き The memory of that day Which fills my waking thoughts, nor yet In dreams I still renew the rites Whose strong but mystic chain The spirit to its GOD unites, And none can part again. How oft the bishop's form I see, While he above me stands, Again the priests in meet array, As my weak spirit fails, Beside me bend them down to pray As then, the sacramental host Of God's elect are by, When many a voice its utterance lost, And tears dimm'd many an eye. As then they on my vision rose, And desk and cushion'd book repose In solemn sanctity, The mitre o'er the marble niche, The broken crook and key, That from a bishop's tomb shone rich The hangings, the baptismal font, The linen cloth, the plate, the cup, The solemn ceremonial past, And I am set apart To serve the LORD, from first to last, And I have sworn, with pledges dire, Which God and man have heard, O Thou, who in thy holy place Grant me, thy meanest servant, grace To win a good degree; Thou mayst he honoured, and in love WITH awful dread his murderers shook, As, radiant and serene, The lustre of his dying look Was like an angel's seen; Or Moses' face of paly light, When down the mount he trod, All glowing from the glorious sight And presence of his Gon. To us, with all his constancy, Be his rapt vision given, Revealments bright of heaven. THE CHRISTMAS OFFERING. WE come not with a costly store, From Ophir's shore of gold: But still our love would bring its best, A spirit keenly tried By fierce affliction's fiery test, And seven times purified: The fragrant graces of the mind, To give their perfume out, will find GEORGE D. PRENTICE. [Born, 1804.J MR. PRENTICE is a native of Preston, in Connecticut, and was educated at Brown University, in Providence, where he was graduated in 1823. He edited for several years, at Hartford, "The New England Weekly Review," in connection, I believe, with JOHN G. WHITTIER; and in 1831 THE CLOSING YEAR. he removed to Louisville, Kentucky, where he has since conducted the "Journal," of that city, one of the most popular gazettes ever published in this country. Nearly all his poems were written while he was in the university. They have never been published collectively. In the dim land of dreams. Remorseless Time- "Tis midnight's holy hour-and silence now It heralded its millions to their home 322 LINES TO A LADY. LADY, I love, at eventide, Eve's low, faint wind is breathing now, Through the dark pines; and thy sweet words And oft, mid musings sad and lone, When sleep's calm wing is on my brow, That form floats dim and beautiful; And, when the gentle moonbeam smiles On the blue streams and dark-green isles, In every ray pour'd down the sky, That same light form seems stealing by. It is a blessed picture, shrined In memory's urn; the wing of years Can change it not, for there it glows, Undimm'd by "weaknesses and tears;" Deep-hidden in its still recess, It beams with love and holiness, O'er hours of being, dark and dull, Till life seems almost beautiful. The vision cannot fade away; "Tis in the stillness of my heart, And o'er its brightness I have mused In solitude; it is a part Of my existence; a dear flower Breathed on by Heaven: morn's earliest hour That flower bedews, and its blue eye Lady, like thine, my visions cling To the dear shrine of buried years; We have been bless'd; though life is made Those still, those soft, those summer eyes, And still 'tis sweet. Our hopes went by To deep, undying melody; And still, around her early shrine, Our hopes are flown-yet parted hours Lady, adieu! to other climes I go, from joy, and hope, and thee; A weed on Time's dark waters thrown, A wreck on life's wild-heaving sea; I go; but O, the past, the past! Its spell is o'er my being cast,— And still, to Love's remember'd eves, With all but hope, my spirit cleaves. Adieu! adieu! My farewell words Are on my lyre, and their wild flow Is faintly dying on the chords, Broken and tuneless. Be it so! Thy name-O, may it never swell My strain again-yet long 't will dwell Shrined in my heart, unbreathed, unspokenA treasured word-a cherish'd token. THE DEAD MARINER. SLEEP on, sleep on! above thy corse Sleep on; no willow o'er thee bends No violet springs, nor dewy rose Its soul of love lays bare; But there the sea-flower, bright and young, Sleep on, sleep on; the glittering depths The music of its waves; Sleep on, sleep on; the fearful wrath But, when the wave has sunk to rest, Perchance will make their home with thee. Sleep on; thy corse is far away, But love bewails thee yet; For thee the heart-wrung sigh is breathed, And she, thy young and beauteous bride, SABBATH EVENING. How calmly sinks the parting sun! And beautiful as dream of Heaven It slumbers on the hill; Earth sleeps, with all her glorious things, Round yonder rocks the forest-trees Like saints at evening bow'd in prayer And through their leaves the night-winds blow And yonder western throng of clouds, Retiring from the sky, So calmly move, so softly glow, They seem to fancy's eye The blue isles of the golden sea, The night-arch floating by, The spirit of the holy eve Comes through the silent air Each soul is fill'd with glorious dreams, And thought is soaring to the shrine And holy aspirations start, Like blessed angels, from the heart, And bind-for earth's dark ties are riven- TO A LADY. I THINK of thee when morning springs I think of thee-I think of thee. I think of thee, when, soft and wide, The evening spreads her robes of light, And, like a young and timid bride, Sits blushing in the arms of night. And when the moon's sweet crescent springs In light o'er heaven's deep, waveless sea, And stars are forth, like blessed things, I think of thee-I think of thee. I think of thee;-that eye of flame, Those tresses, falling bright and free, That brow, where "Beauty writes her name," I think of thee-I think of thee. WRITTEN AT MY MOTHER'S GRAVE. THE trembling dew-drops fall Mother, I love thy grave! The violet, with its blossoms blue and mild, "Tis a sweet flower, yet must Its bright leaves to the coming tempest bow; And I could love to die: To leave untasted life's dark, bitter streams- And I must linger here, To stain the plumage of my sinless years, And mourn the hopes to childhood dear With bitter tears. Ay, I must linger here, A lonely branch upon a wither'd tree, Whose last frail leaf, untimely sere, Went down with thee! Oft, from life's wither'd bower, In still communion with the past, I turn, And, when the evening pale Bows, like a mourner, on the dim, blue wave, I stray to hear the night-winds wail Around thy grave. Where is thy spirit flown? I gaze above thy look is imaged there; O, come, while here I press My brow upon thy grave; and, in those mild Yes, bless your weeping child; And o'er thine urn-religion's holiest shrineO, give his spirit, undefiled, To blend with thine. n, soft and ri WILLIAM PITT PALMER. [Born, 1805.] MR. PALMER is descended from a Puritan anrecestor who came to America in the next ship after the May Flower. His father was a youthful soldier in the Revolution, and one of the latest, if not the last, of the survivors of the Jersey prison ship. Having acquired a competency as the captain of a New York merchantman, he retired from the sea early in the present century, to Stockbridge, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, where he spent the remainder of his days, in that sunshine of love and respect which has gilded the declining years of so many men of our heroic age. There, on the twenty-second of February, 1805, our poet was born, and named in honour of the great orator whose claims to gratitude are recognised among us in a thousand living monuments which bear the name of WILLIAM PITT. TE In his native county, Mr. PALMER has told me, the first and happiest half of his life was spent on the farm, in the desultory acquisition of such knowledge as could then be obtained from a New England common school, and a "college" with a single professor. The other half has been chiefly passed in New York, as a medical student, teacher, writer for the gazettes, and, for several years, clerk in a public office. Mr. PALMER is a man of warm affections, who finds a heaven in a quiet home. He is a lover of nature, too, and like most inhabitants of the pent-up city, whose early days have been passed in the country, he delights in recollections of rural life. Some of his poems have much tenderness and delicacy, and they are generally very complete and polished. 1 LIGHT. FROM the quicken'd womb of the primal gloom Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast, And when the broad tent of the firmament I pencill'd the hue of its matchless blue, I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers, Of Eden's virgin queen; And when the fiend's art, on her trustful heart, In the silvery sphere of the first-born tear To the trembling earth I fell. When the waves that burst o'er a world accursed And the Ark's lone few, the tried and true, With the wondrous gleams of my braided beams I bade their terrors cease; As I wrote on the roll of the storm's dark scroll Like a pall at rest on a pulseless breast, Night's funeral shadow slept, Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains When I flash'd on their sight the heralds bright As they chanted the morn of a Saviour born- Equal favour I show to the lofty and low, E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness and tears, Feel my smile the best smile of a friend: Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced, As the rose in the garden of kings; As the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear, The desolate Morn, like a mourner forlorn, And lead the young Day to her arms; I wrap their soft rest by the zephyr-fann'd west, From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep, When the cynosure star of the mariner Is blotted from the sky; And guided by me through the merciless sea, I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers, And mountain and plain glow with beauty again, What glories must rest on the home of the bless'd, |