ON SEEING AN EAGLE PASS NEAR ME IN AUTUMN TWILIGHT. SAIL on, thou lone, imperial bird, Of quenchless eye and tireless wing; As the night's breezes round thee ring! Thou stoop'st to earth so lowly now? Less stormy and unsafe than thine? So closely to this shadowy world, Yet lonely is thy shatter'd nest, Thy eyry desolate, though high; And lonely thou, alike at rest, Or soaring in the upper sky. The golden light that bathes thy plumes So come the eagle-hearted down, So come the high and proud to earth, When life's night-gathering tempests frown Over their glory and their mirth: So quails the mind's undying eye, That bore, unveil'd, fame's noontide sun; So man seeks solitude, to die, His high place left, his triumphs done. So, round the residence of power, A cold and joyless lustre shines, And on life's pinnacles will lower Clouds, dark as bathe the eagle's pines. But, O, the mellow light that pours From God's pure throne—the light that saves! It warms the spirit as it soars, And sheds deep radiance round our graves. THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA. - ITALIA'S vales and fountains, And forests more than ye; Of ancient heart and clime; Ours is the land and age of gold, And ours the hallow'd time! The jewell'd crown and sceptre And sculptured heroes all, Rome! with thy giant sons of power, I would not have my land like thee, Be hers a lowlier majesty, In yet a nobler mould. Thy marbles-works of wonder! Before the astonish'd gaze; The living on the dead,— O, ours a holier hope shall be To snatch us from the dust. Shall fix our image here,- A nobler BELVIDERE! Then let them bind with bloomless flowers The busts and urns of old, A fairer heritage be ours, A sacrifice less cold! Give honour to the great and good, So, when the good and great go down, To crowd those temples of our own, And when the sculptured marble falls, Our forms shall live in holier halls, GEORGE HILL. (Born, 1800.] GEORGE HILL is known to the public, only through his writings. From native diffidence, or some eccentricity of character, he appears to have shunned all contact with society. He was once married; "but how his marriage was brought about," writes one of his friends to me, "is an unravelled mystery; for he never spoke to a dozen ladies in his life." He is a native of Guilford, on Long Island Sound, near New Haven. He was admitted to Yale College in his fifteenth year, and, when he graduated, took the Berkleian prize, as the best classic. He was subsequently attached to the navy, as Professor of Mathematics; and visited in this capacity the Mediterranean, its storied islands, and classic shores. After his return, he was appointed librarian to the State Department, at Washington: a situation which he at length resigned on account of ill health, and was appointed Consul of the United States for the south-western portion of Asia Minor. The climate disagreeing with him, he returned to Washington; and is now attached again to one of the bureaus in the, Department of State. The style of his poetry is severe, and sometimes so elliptical as to embarrass his meaning; this is especially true of his more elaborate production, "The Ruins of Athens," written in the Spenserian stanza. He is most successful in his lyrics, where he has more freedom, without a loss of energy. His "Titania," a dramatic piece, is perhaps the most original of his productions. It is wild and fanciful, and graced with images of much beauty and freshness. FROM "THE RUINS OF ATHENS." THE daylight fades o'er old Cyllene's hill, And broad and dun the mountain shadows fall; The stars are up and sparkling, as if still Smiling upon their altars; but the tall, Dark cypress, gently, as a mourner, bendsWet with the drops of evening as with tearsAlike o'er shrine and worshipper, and blends, All dim and lonely, with the wrecks of years, As of a world gone by no coming morning cheers. There sits the queen of temples-gray and lone. She, like the last of an imperial line, Has seen her sister structures, one by one, To Time their gods and worshippers resign; And the stars twinkle through the weeds that twine Their roofless capitals; and, through the night, Heard the hoarse drum and the exploding mine, The clash of arms and hymns of uncouth rite, From their dismantled shrines the guardian powers affright. Go! thou from whose forsaken heart are reft The ties of home; and, where a dwelling-place Not Jove himself the elements have left, The grass-grown, undefined arena pace! [hear Look on its rent, though tower-like shafts, and The loud winds thunder in their aged face; Then slowly turn thine eye, where moulders near A CESAR'S arch, and the blue depth of space Vaults like a sepulchre the wrecks of a past race. Is it not better with the Eremite, Where the weeds rustle o'er his airy cave, Perch'd on their summit, through the long, still night To sit and watch their shadows slowly wave While oft some fragment, sapp'd by dull decay, Or, where the palm, at twilight's holy hour, weeps Vainly the Spring her quickening dews away, And Love as vainly mourns, and mourns, alas! for aye. Or, more remote, on Nature's haunts intrude, Where, since creation, she has slept on flowers, Wet with the noonday forest-dew, and woo'd By untamed choristers in unpruned bowers: By pathless thicket, rock that time-worn towers O'er dells untrodden by the hunter, piled Ere by its shadow measured were the hours To human eye, the rampart of the wild, Whose banner is the cloud, by carnage undefiled. The weary spirit that forsaken plods The world's wide wilderness, a home may find Here, mid the dwellings of long-banish'd gods, And thoughts they bring, the mourners of the mind; The spectres that no spell has power to bind, The loved, but lost, whose soul's life is in ours, As incense in sepulchral urns, enshrined, The sense of blighted or of wasted powers, The hopes whose promised fruits have perish'd with their flowers. There is a small, low cape-there, where the moon Upon it, and the wind's and wave's low moan, A what? a name-perchance ne'er graven there; At whom the urchin, with his mimic eye, Sits peering through a skull, and laughs continually. THE MOUNTAIN-GIRL. THE clouds, that upward curling from Melt into air: gone are the showers, All hearts are by the spirit that Breathes in the sunshine stirr'd; A thing all lightness, life, and glee; With glossy ringlet, brow that is At once both dark and bright; To leave its print on thing so fair- She stops, looks up-what does she see? Upon a balcony: High, leaning from a window forth, Nor flower, nor lady fair she sees→→→ That mountain-girl-but dumb That flower to her is as a tone Of some forgotten song, One of a slumbering thousand, struck She sees beside the mountain-brook, And toppling crag, a vine-thatch'd shed, The home of liberty; The rivulet, the olive shade, The grassy plot, the flock; That springs beneath the rock. Sister and mate, they may not from Her dreaming eye depart; And hence her eye is dim, her cheek Has lost its livelier glow; THE FALL OF THE OAK. A GLORIOUS tree is the old gray oak: He has stood for a thousand years, Has stood and frown'd On the trees around, He has stood like a tower As from plates of mail, From his own limbs shaken, rattle; He has toss'd them about, and shorn the tops (When the storm had roused his might) Of the forest trees, as a strong man doth The heads of his foes in fight. The autumn sun looks kindly down, And sprinkles the horn Of the owl at morn, As she hies to the old oak tree. Not a leaf is stirr'd; Not a sound is heard But the thump of the thresher's flail, Or the distant cry Of the hound on the fox's trail. The forester he has whistling plunged With his axe, in the deep wood's gloom, That shrouds the hill, Where few and chill The sunbeams struggling come: And, with lusty stroke, He wields it merrily:- With lusty stroke, And the old gray oak, Through the folds of his gorgeous vest She will come but to find him gone from where Like a cloud that peals as it melts to air, Though the spring in the bloom and the frost in gold On the stormy wave He shall float, and brave Shall spread his white wings to the wind, As he thunder'd when On the high and stormy steep. TO A YOUNG MOTHER. WHAT things of thee may yield a semblance meet, They once have bloom'd, a fragrance leave behind; And suns continue to light up the air, When set; and music from the broken shrine Breathes, it is said, around whose altar-stone His flower the votary has ceased to twine : Types of the beauty that, when youth is gone, Beams from the soul whose brightness mocks decline. SPRING. Now Heaven seems one bright, rejoicing eye, Puts forth, as does thy cheek, a lovelier dye, And each new morning some new songster brings. And, hark! the brooks their rocky prisons break, And echo calls on echo to awake, Like nymph to nymph. The air is rife with wings, Rustling through wood or dripping over lake. Herb, bud, and bird return-but not to me With song or beauty, since they bring not thee. NOBILITY. Go, then, to heroes, sages if allied, Go! trace the scroll, but not with eye of pride, Where Truth depicts their glories as they shone, And leaves a blank where should have been your own. Mark the pure beam on yon dark wave impress'd; So shines the star on that degenerate breast-Each twinkling orb, that burns with borrow'd fires,So ye reflect the glory of your sires. JAMES G. BROOKS. [Born, 1801. Died, 1841.] THE late JAMES GORDON BROOKS was born at Red Hook, near the city of New York, on the third day of September, 1801. His father was an officer in the revolutionary army, and, after the achievement of our independence, a member of the national House of Representatives. Our author was educated at Union College, in Schenectady, and was graduated in 1819. In the following year he commenced studying the law with Mr. Justice EMOTT, of Poughkeepsie; but, though he devoted six or seven years to the acquisition of legal knowledge, he never sought admission to the bar. In 1823, he removed to New York, where he was for several years an editor of the Morning Courier, one of the most able and influential journals in this country. Mr. BROOKS began to write for the press in 1817. Two years afterward he adopted the signature of "Florio," by which his contributions to the periodicals were from that time known. In 1828, he was married. His wife, under the signature of "Norna," had been for several years a writer for the literary journals, and, in 1829, a collection of the poetry of both was published, entitled " The Rivals of Este, and other Poems, by James G. and Mary E. Brooks." The poem which gave its title to the volume was by Mrs. BROOKS. The longest of the pieces by her husband was one entitled "Genius," which he had delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, in 1827. He wrote but little poetry after the appearance of this work. In 1830 or 1831, he removed to Winchester, in Virginia, where, for four or five years, he edited a political and literary gazette. He returned to the state of New York, in 1838, and established himself in Albany, where he remained until the 20th day of February, 1841, when he died. The poems of Mr. BROOKS are spirited and smoothly versified, but diffuse and carelessly written. He was imaginative, and composed with remarkable ease and rapidity; but was too indifferent in regard to his reputation ever to rewrite or revise his productions. GREECE-1832. LAND of the brave! where lie inurn'd And blazed upon the battle's fray: Land of the Muse! within thy bowers And every stream that flow'd along, Shall glory gild thy clime no more? Where proudly it hath swept before? Hath not remembrance then a charm To break the fetters and the chain, To bid thy children nerve the arm, And strike for freedom once again? No! coward souls, the light which shone On Leuctra's war-empurpled day, The light which beam'd on Marathon Hath lost its splendour, ceased to play; And thou art but a shadow now, Where sleeps the spirit, that of old Dash'd down to earth the Persian plume, When the loud chant of triumph told How fatal was the despot's doom?The bold three hundred-where are they, Who died on battle's gory breast? Tyrants have trampled on the clay Where death hath hush'd them into rest. Yet, Ida, yet upon thy hill A glory shines of ages fled; And fame her light is pouring still, Which sheds a faint and feeble ray, Greece! yet awake thee from thy trance, |