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
The shrouded forms of mortal clay,
In whom the fire of valour burn'd,

And blazed upon the battle's fray:
Land, where the gallant Spartan few
Bled at Thermopyla of yore,
When death his purple garment threw
On Helle's consecrated shore!

Land of the Muse! within thy bowers
Her soul-entrancing echoes rung,
While on their course the rapid hours
Paused at the melody she sung-
Till every grove and every hill,

And every stream that flow'd along,
From morn to night repeated still
The winning harmony of song.
Land of dead heroes! living slaves!

Shall glory gild thy clime no more?
Her banner float above thy waves

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,
With helmet shatter'd-spear in rust-
Thy honour but a dream--and thou
Despised-degraded in the dust!

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,
Not on the living, but the dead!
But 't is the dim, sepulchral light,

Which sheds a faint and feeble ray,
As moonbeams on the brow of night,
When tempests sweep upon their way.

Greece! yet awake thee from thy trance,
Behold, thy banner waves afar;
Behold, the glittering weapons glance
Along the gleaming front of war!
A gallant chief, of high emprize,
Is urging foremost in the field,
Who calls upon thee to arise
In might in majesty reveal'd.

In vain, in vain the hero calls-
In vain he sounds the trumpet loud!
His banner totters-see! it falls

In ruin, Freedom's battle-shroud :
Thy children have no soul to dare

Such deeds as glorified their sires; Their valour's but a meteor's glare,

Which gleams a moment, and expires.

Lost land! where Genius made his reign,
And rear'd his golden arch on high;
Where Science raised her sacred fane,
Its summits peering to the sky;
Upon thy clime the midnight deep

Of ignorance hath brooded long,
And in the tomb, forgotten, sleep

The sons of science and of song.

Thy sun hath set--the evening storm
Hath pass'd in giant fury by,
To blast the beauty of thy form,

And spread its pall upon the sky!
Gone is thy glory's diadem,

And freedom never more shall cease To pour her mournful requiem

O'er blighted, lost, degraded Greece !

TO THE DYING YEAR.

THOU desolate and dying year!

Emblem of transitory man, Whose wearisome and wild career,

Like thine, is bounded to a span; It seems but as a little day

Since nature smiled upon thy birth, And Spring came forth in fair array, To dance upon the joyous earth.

Sad alteration! now how lone,

How verdureless is nature's breast,
Where ruin makes his empire known,
In autumn's yellow vesture dress'd;
The sprightly bird, whose carol sweet
Broke on the breath of early day,
The summer flowers she loved to greet;
The bird, the flowers, O! where are they?

Thou desolate and dying year!
Yet lovely in thy lifelessness

As beauty stretch'd upon the bier,

In death's clay-cold and dark caress; There's loveliness in thy decay,

Which breathes, which lingers on thee still, Like memory's mild and cheering ray Beaming upon the night of ill.

Yet, yet the radiance is not gone,

Which shed a richness o'er the scene, Which smiled upon the golden dawn, When skies were brilliant and serene; O! still a melancholy smile

Gleams upon Nature's aspect fair, To charm the eye a little while,

Ere ruin spreads his mantle there!

Thou desolate and dying year!

Since time entwined thy vernal wreath, How often love hath shed the tear,

And knelt beside the bed of death; How many hearts, that lightly sprung

When joy was blooming but to die, Their finest chords by death unstrung,

Have yielded life's expiring sigh,

And, pillow'd low beneath the clay,

Have ceased to melt, to breathe, to burn; The proud, the gentle, and the gay,

Gather'd unto the mouldering urn;
While freshly flow'd the frequent tear
For love bereft, affection fled;
For all that were our blessings here,
The loved, the lost, the sainted dead!

Thou desolate and dying year!

The musing spirit finds in thee Lessons, impressive and serene, Of deep and stern morality; Thou teachest how the germ of youth, Which blooms in being's dawning day, Planted by nature, rear'd by truth,

Withers, like thee, in dark decay.

Promise of youth! fair as the form

Of Heaven's benign and golden bow,
Thy smiling arch begirds the storm,
And sheds a light on every wo;
Hope wakes for thee, and to her tongue
A tone of melody is given,
As if her magic voice were strung
With the empyreal fire of heaven.
And love which never can expire,

Whose origin is from on high,
Throws o'er thy morn a ray of fire,

From the pure fountains of the sky;
That ray which glows and brightens still,
Unchanged, eternal and divine;
Where seraphs own its holy thrill,

And bow before its gleaming shrine.
Thou desolate and dying year!

Prophetic of our final fall;

Thy buds are gone, thy leaves are sear;
Thy beauties shrouded in the pall;
And all the garniture that shed

A brilliancy upon thy prime,
Hath like a morning vision fled
Unto the expanded grave of time.

Time! Time! in thy triumphal flight,

How all life's phantoms fleet away; Thy smile of hope, and young delight, Fame's meteor-beam, and Fancy's ray: They fade; and on the heaving tide,

Rolling its stormy waves afar,
Are borne the wreck of human pride,
The broken wreck of Fortune's war.

There, in disorder, dark and wild,

Are seen the fabrics once so high; Which mortal vanity had piled As emblems of eternity!

And deem'd the stately piles, whose forms
Frown'd in their majesty sublime,
Would stand unshaken by the storms

That gather'd round the brow of Time.

Thou desolate and dying year!

Earth's brightest pleasures fade like thine; Like evening shadows disappear,

And leave the spirit to repine.
The stream of life, that used to pour

Its fresh and sparkling waters on,
While Fate stood watching on the shore,
And number'd all the moments gone-
Where hath the morning splendour flown,
Which danced upon the crystal stream?
Where are the joys to childhood known,

When life was an enchanted dream? Enveloped in the starless night

Which destiny hath overspread; Enroll'd upon that trackless flight

Where the death-wing of time hath sped!

O! thus hath life its even-tide

Of sorrow, loneliness, and grief;
And thus, divested of its pride,

It withers like the yellow leaf:
O! such is life's autumnal bower,
When plunder'd of its summer bloom;
And such is life's autumnal hour,

Which heralds man unto the tomb!

TO THE AUTUMN LEAF.

THOU faded leaf! it seems to be
But as of yesterday,
When thou didst flourish on the tree
In all the pride of May:
Then t'was the merry hour of spring,
Of nature's fairest blossoming,

On field, on flower, and spray;
It promised fair; how changed the scene
To what is now, from what hath been!
So fares it with life's early spring;

Hope gilds each coming day.
And sweetly doth the syren sing

Her fond, delusive lay:

Then the young, fervent heart beats high,
While passion kindles in the eye,

With bright, unceasing play;
Fair are thy tints, thou genial hour,
Yet transient as the autumn flower.
Thou faded leaf! how like to thee

Is beauty in her morning pride,
When life is but a summer sea,

And hope illumes its placid tide:
Alas! for beauty's autumn hour,
Alas! for beauty's blighted flower,

When hope and bliss have died!
Her pallid brow, her cheek of grief,
Have thy sad hue, thou faded leaf!
Autumnal leaf! thus honour's plume,

And valour's laurel wreath must fade; Must lose the freshness, and the bloom

On which the beam of glory play'd;

The banner waving o'er the crowd,
Far streaming like a silver cloud,
Must sink within the shade,
Where dark oblivion's waters flow
O'er human weal and human wo.
Autumnal leaf! there is a stern

And warning tone in thy decay;
Like thee must man to death return
With his frail tenement of clay :
Thy warning is of death and doom,
Of genius blighted in its bloom,
Of joy's beclouded ray;
Life, rapture, hope, ye are as brief
And fleeting as the autumn leaf!

THE LAST SONG.

STRIKE the wild harp yet once again!
Again its lonely numbers pour;
Then let the melancholy strain

Be hush'd in death for evermore.
For evermore, for evermore,

Creative fancy, be thou still; And let oblivious Lethe pour

Upon my lyre its waters chill. Strike the wild harp yet once again! Then be its fitful chords unstrung, Silent as is the grave's domain,

And mute as the death-moulder'd tongue;
Let not a thought of memory dwell
One moment on its former song;
Forgotten, too, be this farewell,

Which plays its pensive strings along!
Strike the wild harp yet once again!
The saddest and the latest lay;
Then break at once its strings in twain,
And they shall sound no more for aye:
And hang it on the cypress tree :

The hours of youth and song have pass'd,
Have gone, with all their witchery;
Lost lyre! these numbers are thy last.

JOY AND SORROW.

Joy kneels, at morning's rosy prime,
In worship to the rising sun;
But Sorrow loves the calmer time,
When the day-god his course hath run:
When Night is on her shadowy car,
Pale sorrow wakes while Joy doth sleep;
And, guided by the evening star,
She wanders forth to muse and weep.
Joy loves to cull the summer-flower,
And wreathe it round his happy brow;
But when the dark autumnal hour

Hath laid the leaf and blossoms low;
When the frail bud hath lost its worth,

And Joy hath dash'd it from his crest,
Then Sorrow takes it from the earth,
To wither on her wither'd breast.

MR. GREENE was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on the tenth day of February, 1802. He was educated at Brown University, in that city, at which he was graduated in 1820. He was soon after admitted to the bar, and followed his profession until 1834, when he was elected to an office under the city government, in which he has since

remained. One of his earliest metrical compositions was the familiar piece entitled "Old Grimes," which was written in the year in which he entered the university.

His poems, except one delivered before a literary society, at Providence, were written for periodicals, and have never been published in a collected form.

THE BARON'S LAST BANQUET.

O'ER a low couch the setting sun
Had thrown its latest ray,
Where in his last strong agony

A dying warrior lay,
The stern, old Baron RUDIGER,

Whose fame had ne'er been bent By wasting pain, till time and toil

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Its iron strength had spent.

They come around me here, and say
My days of life are o'er,

That I shall mount my noble steed
And lead my band no more;
They come, and to my beard they dare
To tell me now, that I,

Their own liege lord and master born,—
That I-ha! ha!-must die.

"And what is death? I've dared him oft
Before the Paynim spear,-
Think ye he's entered at my gate,
Has come to seek me here?
I've met him, faced him, scorn'd him,
When the fight was raging hot,-
I'll try his might-I'll brave his power;
Defy, and fear him not.

"Ho! sound the tocsin from my tower,And fire the culverin,

Bid each retainer arm with speed,-
Call every vassal in;

Up with my banner on the wall,—
The banquet board prepare,
Throw wide the portal of my hall,
And bring my armour there!"
A hundred hands were busy then,—
The banquet forth was spread,-
And rung the heavy oaken floor

With many a martial tread,
While from the rich, dark tracery

Along the vaulted wall,

Lights gleam'd on harness, plume, and spear, O'er the proud, old Gothic hall.

TO THE WEATHERCOCK ON OUR STEEPLE.

THE dawn has broke, the morn is up,
Another day begun;

And there thy poised and gilded spear
Is flashing in the sun,

Upon that steep and lofty tower

Where thou thy watch hast kept, A true and faithful sentinel,

While all around thee slept.

For years, upon thee, there has pour'd
The summer's noon-day heat,

And through the long, dark, starless night,
The winter storms have beat;
But yet thy duty has been done,

By day and night the same,

Still thou hast met and faced the storm,
Whichever way it came.

No chilling blast in wrath has swept
Along the distant heaven,

But thou hast watch'd its onward course,
And distant warning given;
And when mid-summer's sultry beams
Oppress all living things,

Thou dost foretell each breeze that comes
With health upon its wings.

How oft I've seen, at early dawn,

Or twilight's quiet hour,
The swallows, in their joyous glee,

Come darting round thy tower,
As if, with thee, to hail the sun

And catch his earliest light, And offer ye the morn's salute,

Or bid ye both,-good-night.

And when, around thee or above,
No breath of air has stirr'd,

Thou seem'st to watch the circling flight
Of each free, happy bird,

Till, after twittering round thy head
In many a mazy track,
The whole delighted company

Have settled on thy back.

Then, if, perchance, amidst their mirth,
A gentle breeze has sprung,
And, prompt to mark its first approach,
Thy eager form hath swung,
I've thought I almost heard thee say,
As far aloft they flew,-
"Now all away!-here ends our play,
For I have work to do!"

Men slander thee, my honest friend,
And call thee, in their pride,
An emblem of their fickleness,
Thou ever-faithful guide.
Each weak, unstable human mind
A "weathercock" they call;
And thus, unthinkingly, mankind
Abuse thee, one and all.

They have no right to make thy name
A by-word for their deeds :-
They change their friends, their principles,
Their fashions, and their creeds;

Whilst thou hast ne'er, like them, been known
Thus causelessly to range;

But when thou changest sides, canst give
Good reason for the change.

Thou, like some lofty soul, whose course
The thoughtless oft condemn,
Art touch'd by many airs from heaven
Which never breathe on them,-
And moved by many impulses

Which they do never know,

Who, round their earth-bound circles, plod
The dusty paths below.

Through one more dark and cheerless night
Thou well hast kept thy trust,

And now in glory o'er thy head

The morning light has burst. And unto earth's true watcher, thus, When his dark hours have pass'd, Will come "the day-spring from on high," To cheer his path at last.

Bright symbol of fidelity,

Still may I think of thee:

And may the lesson thou dost teach
Be never lost on me;-

But still, in sunshine or in storm,

Whatever task is mine,

May I be faithful to my trust,
As thou hast been to thine.

STANZAS.

O, 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.
Do the dull flint, the rigid steel,
Which thou within thy hand mayst 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.
While thus, in things of sense alone,
Such truths from sense lie still conceal'd,
How can the living heart be known-
Its secret, inmost depths reveal'd?