimed, 'Now indeed do I long to fly
away!' Then he returned to his pillow, never to go forth again. 'I shall
die,' he said, 'when the season is in its prime and glory; when the fields
are green and the trees leafy; and the sunlight shall shimmer down through
the branches where the birds sing over my grave.' Then casting a look at
his books, where they stood neatly arranged on the well-filled shelves, he
lamented that he had not time to garner half the stores of a beautiful
literature; to satisfy his perpetual thirst; to drink to the full at the
'pure wells of English undefiled.' There were the Greek poets, whom he
would have more intimately cherished, (he had been lately absorbed in the
sublimity of the 'Prometheus Vinctus;') there was the great master and
anatomizer of the human heart, who knew how to detail the springs of
action common to all ages, the paragon of that deep learning which is not
derived from books, but gleaned by his genius from all nature with a rare
intuition, and with an incomprehensible power of research. In him what
mines of instruction, what sources of undiscovered delight, what
philosophy yet to be grappled with, to be laid to the heart! Charles Lamb
has with a quaint melancholy depicted the pain of parting from his books,
and from the indefinable delights laid up in each dear folio. Yet after
all, what is the literature of one age but the reproduction, the
remoulding, the condensation of the literature of another; the loss and
destruction of its waste ore, but the re-setting of its gems, and the
renewed investiture of all its beauties. There is no glowing thought, no
exquisite conception, no sublime and beautiful idea, which is not
imperishable as the mind itself, and which shall not be carried on from
age to age, or if destroyed or lost upon the written page, revived by some
happy coincidence of intellectual being, and perpetuated and enjoyed, here
or hereafter, wherever mind exists. A communion like this will be a
communion of spirits. A finer organization, expanded faculties shall
rapidly consume the past; but oh, the future! what glories are to be
crowded into its immensity? How shall knowledge be commensurate with the
stars, or wander over the universe? Now bring me the written Revelation,
the written word. It clasps within its volume all excellencies, all
sublimities of speech; secrets which could not be developed by reason, nor
found in the arcana of human wisdom. Henceforth this shall be my only
companion, and its promises shall light my passage over the grave.'
I marked the lustrous beaming of his eye, and from that time he looked at
all things on the 'bright side.' His very love could think upon its object
without a tear, and look forward to a pure and eternal re-union. At last
the hour of dissolution came. I knew it by its unerring symptoms; yet
still I listened to his passionate, poetic converse. It was for the last
time; I was in the chamber of death. What observer can mistake it; the
darkened windows, the stillness, the grouping, the subdued sobs, the awful
watchfulness for the identical moment when a lovely and intellectual
spirit breaks its bonds, as if the strained vision could detect the
spiritual essence. What a heart-sickness comes over those who love! What a
change in the appearance of all things! The very sun-light is
disagreeable, the very skies a mockery; the very roses unlovely. We look
out of the casement, and see the external face of nature still the same;
how heartless, how destitute of sympathy, now appears the whole world
without, with the home, that inner world! How can those birds sing so
sweetly on the branches; how can the flowers bloom as brightly as ever;
how can those children play so gleefully; how can yon group laugh with
such unconcern! He is an only son. Though wan, and wasted in all his
lineaments, his pure brow, his gentle expression, tell that he was worthy
to be loved. Can no human power restore him to the arms of a fond mother?
It is in vain! The spirit flutters upon his lips; it has departed. But it
has left behind it a token; a clear, bright impress; a smile of
undissembled love and purity; an expression beaming with the last
unutterable peace; the graces which were so winning upon earth, but which
shall attain their perfection in heaven.
FREEDOM'S BEACON.
'To-day, to-day it speaks to us! Its future auditories will be the
generations of men, as they rise up before it and gather round it'
WEBSTER.
'To-day it speaks to us!'
Of 'the times that tried men's souls,'
When hostile ships rode where yon bay
Its deep blue waters rolls:
When the war-cloud dark was lowering
Portentous o'er the land;
When the vassal troops of Britain came
With bayonet, sword and brand.
'To-day it speaks to us!'
Of brave deeds nobly done,
When patriot hearts beat high with hope,
Ere Freedom's cause was won:
Of the conflict fierce, where fell
New-England's valiant men,
Who waved their country's banner high,
Though warm blood dyed it then!
And will its voice be still
When the thousands of to-day,
Who have come like pilgrim-worshippers,
From earth shall pass away?
Oh no! 'the potent orator'
To future times shall tell
Where PRESCOTT, BROOKS, and PUTNAM fought,
Where gallant WARREN fell.
'Twill speak of these, and others--
Of brave men, born and nurst
In stormy times, on Danger's lap.
Who dared Oppression's worst:
Of Vernon's chief, and he who came
Across the Atlantic flood,
To offer to the patriot's GOD
A sacrifice of blood.
Long as the 'Bay State' cherishes
One thought of sainted sires,
Long as the day-god greets her cliffs,
Or gilds her domes and spires;
Long as her granite hills remain
Firm fixed, so long shall be
Yon Monument on Bunker's height
A beacon for the free!
A WINTER TRIP TO TRENTON FALLS.
IN THREE SCENES.
SCENE FIRST.
Morning; eight on the clock. BILLING'S HOTEL, Trenton. Outside, a clear
bright sun glancing down through an atmosphere sparkling with frost, upon
as fine a road for a sleigh-ride as ever tempted green-mountain boys and
girls for a moonlight flit. Inside, a well-furnished breakfast-table,
beef-steak, coffee, toast, etc., etc. On the one side of it your
correspondent; serious, as if he considered breakfast a thing to be
attended to. He is somewhat, as the lady on the other side of the table
says, _somewhat_ in the 'sear leaf,' by which name indeed she is pleased
to call him; but there is enough of spring in her, to suffice for all
deficiencies in him. Like the morning, she is a _little_ icy, but
sunshiny, sparkling, exhilarating, thoughtful, youthful--and decided. She
takes no marked interest in the breakfast.
'Sear leaf!' Madam, say on.
'I wish to go to the Falls.'
'To what!'
'To the Falls--to Trenton Falls.'
He drops his knife and fork. 'Whew! what! in winter?--in the snow?--on the
ice?'
'Certainly; that is just the season.'
'Crazy! You were there in the summer----'
'I know it; every one goes there in summer. I must see them now. There's
no time like it; in their drapery of snow and ice; in the sternness and
solitude, the wild grandeur of winter!'
'How you run on! You'll miss the cars at Utica.'
'I don't care.'
'You'll be a day later in New-York.'
'I don't care. I must see them in their hoary head.'
'You wish to see if they look as well in gray hairs as I do, perhaps.'
'Yes.'
'You really must go?'
'Yes.'
'You are a very imperious young lady; and allow me to say, that although
some young gentlemen----'
Lady, interrupting him: 'Shall I ring the bell?' She rings it. Enter
landlord. She orders the horse and cutter.
SCENE SECOND.
Enter landlord: 'All ready, Sir.'
'Will you allow me to ask if your feet are warmly clad, Madam?'
'I am ready for the ascent of Mont Blanc, or a ramble with a hunter upon
the shore of Hudson's Bay.'
'Very well; now for the cutter.'
'Landlord, just step round, if you please, and put that buffalo-robe a
little more closely about the lady. Hold fast, hostler! That horse likes
any thing better than standing still.'
'Ay, ay, Sir.'
'Now we are ready. Let go! Away we dash; 'on for the Falls!' Gently, my
good horse, gently round this corner; now 'go ahead!' How do you like my
steed, Madam?'
'A rein-deer could not transact this little business better.'
'Is not this a glorious morning?'
'Vivifying to the utmost! How far we fail of becoming acquainted with the
face of nature, when we only come to look upon it in summer! It is as if
one should only look upon the human face in the hues of youth, and never
upon the gray head; on the brow where high thoughts have left their
impress; on the face which deeper and sterner knowledge, research,
patience, have made eloquent, while stealing away the rose. As for me,
though I am but a girl, I like to see sometimes an old man; one who in the
trial-hour of life has kept his integrity; and when the snows of age fall
on him, he gently bends beneath their weight, like those old cedars yonder
by the way-side, beneath their weight of snow. Wherever the eye can pierce
their white vesture, all is still deep spring-green beneath; unchanged at
heart--strong and true. So I like to look on you, Sere Leaf.'
'Thank you! You have a gift at compliments.'
'Summer reminds one of feeling and Lalla Rookh; Winter; of intellect and
Paradise Lost.'
'How your voice rings in this clear air! Do you know what Dean Swift says
a sleigh-ride is like? 'Sitting in the draft of a door with your feet in a
pail of cold water!''
'Abominable! libellous! Exhilaration and comfort are so blended in me
that---- But is not that the house?'
'Ay; here we are! Smoke from the chimney; some one is there to welcome us,
no doubt. Gently, my Bucephalus, through this gate! There comes the
landlord. Treat my horse well, if you please; we are going to the Falls.'
SCENE THIRD.
'Madam, are you ready for the woods?'
'Quite. How still the air is! Why don't you thank me for insisting on
coming? You have no gratitude. There's not two inches of snow on the
ground. It all seems piled upon these grand old trees. There! see that
tuft of it falling and now spreading into a cloud of spangles in the
sun-light which streams down by those old pines. Hark! the roar of waters!
The sound seems to find new echoes in these snow-laden boughs, and lingers
as if loth to depart.'
'This way, Madam; the trees are bent too low over the path to allow a
passage there. We are near the bank which overlooks the first fall. Take
my arm; the brink may be icy. Lo! the abyss!'
'Magnificent! What a rush of waters! How the swollen stream foams and
rages!'
'And see! the pathway under the shelving rock where we passed in summer is
completely colonnaded by a row of tall ice pillars; gigantic,
symmetrical--fluted, even. What Corinthian shaft ever equalled them! What
capital ever rivalled the delicacy or grace of those ice-and-hemlock
wreaths about their summits!'
'And see those pines, rank above rank, higher and higher; stately and
still and snow-robed like tall centinels! Perhaps, Sear Leaf, the Old
Guard might have stood thus in the Russian snows over NAPOLEON, when he
bivouacked on the hill-side, and sought rest while his spirit was as
wildly tossed as the waters that dash beneath us.'
'Yes, Lady; or it may be that these trees in their perpetual green, in
their calmness and dignity, may be emblematic of the way in which the
angels who watch on earth look down on man. Perfect rest on perfect
unrest.'
'Ah! you grow gloomy.'
'Took I not my hue from you? On, then, for the higher fall!'
'These trees seem to have increased in stature since the summer we were
here. As we proceed, the snow lies thicker on them, and the branches seem
closer locked; the roof overhead more complete. How still the woods are!
Our very foot-fall is noiseless.'
Influenced by the scene, they pass on in silence along the path which
leads round the foot of the cone-like hill toward the cottage by the
higher Falls, whose deep roar now breaks upon the ear, and rolls through
the motionless forest. Thus then the Lady to Sear Leaf:
'Has GOD any other temple like this?'
'Never a one, reared by any hand save His!'
'What organ ever rolled so deep a bass through arches so grand! See how
the sunlight glances amid the gnarled branches of the roof, and here and
there falls through on the floor below; making those low icy forms look
like the shrubs of the valley of diamonds in the eastern story. Just so it
is that the light of truth struggles through entangled and dark mazes of
human error, and here and there illuminate some humble mind with its pure
ray; while others, tall and strong and haughty, like those old trees, are
left darkened.'
'You have a noble nature, and should be nobly mated. But here we are upon
the brow of the hill which leads to the cottage. The snow is deeper here:
gently, now; a slide down this bank might check even _your_ enthusiasm.
Take my arm; there--so; safe at the bottom! Let us go forward upon the
platform of the cottage over the Falls. No bench? Well, sit upon my
cloak.'
'No, I won't.'
'You must. There; be _pleased_ to sit and rest. What a gorgeous display of
frost-work and flashing light on fantastic forms of ice! How the spray
rises and waves and changes its hues in the sun! And the trees, how
delicately each sprig of the evergreens is covered with a dress so white
and shining 'as no fuller on earth could whiten them.''
'Even so, Sear Leaf; And I love to think that the same one who wove the
glorious dress to which you refer, to gladden Peter, made this dazzling
drapery, and gave us eyes to look upon it. It recalls to my mind the song
of the Seraphim: 'The whole earth is full of thy glory!''
'Did they not, Lady, sing of a moral glory?'
'No; decidedly no. There was no moral glory in the earth when they sang
that song. Even the chosen people of GOD are then and there denounced as
having abandoned Him. No; it was the glory of the works of His hands, such
as we look upon this day, which elicited their praise.'