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THE TUSCAN MAID.

How pleasant and how sad the turning tide
Of human life, when side by side
The child and youth begin to glide

Along the vale of years;

The pure twin-being for a little space,
With lightsome heart, and yet a graver face,
Too young for wo, though not for tears.

This turning tide is URSULINA'S now;
The time is mark'd upon her brow;
Now every thought and feeling throw
Their shadows on her face;

And so are every thought and feeling join'd,
"Twere hard to answer whether heart or mind
Of either were the native place.

The things that once she loved are still the same;
Yet now there needs another name
To give the feeling which they claim,
While she the feeling gives;

She cannot call it gladness or delight;
And yet there seems a richer, lovelier light

On e'en the humblest thing that lives.
She sees the mottled moth come twinkling by,
And sees it sip the floweret nigh;
Yet not, as once, with eager cry

She grasps the pretty thing;

Her thoughts now mingle with its tranquil moodSo poised in air, as if on air it stood

To show its gold and purple wing.

She hears the bird without a wish to snare,
But rather on the azure air

To mount, and with it wander there
To some untrodden land;

As if it told her in its happy song
Of pleasures strange, that never can belong
To aught of sight or touch of hand.

Now the young soul her mighty power shall prove,
And outward things around her move,
Pure ministers of purer love,

And make the heart her home;
Or to the meaner senses sink a slave,
To do their bidding, though they madly crave
Through hateful scenes of vice to roam.
But, URSULINA, thine the better choice;
Thine eyes so speak, as with a voice:
Thy heart may still in earth rejoice
And all its beauty love;

But no, not all this fair, enchanting earth
With all its spells, can give the rapture birth
That waits thy conscious soul above.

ROSALIE.

O, POUR upon my soul again

That sad, unearthly strain,

That seems from other worlds to plain;
Thus falling, falling from afar,
As if some melancholy star
Had mingled with her light her sighs,
And dropped them from the skies.

No-never came from aught below
This melody of wo,

That makes my heart to overflow
As from a thousand gushing springs
Unknown before; that with it brings
This nameless light-if light it be-
That veils the world I see.

For all I see around me wears

The hue of other spheres;

And something blent of smiles and tears
Comes from the very air I breathe.
O, nothing, sure, the stars beneath,
Can mould a sadness like to this-

So like angelic bliss.

So, at that dreamy hour of day
When the last lingering ray
Stops on the highest cloud to play-
So thought the gentle ROSALIE
As on her maiden revery

First fell the strain of him who stole
In music to her soul.

TO REMBRANDT.*

As in that twilight, superstitious age When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind Seem'd fraught with meanings of supernal kind, When e'en the learned, philosophic sage, Wont with the stars through boundless space to range,

Listen'd with reverence to the changeling's tale; E'en so, thou strangest of all beings strange ! E'en so, thy visionary scenes I hail; That like the rambling of an idiot's speech, No image giving of a thing on earth,

Nor thought significant in Reason's reach,

Yet, in their random shadowings give birth To thoughts and things from other worlds that

come,

And fill the soul, and strike the reason dumb.

TO BENJAMIN WEST.

FROM one unused in pomp of words to raise
A courtly monument of empty praise,
Where self, transpiring through the flimsy pile,
Betrays the builder's ostentatious guile,
Accept, O WEST, these unaffected lays,
Which genius claims and grateful justice pays.
Still green in age, thy vigorous powers impart
The youthful freshness of a blameless heart:
For thine, unaided by another's pain,
The wiles of envy, or the sordid train
Of selfishness, has been the manly race
Of one who felt the purifying grace
Of honest fame; nor found the effort vain,
E'en for itself to love thy soul-ennobling art.

Occasioned by his picture of "Jacob's Dream."

JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.

[Born 1779.]

Mr. PAULDING is known by his numerous novels and other prose writings, much better than by his poetry; yet his early contributions to our poetical literature, if they do not bear witness that he possesses, in an eminent degree, "the vision and the faculty divine," are creditable for their patriotic spirit and moral purity.

He was born in the town of Pawling,-the original mode of spelling his name,-in Duchess county, New York, on the 22d of August, 1779, and is descended from an old and honourable family, of Dutch extraction.

His earliest literary productions were the papers entitled "Salmagundi," the first series of which, in two volumes, were written in conjunction with WASHINGTON IRVING, in 1807. These were succeeded, in the next thirty years, by the following works, in the order in which they are named: John Bull and Brother Jonathan, in one volume; The Lay of a Scotch Fiddle, a satirical poem, in one volume; The United States and England, in one volume; Second Series of Salmagundi, in two

volumes; Letters from the South, in two volumes; The Backwoodsman, a poem, in one volume; Koningsmarke, or Old Times in the New World, a novel, in two volumes; John Bull in America, in one volume; Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham, in one volume; The Traveller's Guide, or New Pilgrim's Progress, in one volume; The Dutchman's Fireside, in two volumes; Westward Ho! in two volumes; Slavery in the United States, in one volume; Life of Washington, in two volumes; The Book of St. Nicholas, in one volume; and Tales, Fables, and Allegories, originally published in various periodicals, in three volumes. Beside these, and some less pretensive works, he has written much in the gazettes on political and other questions agitated in his time.

Mr. PAULDING has held various honourable offices in his native state; and in the summer of 1838, he was appointed, by President VAN BUREN, Secretary of the Navy. He continued to be a member of the cabinet until the close of Mr. VAN BUREN's administration, in 1841.

ODE TO JAMESTOWN.

OLD cradle of an infant world,

In which a nestling empire lay,
Struggling a while, ere she unfurl'd

Her gallant wing and soar'd away;

All hail! thou birth-place of the glowing west, Thou seem'st the towering eagle's ruin'd nest! What solemn recollections throng,

What touching visions rise,

As, wandering these old stones among,
I backward turn mine eyes,

And see the shadows of the dead flit round,
Like spirits, when the last dread trump shall sound!

The wonders of an age combined,

In one short moment memory supplies;
They throng upon my waken'd mind,
As time's dark curtains rise.

The volume of a hundred buried years,
Condensed in one bright sheet, appears.

I hear the angry ocean rave,

I see the lonely little barque
Scudding along the crested wave,
Freighted like old Noah's ark,

As o'er the drowned earth 't was hurl'd,
With the forefathers of another world.

I see a train of exiles stand,

Amid the desert, desolate,

The fathers of my native land,

The daring pioneers of fate,

Who braved the perils of the sea and earth,
And gave a boundless empire birth.

I see the sovereign Indian range
His woodland empire, free as air;

I see the gloomy forest change,

The shadowy earth laid bare;

And, where the red man chased the bounding deer, The smiling labours of the white appear.

I see the haughty warrior gaze

In wonder or in scorn,
As the pale faces sweat to raise
Their scanty fields of corn,

While he, the monarch of the boundless wond,
By sport, or hair-brain'd rapine, wins his food.

A moment, and the pageant's gone;
The red men are no more;

The pale-faced strangers stand alone
Upon the river's shore;

And the proud wood-king, who their arts disdain'd,
Finds but a bloody grave where once he reign'd.

The forest reels beneath the stroke

Of sturdy woodman's axe;

The earth receives the white man's yoke,

And pays her willing tax

Of fruits, and flowers, and golden harvest fields, And all that nature to blithe labour yields.

Then growing hamlets rear their heads,

And gathering crowds expand,

Far as my fancy's vision spreads,

O'er many a boundless land,

Till what was once a world of savage strife,

Teems with the richest gifts of social life.

Empire to empire swift succeeds, Each happy, great, and free; One empires still another breeds,

A giant progeny,

Destined their daring race to run,
Each to the regions of yon setting sun.

Then, as I turn my thoughts to trace

The fount whence these rich waters sprung, I glance towards this lonely place,

And find it, these rude stones among.
Here rest the sires of millions, sleeping round,
The Argonauts, the golden fleece that found.

Their names have been forgotten long;
The stone, but not a word, remains;
They cannot live in deathless song,
Nor breathe in pious strains.
Yet this sublime obscurity, to me
More touching is, than poet's rhapsody.
They live in millions that now breathe;
They live in millions yet unborn,
And pious gratitude shall wreathe

As bright a crown as e'er was worn,
And hang it on the green-leaved bough,
That whispers to the nameless dead below.

No one that inspiration drinks;

No one that loves his native land; No one that reasons, feels, or thinks, Can mid these lonely ruins stand, Without a moisten'd eye, a grateful tear

Of reverent gratitude to those that moulder here.

The mighty shade now hovers round

Of HIM whose strange, yet bright career,
Is written on this sacred ground

In letters that no time shall sere;
Who in the old world smote the turban'd crew,
And founded Christian empires in the new.

And she! the glorious Indian maid,
The tutelary of this land,

The angel of the woodland shade,

The miracle of God's own hand,

Who join'd man's heart to woman's softest grace, And thrice redeem'd the scourges of her race.

Sister of charity and love,

Whose life-blood was soft Pity's tide,
Dear goddess of the sylvan grove,

Flower of the forest, nature's pride,
He is no man who does not bend the knee,
And she no woman who is not like thee!
Jamestown, and Plymouth's hallow'd rock
To me shall ever sacred be-

I care not who my themes may mock,
Or sneer at them and me.

I envy not the brute who here can stand,
Without a thrill for his own native land.

And if the recreant crawl her earth,
Or breathe Virginia's air,

Or, in New England claim his birth,
From the old pilgrims there,

He is a bastard, if he dare to mock

Old Jamestown's shrine, or Plymouth's famous rock.

PASSAGE DOWN THE OHIO.*

As down Ohio's ever ebbing tide,
Oarless and sailless, silently they glide,
How still the scene, how lifeless, yet how fair
Was the lone land that met the stranger there!
No smiling villages or curling smoke
The busy haunts of busy men bespoke;
No solitary hut, the banks along,

Sent forth blithe labour's homely, rustic song;
No urchin gamboll'd on the smooth, white sand,
Or hurl'd the skipping-stone with playful hand,
While playmate dog plunged in the clear blue wave,
And swam, in vain, the sinking prize to save.
Where now are seen, along the river side,
Young, busy towns, in buxom, painted pride,
And fleets of gliding boats with riches crown'd,
To distant Orleans or St. Louis bound.
Nothing appear'd but nature unsubdued,.
One endless, noiseless woodland solitude,
Or boundless prairie, that aye seem'd to be
As level and as lifeless as the sea;
They seem'd to breathe in this wide world alone,
Heirs of the earth-the land was all their own!
'Twas evening now: the hour of toil was o'er,
Yet still they durst not seek the fearful shore,
Lest watchful Indian crew should silent creep,
And spring upon and murder them in sleep;
So through the livelong night they held their way,
And 'twas a night might shame the fairest day;
So still, so bright, so tranquil was its reign,
They cared not though the day ne'er came again.
The moon high wheel'd the distant hills above,
Silver'd the fleecy foliage of the grove,
That as the wooing zephyrs on it fell,
Whisper'd it loved the gentle visit well
That fair-faced orb alone to move appear'd,
That zephyr was the only sound they heard.
Nodeep-mouth'd hound the hunter's haunt betray'd,
No lights upon the shore or waters play'd,
No loud laugh broke upon the silent air,
To tell the wanderers, man was nestling there;
All, all was still, on gliding bark and shore,
As if the earth now slept to wake no more.

EVENING.

"T WAS sunset's hallow'd time-and such an eve Might almost tempt an angel heaven to leave. Never did brighter glories greet the eye, Low in the warm and ruddy western sky: Nor the light clouds at summer eve unfold More varied tints of purple, red, and gold. Some in the pure, translucent, liquid breast Of crystal lake, fast anchor'd seem'd to rest, Like golden islets scatter'd far and wide, By elfin skill in fancy's fabled tide, Where, as wild eastern legends idly feign, Fairy, or genii, hold despotic reign.

*This, and the two following extracts, are from the "Backwoodsman."

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