PROEM TO YAMOYDEN.

Go forth, sad fragments of a broken strain,
The last that either bard shall e'er essay !
The hand can ne'er attempt the chords again,
That first awoke them, in a happier day:
Where sweeps the ocean breeze its desert way,
His requiem murmurs o'er the moaning wave;
And he who feebly now prolongs the lay,

Shall ne'er the minstrel's hallowed honours crave; His harp lies buried deep, in that untimely grave!

Friend of my youth, with thee began the love Of sacred song; the wont, in golden dreams, 'Mid classic realms of splendours past to rove, O'er haunted steep, and by immortal streams; Where the blue wave, with sparkling bosom gleams Round shores, the mind's eternal heritage, For ever lit by memory's twilight beams; Where the proud dead that live in storied page, Beckon, with awful port, to glory's earlier age.

There would we linger oft, entranced, to hear, O'er battle fields, the epic thunders roll; Or list, where tragic wail upon the ear, Through Argive palaces shrill echoing, stole; There would we mark, uncurbed by all control, In central heaven, the Theban eagle's flight; Or hold communion with the musing soul Of sage or bard, who sought, 'mid pagan night, In loved Athenian groves, for truth's eternal light.

Homeward we turned, to that fair land, but late Redeemed from the strong spell that bound it fast, Where mystery, brooding o'er the waters, sate And kept the key, till three millenniums past; When, as creation's noblest work was last, Latest, to man it was vouchsafed, to see Nature's great wonder, long by clouds o'ercast, And veiled in sacred awe, that it might be An empire and a home, most worthy for the free. And here, forerunners strange and meet were found,

Of that blessed freedom, only dreamed before;Dark were the morning mists, that lingered round Their birth and story, as the hue they bore. "Earth was their mother;" "-or they knew no

more,

Or would not that their secret should be told; For they were grave and silent, and such lore, To stranger ears, they loved not to unfold, The long-transmitted tales their sires were taught of old.

Kind nature's commoners, from her they drew Their needful wants, and learned not how to hoard, And him whom strength and wisdom crowned, they knew,

But with no servile reverence, as their lord. And on their mountain summits they adored One great, good Spirit, in his high abode, And thence their incense and orisons poured To his pervading presence, that abroad They felt through all his works, their Father, King, and God,

And in the mountain mist, the torrent's spray,
The quivering forest, or the glassy flood,
Soft falling showers, or hues of orient day,
They imaged spirits beautiful and good;
But when the tempest roared, with voices rude,
Or fierce, red lightning fired the forest pine,
Or withering heats untimely seared the wood,
The angry forms they saw of powers malign;
These they besought to spare, those blest for aid di-
vine.

As the fresh sense of life, through every vein,
With the pure air they drank, inspiring came,

Comely they grew, patient of toil and pain,
And as the feet deer's agile was their frame;
Of meaner vices scarce they knew the name;
These simple truths went down from sire to son,-
To reverence age,-the sluggish hunter's shame,
And craven warrior's infamy to shun,-

And still avenge each wrong, to friends or kindred done.

From forest shades they peered, with awful dread,
When, uttering flame and thunder from its side,
The ocean-monster, with broad wings outspread,
Came ploughing gallantly the virgin tide.
Few years have passed, and all their forests' pride
From shores and hills has vanished, with the race,
Their tenants erst, from memory who have died,
Like airy shapes, which eld was wont to trace,
In each green thicket's depth, and lone, sequestered
place.

And many a gloomy tale, tradition yet
Saves from oblivion, of their struggles vain,
Their prowess and their wrongs, for rhymer meet,
To people scenes, where still their names remain;
And so began our young, delighted strain,
That would evoke the plumed chieftains brave,
And bid their martial hosts arise again,

Where Narraganset's tides roll by their grave, And Haup's romantic steeps are piled above the

wave.

Friend of my youth! with thee began my song, And o'er thy bier its latest accents die; Misled in phantom-peopled realms too long,Though not to me the muse averse deny, Sometimes, perhaps, her visions to descry, Such thriftless pastime should with youth be o'er; And he who loved with thee his notes to try, But for thy sake, such idlesse would deplore, And swears to meditate the thankless muse no more.

But, no! the freshness of the past shall still Sacred to memory's holiest musings be; When through the ideal fields of song, at will, He roved and gathered chaplets wild with thee; When, reckless of the world, alone and free, Like two proud barks, we kept our careless way, That sail by moonlight o'er the tranquil sea; Their white apparel and their streamers gay, Bright gleaming o'er the main, beneath the ghostly

ray;

And downward, far, reflected in the clear Blue depths, the eye their fairy tackling sees; So buoyant, they do seem to float in air, And silently obey the noiseless breeze; Till, all too soon, as the rude winds may please, They part for distant ports: the gales benign Swift wafting, bore, by Heaven's all-wise decrees To its own harbour sure, where each divine And joyous vision, seen before in dreams, is thine. Muses of Helicon! melodious race Of Jove and golden-haired Mnemosyné; Whose art from memory blots each sadder trace, Aud drives each scowling form of grief away! Who, round the violet fount, your measures gay Once trod, and round the altar of great Jove, Whence, wrapt in silvery clouds, your nightly

On your own mountain's side ye taught of yore, Whose honoured hand took not your gift in vain, Worthy the budding laurel-bough it bore,-* Farewell! a long farewell! I worship thee no more.

A MONODY MADE ON THE LATE MI. SAMUEL PATCH, BY AN ADMIRER OF THE BATHOS.

By waters shall he die, and take his end.-SHAKESPEARE. Toll for Sam Patch! Sam Patch, who jumps no

more,

This or the world to come. Sam Patch is dead! The vulgar pathway to the unknown shore

Of dark futurity he would not tread.

No friends stood sorrowing round his dying bed; Nor with decorous woe, sedately stepped

Behind his corpse, and tears by retail shed;— The mighty river, as it onward swept,

In one great wholesale sob, his body drowned and kept.

Toll for Sam Patch! he scorned the common way
That leads to fame, up heights of rough ascent,
And having heard Pope and Longinus say,

That some great men had risen to falls, he went
And jumped, where wild Passaic's waves had rent
The antique rocks;-the air free passage gave,-
And graciously the liquid element
Upbore him, like some sea-god on its wave;
And all the people said that Sam was very brave.
Fame, the clear spirit that doth to heaven upraise,
Led Sam to dive into what Byron calls
The hell of waters. For the sake of praise,

He wooed the bathos down great water-falls;
The dizzy precipice, which the eye appals
Of travellers for pleasure, Samuel found

Pleasant, as are to women lighted halls, Crammed full of fools and fiddles; to the sound Of the eternal roar, he timed his desperate bound. Sam was a fool. But the large world of such,

Has thousands-better taught, alike absurd, And less sublime. Of fame he soon got much, Where distant cataracts spout, of him men heard. Alas for Sam! Had he aright preferred The kindly element, to which he gave

Himself so fearlessly, we had not heard That it was now his winding-sheet and grave,

Nor sung, 'twixt tears and smiles, our requiem for the brave.

He soon got drunk, with rum and with renown,
As many others in high places do ;-
Whose fall is like Sam's last-for down and down,

By one mad impulse driven, they flounder through
The gulf that keeps the future from our view,
And then are found not. May they rest in peace!
We heave the sigh to human frailty due--
And shall not Sam have his? The muse shall cease
To keep the heroic roll, which she began in Greece-
With demigods, who went to the Black Sea

For wool (and if the best accounts be straight, Came back, in negro phraseology,

With the same wool each upon his pate), In which she chronicled the deathless fate Of him who jumped into the perilous ditch

Left by Rome's street commissioners, in a state Which made it dangerous, and by jumping which He made himself renowned, and the contractors rich

I say, the muse shall quite forget to sound
The chord whose music is undying, if

She do not strike it when Sam Patch is drowned.
Leander dived for love. Leucadia's cliff

*Hesiod. Theog. 1. 1. 60. 30.

The Lesbian Sappho leapt from in a miff,
To punish Phaon; Icarus went dead,

Because the wax did not continue stiff;
And, had he minded what his father said,
He had not given a name unto his watery bed.
And Helle's case was all an accident,

As everybody knows. Why sing of these?
Nor would I rank with Sam that man who went
Down into Etna's womb-Empedocles,

I think he called himself. Themselves to please, Or else unwillingly, they made their springs; For glory in the abstract, Sam made his,

To prove to all men, commons, lords, and kings, That "some thi gs may be done, as well as other things."

I will not be fatigued, by citing more

Who jumped of old, by hazard or design, Nor plague the weary ghosts of boyish lore, Vulcan, Apollo, Phaeton-in fine

All Tooke's Pantheon. Yet they grew divine By their long tumbles; and if we can match Their hierarchy, shall we not entwine

One wreath? Who ever came "up to the scratch."
And for so little, jumped so bravely as Sam Patch?
To long conclusions many men have jumped

In logic, and the safer course they took;
By any other, they would have been stumped,
Unable to argue, or to quote a book,

And quite dumb-founded, which they cannot brook;

They break no bones, and suffer no contusion,
Hiding their woful fall, by hook and crook,

In slang and gibberish, sputtering and confusion; But that was not the way Sam came to his conclusion.

He jumped in person. Death or Victory

Was his device," and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die,

A blunder which the wisest men will make.
Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break,
To stand, the target of ten thousand eyes,

And down into the coil and water-quake,
To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies-
For this all vgar flights he ventured to despise.
And while Niagara prolongs its thunder,

Though still the rock primeval disappears, And nations change their bounds-the theme of wonder

Shall Sam go down the cataract of long years;
And if there be sublimity in tears,

Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed

When his frail star gave way, and waked his fers Lest, by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, That he was all a hoax, or that his pluck had fled. Who would compare the maudlin Alexander,

Blubbering, because he had no job in hand, Acting the hypocrite, or else the gander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand? His crying was not womanish, nor planned For exhibition; but his heart o'erswelled With its own agony, when he the grand Natural arrangements for a jump beheld, And measuring the cascade, found not his courage quelled.

His last great failure set the final seal

Unto the record Time shall never tear,

While bravery has its honour,-while men feel
The holy natural sympathies which are

First, last, and mightiest in the bosom. Where The tortured tides of Genesee descend,

He came his only intimate a bear,

(We know not that he had another friend),

The martyr of renown, his wayward course to end.

The fiend that from the infernal rivers stole

Hell-draughts for man, too much tormented him, With nerves unstrung, but steadfast in his soul, He stood upon the salient current's brim; His head was giddy, and his sight was dim; And then he knew this leap would be his last,Saw air, and earth, and water wildly swim, With eyes of many multitudes, dense and vast, That stared in mockery; none a look of kindness

cast.

Beat down, in the huge amphitheatre

"I see before me the gladiator lie," And tier on tier, the myriads waiting there The bow of grace, without one pitying eyeHe was a slave-a captive hired to die ;Sam was born free as Cæsar; and he might

66

The hopeless issue have refused to try;

No! with true leap, but soon with faltering flight,Deep in the roaring gulf, he plunged to endless night."

But, ere he leapt, he begged of those who made
Money by his dread venture, that if he
Should perish, such collection should be paid

As might be picked up from the "company"
To his Mother. This, his last request, shall be,-
Tho' she who bore him ne'er his fate should know,-
An iris, glittering o'er his memory—

When all the streams have worn their barriers low,
And, by the sea drunk up, for ever cease to flow.
On him who chooses to jump down cataracts,
Why should the sternest moralist be severe?
Judge not the dead by prejudice--but facts,
Such as in strictest evidence appear.
Else were the laurels of all ages sere.
Give to the brave, who have passed the final goal,—
The gates that ope not back,-the generous tear;
And let the muse's clerk upon her scroll,

In coarse, but honest verse, make up the judgment

roll.

Therefore it is considered, that Sam Patch

Shall never be forgot in prose or rhyme; His name shall be a portion in the batch

Of the heroic dough, which baking Time Kneads for consuming ages-and the chime Of Fame's old bells, long as they truly ring,

Shall tell of him; he dived for the sublime, And found it. Thou, who with the eagle's wing Being a goose, would'st fly,-dream not of such a thing!

THE DEAD OF 1832.

Oh Time and Death! with certain pace,
Though still unequal, hurrying on,
O'erturning in your awful race,

The cot, the palace, and the throne!

Not always in the storm of war,

Nor by the pestilence that sweeps From the plague-smitten realms afar, Beyond the old and solemn deeps: In crowds the good and mighty go,

And to those vast dim chambers hie:Where mingled with the high and low, Dead Caesars and dead Shakespeares lie! Dread Ministers of God! sometimes

Ye smite at once, to do His will,
In all earth's ocean-severed climes,
Those whose renown ye cannot kill!
When all the brightest stars that burn
At once are banished from their spheres,

Men sadly ask, when shall return
Such lustre to the coming years?

For where is he*--who lived so long

Who raised the modern Titan's ghost, And showed his fate, in powerful song, Whose soul for learning's sake was lost? Where he who backwards to the birth Of Time itself, adventurous trod, And in the mingled mass of earth

Found out the handiwork of God?t Where he who in the mortal head,‡

Ordained to gaze on heaven, could trace The soul's vast features, that shall tread The stars, when earth is nothingness? Where he who struck old Albyn's lyre,§ Till round the world its echoes roll, And swept, with all a prophet's fire,

The diapason of the soul?

Where he who read the mystic lore,

Buried, where buried Pharaohs sleep; And dared presumptuous to explore Secrets four thousand years could keep? Where he who with a poet's eye¶ Of truth, on lowly nature gazed, And made even sordid Poverty

Classic, when in HIS numbers glazed! Where that old sage so hale and staid,** The "greatest good" who sought to find; Who in his garden mused, and made All forms of rule, for all mankind? And thou-whom millions far removed++ Revered-the hierarch meek and wise, Thy ashes sleep, adored, beloved,

Near where thy Wesley's coffin lies. He too-the heir of glory-where Hath great Napoleon's scion fled? Ah! glory goes not to an heir!

Take him, ye noble, vulgar dead!
But hark! a nation sighs! for he,tt
Last of the brave who perilled all
To make an infant empire free,
Obeys the inevitable call!

They go, and with them is a crowd,
For human rights who THOUGHT and DID,
We rear to them no temples proud,
Each hath his mental pyramid.

All earth is now their sepulchre,

The MIND, their monument sublimeYoung in eternal fame they are

Such are YOUR triumphs, Death and Time.

GRENVILLE MELLEN.

GRENVILLE MELLEN Was born at Biddeford, Maine, June 19, 1799. He was the eldest son of Chief-justice Mellen, of the court of common pleas in that state. He was graduated at Harvard in 1818; studied law with his father, and settled at Portland, Maine. In 1823 he removed to North Yarmouth, in the same state, where he remained for five years. His poems at this period and subsequently to his death, appeared frequently in the periodicals, the magazines and annuals, of the time. In 1826 he pronounced before the Peace Society of Maine, at Portland, a poem, The Rest of Empires, and in 1828 an Anniversary Poem, before the Athenian

From Boston he came to reside in New York. His health, which was always delicate, was now much enfeebled; he was lingering with consumption when he made a voyage to Cuba, from which he returned without benefit, and died in New York September 5, 1841, at the residence of his friend, Mr. Samuel Colman, for whose family he felt the warmest affection, and whose house he had called his home for the latter years of his life. Before his death he was engaged upon a collection of his unpublished poems, which still remain in manuscript.

A glance at his poems shows a delicate susceptibility to poetical impression, tinged with an air of melancholy. He wrote with ease, often carelessly and pretentiously-often with eloquence. With a stronger constitution his verse would probably have assumed a more condensed, energetic expression. With a consciousness of poetic power he struggled with a feeble frame, and at times yielded to despondency. The memory of his tenderness and purity of character is much cherished by his friends.

THE BRIDAL

See at her side

Young Beauty at the altar! Oh! kneel down
All ye that come to gaze into her face,
And breathe low prayers for her.
Stand her pale parents in their latter days,
Pondering that bitter word-the last farewell!
The father, with a mild but tearless eye-
The mother, with both eye and heart in tears!
He, with his iron nature just put off,
Comes from the mart of noisy men awhile,
To witness holier vows than bind the world,
And taste, once more, the fount of sympathy!
She from the secret chamber of her sighs,
The home of woman! She has softly come
To stand beside her child-her only child-
And hear her pale-lipped promises. She comes
With hands laid meekly on her bosom-yet
With eye upraised, as tho' to catch one glance
Like that of childhood, from that pallid face
That hung for hours imploringly on hers,
In the long, watchful years of trial. Now,
She would endure those cruel years again,
To take her as an infant back to arms
That shielded and encircled her-ere she
Had blossomed into life. But lo! she stands
A plighted lovely creature at her side-
The child all lost in woman! The whole world
Contains for her no glory, now, like that
That centres in her full and thrilling heart.
Her eye roves not-is fixed not-but a deep
And lovely haze, as tho' she were in vision,

Has gathered on its dark transparency.
Her sight is on the future! Clouds and dreams!
Her head is bent-and on her varying cheek
The beautiful shame flits by-as hurrying thoughts
Press out the blood from th' o'erteeming citadel
Roses and buds are struggling thro' her hair,
That hangs like night upon her brow-and see!
Dew still is on their bloom! Oh! emblem fair,
Of pure luxuriant youth-ere yet the sun
Of toiling, heated life hath withered it,
And scattered all its fragrance to the winds.

And doth she tremble-this long cherished flower!
As friends come closer round 1 er, and the voice
Of adulation calls her from her dream!
Oh! wonder not that glowing youth like this,
To whom existence has been sunshine all,
A long, sweet dream of love-when on her ear
The tale of faith, of trial, and of death,
Sounds with a fearful music-should be dumb
And quake before the altar! Wonder not
That her heart shakes alarmingly-for now
She listens to the vow, that, like a voice
From out of heaven at night, when it comes down
Upon our fevered slumbers, steals on her
And calls to the recalless sacrifice!
Young maidens cluster round her; but she vows
Amid her bridal tears, and heeds them not.
Her thoughts are tossed and troubled-like lone barks
Upon a tempest sea, when stars have set
Under the heaving waters:-She hears not
The very prayers that float up round her; but
Veiling her eyes, she gives her heart away,
Deaf to all sounds but that low-voiced one
That love breathes through the temple of her soul!
Young Beauty at the altar! Ye may go
And rifle earth of all its loveliness,
And of all things created hither bring
The rosiest and richest-but, alas!
The world is all too poor to rival this!
Ye summon nothing from the place of dreams,
The orient realm of fancy, that can cope,
In all its passionate devotedness,

With this chaste, silent picture of the heart!
Youth, bud-encircled youth, and purity,
Yielding their bloom and fragrance up-in tears.
The promises have past. And welling now
Up from the lowly throng a faint far hymn
Breaks on the whispery silence-plaintively
Sweet voices mingling on the mellow notes,
Lift up the gathering melody, till all
Join in the lay to Jesus-all, save they
Whose hearts are echoing still to other sounds,
The music of their vows!

THE BUGLE.

But still the dingle's hollow throat,
Prolonged the swelling Bugle's note;
The owlets started from their dream,
The eagles answered with their scream.
Round and around the sounds were cast,
Till echo turned an answering blast.
Lady of the Lake

O, wild enchanting horn!
Whose music up the deep and dewy air,
Swells to the clouds, and calls on echo there,
Till a new melody is born.

Wake, wake again; the night

Is bending from her throne of Beauty down, With still stars beaming on her azure crown, Intense and eloquently bright!

Night, at its pulseless noon!

When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long, Barks at the melancholy moon!

Hark! how it sweeps away, Soaring and dying on the silent sky, As if some sprite of sound went wandering by, With lone halloo and roundelay.

Swell, swell in glory out!

Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart,
And my stirred spirit hears thee with a start,
As boyhood's old remembered shout.
Oh, have ye heard that peal,
From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements,
Or from the guarded field and warrior tents,
Like some near breath around
ye
steal!
Or have ye, in the roar

Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle's clamor to the skies,

Where wings and tempests never soar.
Go, go; no other sound,

No music, that of air or earth is born,
Can match the mighty music of that horn,
On midnight's fathomless profound!

PROSPER M. WETMORE. PROSPER MONTGOMERY WETMORE was born at Stratford on the Housatonic, Connecticut, in 1799. At an early age he removed with his parents to New York. His father dying soon after, he was placed, when scarcely nine years of age, in a counting-room, where he continued as a clerk till he reached his majority. He has since that period been engaged in mercantile business in the city of New York.

With scant early opportunities for literary culture, Mr. Wetmore was not long in improving a natural tendency to the pursuits of authorship. He made his first appearance in print in 1816, at the age of seventeen, and soon became an important aid to the struggling literature, and, it may be added, writers of the times. He wrote for the magazines, the annuals, and the old Mirror; and as literature at that period was kept up rather as a social affair than from any reward promised by the trade, it became naturally associated with a taste for the green-room, and the patronage of the theatrical stars of the day. Mr. Wetmore was the companion of Price, Simpson, Brooks, Morris, and other members of a society which supported the wit and gaiety of the town.

AM. Watmon

In 1830 Mr. Wetmore published in an elegant octavo volume, Lexington, with other Fugitive Poems. This is the only collection of his writings which has been made. Lexington, a picture, in an ode, of the early revolutionary battle, is a spirited poem. It has fire and ease of versification. The Banner of Murat, The Russian Retreat, Greece, Painting, and several theatrical addresses possessing similar qualities, are among the contents of this volume.

In 1832 Mr. Wetmore delivered a poem in Spenserian stanza on Ambition, before one of the literary societies of Hamilton College, New York, which has not been printed.

In 1838 he edited a volume of the poems of

James Nack, prefaced with a brief notice of the life of that remarkable person.

Mr.Wetmore, however, has been more generally known as a man of literary influence in society than as an author. He has been prominently connected with most of the liberal interests of the city, both utilitarian and refined-as Regent of the University, to which body he was appointed in 1833, promoting the public school system; as chairman of the committee on colleges and academies in the State Legislature, to which he was elected in 1834 and 1835; as member of the City Chamber of Commerce; as an efficient director of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb; as President of the American Art-Union, which rapidly extended under his management to a national institution; and as a most active member and supporter of the New York Historical Society. These varied pursuits, the public indexes to more numerous private acts of liberality, have been sustained by a graceful personal manner, a sanguine temperament which preserves the freshness of youth, and a wide versatility of talent.

The military title of General Wetmore, by which he is widely known, is derived from his long and honorable service in the militia organization of the state, of which he was for many years Paymaster-General.

PAINTING.

Peopling, with art's creative power, The lonely home, the silent hour. 'Tis to the pencil's magic skill

Life owes the power, almost divine,
To call back vanished forms at will,
And bid the grave its prey resign:
Affeetion's eye again may trace

The lineaments beloved so well;
The speaking look, the form of grace,
All on the living canvas dwell:
'Tis there the childless mother pays
Her sorrowing soul's idolatry;
There love can find, in after days,
A talisman to memory!'
"Tis thine, o'er History's storied page,
To shed the halo light of truth;
And bid the scenes of by-gone age
Still flourish in immortal youth—
The long forgotten battle-field,

With mailed men to people forth;
In bannered pride, with spear and shield,
To show the mighty ones of earth-
To shadow, from the holy book,
The images of sacred lore;

On Calvary, the dying look

That told life's agony was o'er-
The joyous hearts, and glistening eyes,
When little ones were suffered near-
The lips that badle the dead arise,

To dry the widowed mother's tear:
These are the triumphs of the art,
Conceptions of the master-mind;
Time-shrouded forms to being start,
And wondering rapture fills mankind!
Led by the light of Genius on,

What visions open to the gaze! "Tis nature all, and art is gone,

We breathe with them of other days: Italia's victor leads the war,

And triumphs o'er the ensanguined plain: Behold! the Peasant Conqueror Piling Marengo with his slain: