THE SPHINX.

THE Sphinx is drowsy,

Her wings are furl'd,

Her ear is heavy,

She broods on the world.

"Who'll tell me my secret
The ages have kept?

I awaited the seer

While they slumber'd and slept.

"The fate of the manchild,——

The meaning of man,-
Known fruit of the unknown,
Dædalian plan.

Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep,
Life death overtaking,
Deep underneath deep.
"Erect as a sunbeam
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses
Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion

The thrush plies his wings,
Kind leaves of his covert!
Your silence he sings.

"The waves unashamed

In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet.
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,

By their animate poles.

"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirr'd,
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still,
Night veileth the morning,
The vapour the hill.
"The babe, by its mother
Lies bathed in joy,
Glide its hours uncounted,
The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being
Without cloud in its eyes,
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.

"But man crouches and blushes,

Absconds and conceals;

He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.

"Outspoke the great mother
Beholding his fear;-
At the sound of her accents

Cold shudder'd the sphere ;

"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best,
Yawns the Pit of the Dragon
Lit by rays from the Blest;
The Lethe of Nature

Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the Perfect
Which his eyes seek in vain.

"Profounder, profounder

Man's spirit must dive:

To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive.
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,-for new heavens
He spurneth the old.

"Pride ruin'd the angels,

Their shame them restores: And the joy that is sweetest Lurks in stings of remorse. Have I a lover

Who is noble and free,I would he were nobler Than to love me.

"Eterne alternation

Now follows, now flies, And under pain, pleasure,— Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre

Heart heaving alway, Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day.

"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits! Thy sight is growing blear; Hemlock and vitriol for the Sphinx

Her muddy eyes to clear."

The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,—
Said, "Who taught thee me to name?
Manchild! I am thy spirit;

Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

«Thou art the unanswer'd question:-
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh,

And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply,
Ask on, thou clothed eternity,
Time is the false reply."

Uprose the merry Sphinx,

And crouch'd no more in stone, She hopp'd into the baby's eyes, She hopp'd into the moon, She spired into a yellow flame, She flower'd in blossoms red, She flow'd into a foaming wave, She stood Monadnoc's head. Thorough a thousand voices

Spoke the universal dame, "Who telleth one of my meanings Is master of all I am."

THE PROBLEM.

I LIKE a church, I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul,
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature roll'd
The burdens of the Bible old;

The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,—
The canticles of love and wo.
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groin'd the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity.
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew,
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know'st thou what wove yon wood-bird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell;
Or how the sacred pine tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's Abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass,
Art might obey but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o'er him plann'd,
And the same power that rear'd the shrine,

Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentacost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting quires,
And through the priest the mind inspires

The word unto the prophet spoken,
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sybils told
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the Fathers wise,-
The book itself before me lies,-
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines;
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear,
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

THE FORE-RUNNERS.

LONG I follow'd happy guides:
I could never reach their sides.
Their step is forth and, ere the day,
Breaks up their leaguer and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right good will my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet.
Flowers they strew, I catch the scent,
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace,
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes
Mix'd with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travellers

Who the road had surely kept,
They saw not my fine revellers,
These had cross'd them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report,
In the country or the court.
Fleetest couriers alive
Never yet could once arrive,
As they went or they return'd,
At the house where these sojourn'd.
Sometimes their strong speed they slacken,
Though they are not overtaken:
In sleep their jubilant troop is near,
I tuneful voices overhear,
It may be in wood or waste,—
At unawares 't is come and pass'd.
Their near camp my spirit knows
By signs gracious as rainbows
I thenceforward and long after,
Listen for their harp-like laughter,
And carry in my heart for days
Peace that hallows rudest ways.

THE POET.

For this present, hard

Is the fortune of the bard

Born out of time; All his accomplishment

What others did at distance hear,

And guess'd within the thicket's gloom,

Was show'd to this philosopher,

And at his bidding seem'd to come.

From nature's utmost treasure spent Booteth not him.

When the pine tosses its cones

To the song of its waterfall tones,
He speeds to the woodland walks,
To birds and trees he talks:
Cæsar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home.
He goes to the river side,-

Not hook nor line hath he:

He stands in the meadows wide,-
Nor gun nor scythe to see;

With none has he to do,

And none to seek him,

Nor men below,

Nor spirits dim.

What he knows nobody wants;

What he knows, he hides, not vaunts.
Knowledge this man prizes best
Seems fantastic to the rest;
Pondering shadows, colours, clouds,
Grass buds, and caterpillars' shrouds,
Boughs on which the wild bees settle,
Tints that spot the violets' petal,
Why nature loves the number five,

And why the star-form she repeats ;— Lover of all things alive,

Wonderer at all he meets,

....

Wonderer chiefly at himself,-
Who can tell him what he is;
Or how meet in human elf
Coming and past eternities?
And such I knew, a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,
A lover true, who knew by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart;
It seem'd that nature could not raise
A plant in any secret place,
In quaking bog, on snowy hill,
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields known to bird and fox,
But he would come in the very hour
It open'd in its virgin bower,
As if a sunbeam show'd the place,
And tell its long descended race.

It seem'd as if the breezes brought him,
It seem'd as if the sparrows taught him,
As if by secret sight he knew
Where in far fields the orchis grew.
There are many events in the field,

Which are not shown to common eyes,
But all her shows did nature yield
To please and win this pilgrim wise.
He saw the partridge drum in the woods,
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn,
He found the tawny thrush's broods,
And the shy hawk did wait for him.

DIRGE.

KNOWS he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn ?

In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts,
I wander'd up, I wander'd down,
Beset by pensive hosts.

The winding Concord gleam'd below,
Pouring as wide a flood

As when my brothers, long ago,
Came with me to the wood.

But they are gone-the holy ones

Who trod with me this lonely vale, The strong, star-bright companions Are silent, low, and pale.

My good, my noble, in their prime,

Who made this world the feast it was,
Who learn'd with me the lore of Time,
Who loved this dwelling-place;
They took this valley for their toy,

They play'd with it in every mood,
A cell for prayer, a hall for joy,

They treated Nature as they would.
They colour'd the whole horizon round,
Stars flamed and faded as they bade,
All echoes hearken'd for their sound,
They made the woodlands glad or mad.
I touch this flower of silken leaf
Which once our childhood knew,
Its soft leaves wound me with a grief
Whose balsam never grew.

Hearken to yon pine warbler,
Singing aloft in the tree;
Hearest thou, O traveller!

What he singeth to me?

Not unless God made sharp thine ear
With sorrow such as mine,
Out of that delicate lay couldst thou
Its heavy tale divine.

"Go, lonely man," it saith,

"They loved thee from their birth, Their hands were pure, and pure their faith, There are no such hearts on earth.

"Ye drew one mother's milk, One chamber held ye all,

A very tender history

Did in your childhood fall.
"Ye cannot unlock your heart,
The key is gone with them;
The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem."

THE author of "The Last Night of Pompeii" and was born in Warwick, near the western border of Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1803. His father, a respectable physician, died in 1806, and his mother, on becoming a widow, returned with two children to her paternal home in Worcester.

E

Mr. FAIRFIELD entered Harvard College when thirteen years of age; but, after spending two years in that seminary, was compelled to leave it, to aid his mother in teaching a school in a neighbouring village. He subsequently passed two or three years in Georgia and South Carolina, and in 1824 went to Europe. He returned in 1826, was soon afterwards married, and from that period resided in Philadelphia, where for several years he conducted the North American Magazine," a monthly miscellany in which appeared most of his prose writings and poems.

He commenced the business of authorship at a very early period, and perhaps produced more in the form of poetry than any of his American contemporaries. "The Cities of the Plain," one of his earliest poems, was originally published in England. It was founded on the history of the I destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of Genesis. The "Heir of the World," which followed in 1828, is a poetical version of the life of ABRAHAM. It is in the Spenserian measure, and contains some fine passages, descriptive of scenery and feeling. His next considerable work, The Spirit of Destruction," appeared in 1830. Its subject is the deluge. Like the Cities of the Plain," it is in the heroic verse, in which he wrote with great facility. His Last Night of Pompeii"* was published in 1832. It is the result of two years' industrious labour, and was written amid the cares and vexations of poverty. The destruction of the cities of Herculaneum, Pompeii, Retina and Stabiæ, by an eruption of Vesuvius, in the summer of the year seventy-nine, is perhaps one of the finest subjects for poetry in modern history. Mr. FAIRFIELD in this poem exhibits a familiar acquaintance with the manners and events of the period, and his style is stately and sustained. His shorter pieces, though in some cases turgid and unpolished, are generally distinguished for vigour of thought and depth of feeling. An edition of his principal writings was published in a closely-printed octavo volume, in Philadelphia, in 1841.

The first and last time I ever saw FAIRFIELD was in the summer of 1842, when he called at my hotel to thank me for some kind notice of him in one of the journals, of which he supposed me

*Mr. FAIRFIELD accused Sir EDWARD BULWER LYT. TON of founding on this poem his romance of the "Last Days of Pompeii."

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to be the author. In a note sent to my apartment he described himself as " an outcast from all human affections" except those of his mother and his children, with whom he should remain but a little while, for he "felt the weight of the arm of Death." He complained that every man's hand had been against him, that exaggerated accounts had been published of his infirmities, and uncharitable views given of his misfortunes. He said his mother, who had been abused as an annoying old crone," in the newspapers, for endeavouring to obtain subscribers for his works, was attending him from his birth to his burial, and would never grow weary till the end. This prediction was verified. About a year afterwards I read in a published letter from New Orleans that FAIRFIELD had wandered to that city, lived there a few months in solitude and destitution, and after a painful illness died. While he lingered on his pallet, between the angel of death and his mother, she counted the hours of day and night, never slumbering by his side, nor leaving him, until as his only mourner she had followed him to a grave.

Not wishing to enter into any particular examination of his claims to personal respect, I must still express an opinion that FAIRFIELD was harshly treated, and that even if the specific charges against him were true, it was wrong to permit the private character of the author to have any influence upon critical judgments of his works. He wrote much, and generally with commendable aims. His knowledge of books was extensive and accurate. He had considerable fancy, which at one period was under the dominion of cultivated taste and chastened feeling; but troubles, mostly resulting from a want of skill in pecuniary affairs, induced recklessness, misanthropy, intemperance, and a general derangement and decay of his intellectual and moral nature. I see not much to admire in his poems, but they are by no means contemptible; and "the poet FAIRFIELD" had during a long period too much notoriety not to deserve some notice in a work of this sort, even though his verses had been still less poetical.

Persons of an ardent temperament and refined sensibilities have too frequently an aversion to the practical and necessary duties of common life, to the indulgence of which they owe their chief misfortunes and unhappiness. The mind of the true poet, however, is well ordered and comprehensive, and shrinks not from the humblest of duties. FAIRFIELD had the weakness or madness, absurdly thought to belong to the poetical character, which unfitted him for an honourable and distinguished life. He needed, besides his "some learning and more feeling," a strong will and good sense, to be either great or useful.