*

TO MISS SUSAN BECKFORD,

ON HER SINGING.

I MORE than once have heard, at night,
A song like those thy lips have given,
And it was sung by shapes of light,

Who seemed, like thee, to breathe of heaven!

But this was all a dream of sleep,

And I have said, when morning shone
"Oh! why should fairy fancy keep
These wonders for herself alone?"

I knew not then that fate had lent
Such tones to one of mortal birth;
I knew not then that Heaven had sent
A voice, a form like thine on earth!
And yet, in all that flowery maze

Through which my life has loved to tread,
When I have heard the sweetest lays

From lips of dearest lustre shed;

When I have felt the warbled word

From beauty's mouth of perfume sighing,
Sweet as music's hallow'd bird

Upon a rose's bosom lying;

Though form and song at once combined
Their loveliest bloom and softest thrill,
My heart hath sighed, my heart hath pined,
For something softer, lovelier still!

Oh! I have found it all, at last,

In thee, thou sweetest living lyre
Through which the soul hath ever pass'd
Its harmonizing breath of fire!
All that my best and wildest dream,
In fancy's hour, could hear or see
Of music's sigh or beauty's beam,
Are realized, at once, in thee!

LINES

WRITTEN At the coнos, or falls OF THE MOHAWK RIVER.*

Già era in loco ove s'udia 'l rimbombo

Dell' acqua

FROM rise of morn till set of sun

I've seen the mighty Mohawk run,

Dante.

There is a dreary and savage character in the country immediately about these Falls, which is much more in harmony with the wildness of such a scene than the cultivated lands in the neighbourhood of Niagara. See the drawing of them in Mr. Weld's book. According to him, the perpendicular height of the Cohos Fall is fifty feet; but the Marquis de Chastellux makes it seventy

six.

The fine rainbow, which is continually forming and dissolving as the spray rises into the light of the sun, is perhaps the most interesting beauty which these wonderful cataracts exhibit.

And as I marked the woods of pine
Along his mirror darkly shine,
Like tall and gloomy forms that pass
Before the wizard's midnight glass;
And as I viewed the hurrying pace
With which he ran his turbid race,
Rushing, alike untired and wild,

Through shades that frowned and flowers that smiled,
Flying by every green recess

That woo'd him to its calm caress,

Yet, sometimes turning with the wind,

As if to leave one look behind,—

Oh! I have thought, and thinking sighed--
How like to thee, thou restless tide!
May be the lot, the life of him,
Who roams along thy water's brim!
Through what alternate shades of woe,
And flowers of joy my path may go !
How many an humble, still retreat
May rise to court my weary feet,
While still pursuing, still unblest,
I wander on, nor dare to rest!
But, urgent as the doom that calls
Thy water to its destined falls,
I see the world's bewildering force
Hurry my heart's devoted course
From lapse to lapse, till life be done,
And the lost current cease to run !
Oh may my falls be bright as thine!
May Heaven's forgiving rainbow shine
Upon the mist that circles me,
As soft as now it hangs o'er thee !

CHLORIS AND FANNY.

CHLORIS! if I were Persia's king,
I'd make my graceful queen of thee;
While Fanny, wild and artless thing,
Should but thy humble handmaid be.
There is but one objection in it—
That, verily, I'm much afraid
I should, in some unlucky minute,
Forsake the mistress for the maid!

SONG OF THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE WOODS.*

Qua via difficilis, quaque est via nulla

Ovid. Metam. lib. iii. v. 227.

Now the vapour hot and damp,
Shed by day's expiring lamp,

The idea of this poem occurred to me in passing through the very dreary wilderness between Batavia, a new settlement in the midst of the woods, and

T

Through the misty ether spreads
Every ill the white man dreads;
Fiery fever's thirsty thrill,
Fitful ague's shivering chill!
Hark! I hear the traveller's song,
As he winds the woods along!
Christian! 'tis the song of fear;
Wolves are round thee, night is near,
And the wild, thou dar'st to roam-
Oh! 'twas once the Indian's home!

Hither, sprites, who love to harm,
Wheresoe'er you work your charm,
By the creeks, or by the brakes,
Where the pale witch feeds her snakes,
And the cayman + loves to creep,
Torpid, to his wintry sleep:
Where the bird of carrion flits,
And the shuddering murderer sits,‡
Lone beneath a roof of blood,
While upon his poisoned food,
From the corpse of him he slew,
Drops the chill and gory dew!

Hither bend you, turn you hither
Eyes that blast and wings that wither!
Cross the wandering Christian's way,
Lead him, ere the glimpse of day,
Many a mile of maddening error
Through the maze of night and terror,
Till the morn behold him lying
O'er the damp earth, pale and dying!
Mock him, when his eager sight
Seeks the cordial cottage light;
Gleam then, like the lightning-bug ;
Tempt him to the den that's dug
For the foul and famished brood
Of the she-wolf, gaunt for blood!

the little village of Buffalo upon Lake Erie. This is the most fatiguing part of the route in travelling through the Genesee country to Niagara.

* "The Five Confederated Nations (of Indians) were settled along the banks of the Susquehannah and the adjacent country, until the year 1779, when General Sullivan, with an army of 4000 men, drove them from their country to Niagara, where, being obliged to live on salted provisions, to which they were unaccustomed, great numbers of them died. Two hundred of them, it is said, were buried in one grave, where they had encamped."--Morse's American Geography.

The alligator, who is supposed to lie in a torpid state all the winter, in the bank of some creek or pond, having previously swallowed a large number of pine-knots, which are his only sustenance during the time.

This was the mode of punishment for murder (as Father Charlevoix tells us) among the Hurons:-"They laid the dead body upon poles at the top of a cabin, and the murderer was obliged to remain several days together, and to receive all that dropped from the carcass, not only on himself, but on his food."

Or unto the dangerous pass
O'er the deep and dark morass,
Where the trembling Indian brings
Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings,
Tributes, to be hung in air,

To the Fiend presiding there!*
Then, when, night's long labour past,
Wildered, faint, he falls at last,
Sinking where the causeway's edge
Moulders in the slimy sedge,
There let every noxious thing
Trail its filth and fix its sting;
Let the bull-toad taint him over,
Round him let musquitoes hover,
In his ears and eye-balls tingling,
With his blood their poison mingling,
Till, beneath the solar fires,
Rankling all, the wretch expires !

TELL me the witching tale again,
For never has my heart or ear
Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,
So pure to feel, so sweet to hear!

Say, Love in all thy spring of fame,
When the high heaven itself was thine;

When piety confessed the flame,

And even thy errors were divine,—

Did ever Muse's hand so fair,

A glory round thy temples spread?
Did ever lip's ambrosial air

Such perfume o'er thy altars shed?

One maid there was who round her lyre
The mystic myrtle wildly wreathed-

But all her sighs were sighs of fire,

The myrtle withered as she breathed!

* "We find also collars of porcelain, tobacco, ears of maize, skins, &c., by the side of difficult and dangerous ways, on rocks, or by the side of the falls; and these are so many offerings made to the spirits which preside in these places." See Charlevoix's Letter on the Traditions and the Religion of the Savages of Canada.

Father Hennepin, too, mentions this ceremony; he also says. "We took notice of one barbarian, who made a kind of sacrifice upon an oak at the Cascade of St. Anthony of Padau, upon the river Mississippi."-See Hennepin's Voyage into North America.

N

O you that love's celestial dream
In all its purity would know,
Let not the senses' ardent beam

Too strongly through the vision glow!
Love sweetest lies, concealed in night,
The night where Heaven has bid him lie;
Oh! shed not there unhallowed light,

Or, Psyche knows, the boy will fly!

Dear Psyche! many a charmèd hour,
Through many a wild and magic waste,
To the fair fount and blissful bower

Thy mazy foot my soul hath traced!

Where'er thy joys are numbered now,
Beneath whatever shades of rest
The Genius of the starry brow

Has chained thee to thy Cupid's breast;

Whether above the horizon dim,
Along whose verge our spirits stray,
Half sunk within the shadowy brim,
Half brightened by the eternal ray,*

Thou risest to a cloudless pole !

*

Or, lingering here, dost love to mark
The twilight walk of many a soul
Through sunny good and evil dark;
Still be the song to Psyche dear,
The song whose dulcet tide was given
To keep her name as fadeless here
As nectar keeps her soul in heaven!

IMPROMPTU,

UPON LEAVING SOME FRIENDS.

O dulces comitum valete cœtus!

No, never shall my soul forget

Catullus.

The friends I found so cordial-hearted;
Dear shall be the day we met,

And dear shall be the night we parted!

Oh! if regrets, however sweet,

Must with the lapse of time decay,
Yet still, when thus in mirth you meet,
Fill high to him that's far away!

* By this image the Platonists expressed the middle state of the soul between sensible and intellectual existence.