Give me the stars, give me the skies, Give me the heaven's remotest sphere, Above these gloomy scenes to rise

Of desolation and despair.

Those native fires, that warm'd the mind, Now languid grown, too dimly glow, Joy has to grief the heart resign'd,

And love, itself, is changed to wo. The joys of wine are all you boast,

These, for a moment, damp your pain; The gleam is o'er, the charm is lost

And darkness clouds the soul again. Then seek no more for bliss below,

Where real bliss can ne'er be found; Aspire where sweeter blossoms blow,

And fairer flowers bedeck the ground; Where plants of life the plains invest, And green eternal crowns the year :The little god, that warms the breast, Is weary of his mansion here. Like Phospher, sent before the day, His height meridian to regain, The dawn arrives-he must not stay To shiver on a frozen plain. Life's journey past, for fate prepare,"Tis but the freedom of the mind; Jove made us mortal-his we are,

To Jove be all our cares resign'd.

COLUMBUS TO FERDINAND.*

ILLUSTRIOUS Monarch of Iberia's soil,
Too long I wait permission to depart;
Sick of delays, I beg thy listening ear-

Shine forth the patron and the prince of art.

While yet Columbus breathes the vital air,

Grant his request to pass the western main: Reserve this glory for thy native soil,

And, what must please thee more, for thy own reign.

Of this huge globe, how small a part we knowDoes heaven their worlds to western suns deny? How disproportion'd to the mighty deep

The lands that yet in human prospect lie!

Does Cynthia, when to western skies arrived,

Spend her moist beam upon the barren main, And ne'er illume with midnight splendour, she, The natives dancing on the lightsome green? Should the vast circuit of the world contain

Such wastes of ocean and such scanty land? "Tis reason's voice that bids me think not so; I think more nobly of the Almighty hand.

Columbus was a considerable number of years engaged in soliciting the court of Spain to fit him out, in order to discover a new continent, which he imagined to exist somewhere in the western parts of the ocean. During his negotiations, he is here supposed to address King Ferdinand in the above stanzas.

Does

yon fair lamp trace half the circle round To light mere waves and monsters of the seas? No; be there must, beyond the billowy waste, Islands, and men, and animals, and trees. An unremitting flame my breast inspires

To seek new lands amid the barren waves, Where, falling low, the source of day descends, And the blue sea his evening visage laves. Hear, in his tragic lay, Cordova's sage :* "The time may come, when numerous years are past,

When ocean will unloose the bands of things,
And an unbounded region rise at last;
And TYPHIS may disclose the mighty land,

Far, far away, where none have roved before; Nor will the world's remotest region be

Gibraltar's rock, or THULE's savage shore." Fired at the theme, I languish to depart;

Supply the bark, and bid Columbus sail; He fears no storms upon the untravell'd deep; Reason shall steer, and skill disarm the gale. Nor does he dread to miss the intended course, Though far from land the reeling galley stray, And skies above, and gulfy seas below,

Be the sole objects seen for many a day. Think not that Nature has unveil'd in vain The mystic magnet to the mortal eye: So late have we the guiding needle plann'd, Only to sail beneath our native sky? Ere this was known, the ruling power of all Form'd for our use an ocean in the land, Its breadth so small, we could not wander long, Nor long be absent from the neighbouring strand. Short was the course, and guided by the stars,

But stars no more must point our daring way; The Bear shall sink, and every guard be drowned, And great Arcturus scarce escape the sea,

When southward we shall steer- -O grant my wish,

Supply the bark, and bid Columbus sail,
He dreads no tempests on the untravell'd deep,
Reason shall steer, and skill disarm the gale.

THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE.

FAIR flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouch'd thy honey'd blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:

No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.

*Seneca, the poet, a native of Cordova in Spain: "Venient annis secula seris, Quibus oceanus vincula rerum Lazet, et ingens pateat tellus, Typhisque novos detegat orbes ; Nic sit terris ultima Thule."

Seneca, Med., act iii., v. 375.

By Nature's self in white array'd,

She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died-nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;

Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,

For when you die you are the same;
The space between is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.

HUMAN FRAILTY.

DISASTERS On disasters grow,

And those which are not sent we make; The good we rarely find below,

Or, in the search, the road mistake.

The object of our fancied joys

With eager eye we keep in view: Possession, when acquired, destroys

The object, and the passion too.

The hat that hid Belinda's hair

Was once the darling of her eye; "Tis now dismiss'd, she knows not where; Is laid aside, she knows not why.

Life is to most a nauseous pill,

A treat for which they dearly pay: Let's take the good, avoid the ill, Discharge the debt, and walk away.

THE PROSPECT OF PEACE.

THOUGH clad in winter's gloomy dress
All Nature's works appear,
Yet other prospects rise to bless
The new returning year:
The active sail again is seen

To greet our western shore,
Gay plenty smiles, with brow serene,
And wars distract no more.

No more the vales, no more the plains
An iron harvest yield;

Peace guards our doors, impels our swains
To till the grateful field:

From distant climes, no longer foes, (Their years of misery past,) Nations arrive, to find repose

In these domains at last.

And, if a more delightful scene
Attracts the mortal eye,

Where clouds nor darkness intervene,
Behold, aspiring high,

On freedom's soil those fabrics plann'd,
On virtue's basis laid,

That make secure our native land,
And prove our toils repaid.

Ambitious aims and pride severe,

Would you at distance keep,
What wanderer would not tarry here,
Here charm his cares to sleep?
O, still may health her balmy wings
O'er these fair fields expand,

While commerce from all climates brings
The products of each land.

Through toiling care and lengthen'd views,
That share alike our span,

Gay, smiling hope her heaven pursues,
The eternal friend of man:

The darkness of the days to come

She brightens with her ray,
And smiles o'er Nature's gaping tomb,
When sickening to decay!

TO A NIGHT-FLY, APPROACHING A

CANDLE.

ATTRACTED by the taper's rays,
How carelessly you come to gaze
On what absorbs you in its blaze!
O fly! I bid you have a care:
You do not heed the danger near-
This light, to you a blazing star.

Already you have scorch'd your wings:
What courage, or what folly brings
You, hovering near such blazing things?
Ah, me! you touch this little sun-
One circuit more, and all is done!—
Now to the furnace you are gone!-

Thus folly, with ambition join'd,
Attracts the insects of mankind,
And sways the superficial mind:

Thus, power has charms which all admire,

But dangerous is that central fire

If you are wise, in time retire.

JOHN TRUMBULL, LL.D., the author of "McFingal," was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on the twenty-fourth day of April, 1750. His father was a Congregational clergyman, and for many years one of the trustees of Yale College. He early instructed his son in the elementary branches of education, and was induced by the extraordinary vigour of his intellect, and his unremitted devotion to study, to give him lessons in the Greek and Latin languages before he was six years old. At the age of seven, after a careful examination, young TRUMBULL was declared to be sufficiently advanced to merit admission into Yale College. On account of his extreme youth, however, at that time, and his subsequent ill health, he was not sent to reside at New Haven until 1763, when he was in his thirteenth year. His college life was a continued series of successes. His superior genius, attainments and industry enabled him in every trial to surpass his competitors for academic honours; and such of his collegiate exercises as have been printed evince a discipline of thought and style rarely discernible in more advanced years, and after greater opportunities of improvement. He was graduated in 1767, but remained in the college three years longer, devoting his attention principally to the study of polite letters. In this period he became acquainted with DWIGHT, then a member of one of the younger classes, who had attracted considerable attention by translating in a very creditable manner two of the finest odes of Horace, and contracted with him a lasting friendship. On the resignation of two of the tutors in the college in 1771, TRUMBULL and DWIGHT were elected to fill the vacancies, and exerted all their energies for several years to introduce an improved course of study and system of discipline into the seminary. At this period the ancient languages, scholastic theology, logic, and mathematics were dignified with the title of "solid learning," and the study of belles lettres was decried as useless and an unjustifiable waste of time. The two friends were exposed to a torrent of censure and ridicule, but they persevered, and in the end were successful. TRUMBULL wrote many humorous prose and poetical essays while he was a tutor, which were published in the gazettes of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and with DwIGHT produced a series in the manner of the "Spectator," which extended to more than forty numbers. The

quaintance with rhetoric and belles lettres, then obtained more generally than now, and dunces had but to remain four years in the neighbourhood of a university to be admitted to the fellowship of scholars and the ministers of religion. In the satire, Toм BRAINLESS, a country clown, too indolent to follow the plough, is sent by his weakminded parents to college, where a degree is gained by residence, and soon after appears as a full-wigged parson, half-fanatic, half-fool, to do his share toward bringing Christianity into contempt. Another principal person is DICK HAIRBRAIN, an impudent fop, who is made a master of arts in the same way; and in the third part is introduced a character of the same description, belonging to the other sex.

During the last years of his residence at College, TRUMBULL paid as much attention as his other avocations would permit to the study of the law, and in 1773 resigned his tutorship and was admitted to the bar of Connecticut. He did not seek business in the courts, however, but went immediately to Boston, and entered as a student the office of JOHN ADAMS, afterward President of the United States, and at that time an eminent advocate and counsellor. He was now in the focus of American politics. The controversy with Great Britain was rapidly approaching a crisis, and he entered with characteristic ardour into all the discussions of the time, employing his leisure hours in writing for the gazettes and in partisan correspondence. In 1774, he published anonymously his " Essay on the Times," and soon after returned to New Haven, and with the most flattering prospects commenced the practice of his profession.

The first gun of the revolution echoed along the continent in the following year, and private pursuits were abandoned in the general devotion to the cause of liberty. TRUMBULL wrote the first part of "McFingal," which was immediately printed in Philadelphia, where the Congress was then in session, and soon after republished in numerous editions in different parts of this country and in England. It was not finished until 1782, when it was issued complete in three cantos at Hartford, to which place TRUMBULL had removed in the preceding year.

"McFingal" is in the Hudibrastic vein, and much the best imitation of the great satire of BUTLER that has been written. The hero is a Scotish justice of the peace residing in the vicinity of Boston at the beginning of the revolution, and the first two cantos are principally occupied with a discussion between him and one HONORIUS ON the course of the British government, in which MCFINGAL, an unyielding loyalist, endeavours to

make proselytes, while all his arguments are directed against himself. His zeal and his logic are together irresistibly ludicrous, but there is nothing in the character unnatural, as it is common for men who read more than they think, or attempt to discuss questions they do not understand, to use arguments which refute the positions they wish to defend. The meeting ends with a riot, in which MCFINGAL is seized, tried by the mob, convicted of violent toryism, and tarred and feathered. On being set at liberty, he assembles his friends around him in his cellar, and harangues them until they are dispersed by the whigs, when he escapes to Boston, and the poem closes. These are all the important incidents of the story, yet it is never tedious, and few commence reading it who do not follow it to the end and regret its termination. Throughout the three cantos the wit is never separated from the character of the hero.

After the removal of TRUMBULL to Hartford a social club was established in that city, of which BARLOW, Colonel HUMPHRIES, Doctor LEMUEL HOPKINS, and our author, were members. They produced numerous essays on literary, moral, and political subjects, none of which attracted more applause than a series of papers in imitation of the "Rolliad," (a popular English work, ascribed to Fox, SHERIDAN, and their associates,) entitled "American Antiquities" and "Extracts from the Anarchiad," originally printed in the New Haven

Gazette for 1786 and 1787. These papers have never been collected, but they were republished from one end of the country to the other in the periodicals of the time, and were supposed to have had considerable influence on public taste and opinions, and by the boldness of their satire to have kept in abeyance the leaders of political disorganization and infidel philosophy. TRUMBULL also aided BARLOW in the preparation of his edition of WATTs's version of the Psalms, and wrote several of the paraphrases in that work which have been generally attributed to the author of "The Columbiad."

TRUMBULL was a popular lawyer, and was appointed to various honourable offices by the people and the government. From 1795, in consequence of ill health, he declined all public employment, and was for several years an invalid. At length, recovering his customary vigour, in 1800 he was elected a member of the legislature, and in the year following a judge of the Superior Court. In 1808 he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Errors, and held the office until 1819, when he finally retired from public life. His poems were collected and published in 1820, and in 1825 he removed to Detroit, where his daughter, the wife of the Honourable WILLIAM WOODBRIDGE, now a member of the United States Senate for Michigan, was residing, and died there in May, 1831, in the eighty-first year of his age.

III.

Descend, and, graceful, in thy hand,
With thee bring thy magic wand,
And thy pencil, taught to glow
In all the hues of Iris' bow.
And call thy bright, aerial train,
Each fairy form and visionary shade,

That in the Elysian land of dreams,
The flower-enwoven banks along,

Or bowery maze, that shades the purple streams,
Where gales of fragrance breathe the enamour'd

In more than mortal charms array'd, [song, People the airy vales and revel in thy reign.

IV.

But drive afar the haggard crew, That haunt the guilt-encrimson'd bed,

Or dim before the frenzied view Stalk with slow and sullen tread;

While furies, with infernal glare, Wave their pale torches through the troubled air; And deep from Darkness' inmost womb, Sad groans dispart the icy tomb,

And bid the sheeted spectre rise,

Mid shrieks and fiery shapes and deadly fantasies.

See a note on this subject appended to the Life of BARLOW in this volume.

Or call to my transported eyes
Happier scenes, for lovers made;
Bid the twilight grove arise,

Lead the rivulet through the glade.
In some flowering arbour laid,
Where opening roses taste the honey'd dew,
And plumy songsters carol through the shade,
Recall my long-lost wishes to my view.

Bid Time's inverted glass return

The scenes of bliss, with hope elate,
And hail the once expected morn,

And burst the iron bands of fate
Graced with all her virgin charms,
Attractive smiles and past, responsive flame,
Restore my ***** to my arms,

Just to her vows and faithful to her fame.

VIII.

Hymen's torch, with hallow'd fire,

Rising beams the auspicious ray.
Wake the dance, the festive lyre

Warbling sweet the nuptial lay;
Gay with beauties, once alluring,

Bid the bright enchantress move,
Eyes that languish, smiles of rapture,
And the rosy blush of love.

On her glowing breast reclining,
Mid that paradise of charms,
Every blooming grace combining,
Yielded to my circling arms,

I clasp the fair, and, kindling at the view,
Press to my heart the dear deceit, and think the
transport true.

IX.

Hence, false, delusive dreams,

Fantastic hopes and mortal passions vain

Ascend, my soul, to nobler themes
Of happier import and sublimer strain.
Rising from this sphere of night,
Pierce yon blue vault, ingemm'd with golden fires;
Beyond where Saturn's languid car retires,
Or Sirius keen outvies the solar ray,
To worlds from every dross terrene refined,
Realms of the pure, ethereal mind,

Warm with the radiance of unchanging day:
Where cherub-forms and essences of light,
With holy song and heavenly rite,

From rainbow clouds their strains immortal pour;
An earthly guest, in converse high,
Explore the wonders of the sky,
From orb to orb with guides celestial soar,
And take, through heaven's wide round, the uni-
yersal tour;

X.

And find that mansion of the blest,

Where, rising ceaseless from this lethal stage, Heaven's favourite sons, from earthly chains released,

In happier Eden pass the eternal age.

The newborn soul beholds the angelic face Of holy sires, that throng the blissful plain, Or meets his consort's loved embrace, Or clasps the son, so lost, so mourn'd in vain. There, charm'd with each endearing wile, Maternal fondness greets her infant's smile; Long-sever'd friends, in transport doubly dear, Unite and join the interminable train

Hail, sacred shade! for not to dust consign'd, Lost in the grave, thine ardent spirit lies,

Nor fail'd that warm benevolence of mind To claim the birthright of its native skies.

What radiant glory and celestial grace, Immortal meed of piety and praise! Come to my visions, friendly shade, 'Gainst all assaults my wayward weakness arm, Raise my low thoughts, my nobler wishes aid, When passions rage, or vain allurements charm; The pomp of learning and the boast of art, The glow, that fires in genius' boundless range, The pride, that wings the keen, satiric dart, And hails the triumph of revenge. Teach me, like thee, to feel and know Our humble station in this vale of wo, Twilight of life, illumed with feeble ray, The infant dawning of eternal day;

With heart expansive, through this scene improve The social soul of harmony and love;

To heavenly hopes alone aspire and prize The virtue, knowledge, bliss, and glory of the skies.

* Rev. JOSEPH Howɛ, pastor of a church in Boston; some time a fellow-tutor with the author at Yale College. He died in 1775. The conclusion of the ode was varied, by inserting this tribute of affection.