AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.

BY WASHINGTON ALLSTON.

ALL hail! thou noble land,
Our fathers' native soil!
Oh, stretch thy mighty hand,
Gigantic grown by toil,

O'er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore!
For thou with magic might,
Canst reach to where the light
Of Phoebus travels bright

The world o'er !

The genius of our clime,

From his pine-embattled steep,

Shall hail the great sublime;

While the Tritons of the deep

With their conches the kindred league shall proclaim.

Then let the world combine

O'er the main our naval line,
Like the milky way shall shine
Bright in fame.

Though ages long have pass'd

Since our fathers left their home,

Their pilot in the blast,

O'er untravell'd seas to roam,—
Yet lives the blood of England in our veins !

And shall we not proclaim

That blood of honest fame,
Which no tyranny can tame
By its chains?

THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP.

While the language free and bold

Which the bard of Avon sung,
In which our MILTON told,

How the vault of heaven rung,
When Satan blasted, fell with his host;
While this, with reverence meet,
Ten thousand echoes greet,

From rock to rock repeat

Round our coast;

While the manners, while the arts,

That mould a nation's soul,

Still cling around our hearts,

Between let ocean roll,

Our joint communion breaking with the sun

Yet, still, from either beach,

The voice of blood shall reach,

More audible than speech,

"We are one!"

THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP.

BY WILLIAM G. SIMMS.

'Tis a wild spot and hath a gloomy look;

The bird sings never merrily in the trees,

And the young leaves seem blighted. A rank growth
Spreads poisonously round, with power to taint,
With blistering dews, the thoughtless hand that dares
To penetrate the covert. Cypresses

Crowd on the dank, wet earth; and, stretch'd at length,
The cayman- -a fit dweller in such home-
Slumbers, half buried in the sedgy grass,

Beside the green ooze where he shelters him.

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THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP.

A whooping crane erects his skeleton form,
And shrieks in flight. Two summer ducks, aroused
To apprehension as they hear his cry,

Dash up from the lagoon with marvellous haste,
Following his guidance. Meetly taught by these,
And startled at our rapid, near approach,
The steel-jaw'd monster, from his grassy bed,
Crawls slowly to his slimy green abode,

Which straight receives him. You behold him now,
His ridgy back uprising as he speeds

In silence to the centre of the stream,

Whence his head peers alone. A butterfly,
That, travelling all the day, has counted climes
Only by flowers, to rest himself a while,
Lights on the monster's brow. The surly mute
Straightway goes down, so suddenly, that he,
The dandy of the summer flowers and woods,
Dips his light wings and spoils his golden coat
With the rank water of that turbid pond.
Wondering and vex'd, the plumed citizen
Flies, with a hurried effort, to the shore,
Seeking his kindred flowers; but seeks in vain :
Nothing of genial growth may there be seen,
Nothing of beautiful! Wild ragged trees,
That look like felon spectres-fetid shrubs,
That taint the gloomy atmosphere-dusk shades,
That gather, half a cloud and half a fiend
In aspect, lurking on the swamp's wild edge-
Gloom with their sternness and forbidding frowns
The general prospect. The sad butterfly,
Waving his lacker'd wings, darts quickly on,
And, by his free flight, counsels us to speed
For better lodgings, and a scene more sweet
Than these drear borders offer us to-night.

SPRING.

BY NATHANIEL P. WILLIS.

THE Spring is here, the delicate-footed May,
With its slight fingers full of leaves and flowers,
And with it comes a thirst to be away,

Wasting in wood-paths its voluptuous hours:
A feeling that is like a sense of wings,
Restless to soar above these perishing things.

We pass out from the city's feverish hum,

To find refreshment in the silent woods; And Nature, that is beautiful and dumb,

Like a cool sleep upon the pulses broods: Yet even there a restless thought will steal, To teach the indolent heart it still must feel.

Strange, that the audible stillness of the noon,

The waters tripping with their silver feet,

The turning to the light of leaves in June,

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And the light whisper as their edges meet: Strange, that they fill not, with their tranquil tone, The spirit, walking in their midst alone.

There's no contentment in a world like this,
Save in forgetting the immortal dream;

We

may not gaze upon the stars of bliss,

That through the cloud-rifts radiantly stream; Bird-like, the prison'd soul will lift its eye, And pine till it is hooded from the sky.

THE PAST.

BY WILLIAM C. BRYANT.

THOU unrelenting Past!

Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,

Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

Far in thy realm withdrawn

Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone

Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.

Childhood, with all its mirth,

Youth, manhood, age, that draws us to the ground, And last, man's life on earth,

Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.

Thou hast my better years,

Thou hast my earlier friends—the good—the kind, Yielded to thee with tears

The venerable form-the exalted mind.

My spirit yearns to bring

The lost one back: yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring

The bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.
In vain thy gates deny

All passage save to those who hence depart;
Nor to the streaming eye

Thou giv'st them back, nor to the broken heart.

In thy abysses hide

Beauty and excellence unknown: to thee

Earth's wonder and her pride

Are gather'd, as the waters to the sea;