And Windsor's haunted "alleys green"
"Dingle" and "bosky bourn" between,
Till burst upon my raptured glance
The whole wide realm of Old Romance:
Such was the life I lived-a youth!
But vanish'd, at the touch of Truth,
And never to be known agen,
Is all that made my being then.

A man-the thirst for fame was mine,
And bow'd me at Ambition's shrine,
Among the votaries who have given
Time, health, hope, peace--and madly striven,
Ay, madly! for that which, when found,
Is oftenest but an empty sound.
And I have worshipp'd!-even yet
Mine eye is on the idol set;

But it hath found so much to be

But hollowness and mockery,
That from its worship oft it turns
To where a light intenser burns,
Before whose radiance, pure and warm,
Ambition's star must cease to charm.
Our early days!-They haunt us ever-
Bright star-gleams on life's silent river,
Which pierce the shadows, deep and dun,
That bar e'en manhood's noonday sun.

THE LABOURER.

STAND up-erect! Thou hast the form,
And likeness of thy God!-who more?
A soul as dauntless mid the storm
Of daily life, a heart as warm

And pure, as breast e'er wore.

What then?-Thou art as true a man

As moves the human mass among;
As much a part of the great plan
That with Creation's dawn began,
As any of the throng.

Who is thine enemy? the high

In station, or in wealth the chief? The great, who coldly pass thee by, With proud step and averted eye?

Nay! nurse not such belief.

If true unto thyself thou wast,

What were the proud one's scorn to thee?

A feather, which thou mightest cast

Aside, as idly as the blast

The light leaf from the tree.

No:-uncurb'd passions, low desires,
Absence of noble self-respect,
Death, in the breast's consuming fires,
To that high nature which aspires

Forever, till thus check'd;

These are thine enemies--thy worst;
They chain thee to thy lowly lot:
Thy labour and thy life accursed.
O, stand erect! and from them burst!
And longer suffer not!

Thou art thyself thine enemy!

The great!-what better they than that!
As theirs, is not thy will as free?
Has GoD with equal favours thee
Neglected to endow ?

True, wealth thou hast not-'tis but dust!
Nor place-uncertain as the wind!
But that thou hast, which, with thy crust
And water, may despise the last

Of both--a noble mind.

With this, and passions under ban,

True faith, and holy trust in GoD,
Thou art the peer of any man.
Look up, then: that thy little span
Of life may be well trod!

THE MOTHERS OF THE WEST.

THE mothers of our forest-land!

Stout-hearted dames were they;
With nerve to wield the battle-brand,
And join the border-fray.
Our rough land had no braver,

In its days of blood and strife-
Aye ready for severest toil,

Aye free to peril life.

The mothers of our forest-land!
On old Kentucky's soil

How shared they, with each dauntless band,
War's tempest and life's toil!

They shrank not from the foeman-

They quail'd not in the fight-
But cheer'd their husbands through the day.
And soothed them through the night.

The mothers of our forest-land!

Their bosoms pillow'd men!
And proud were they by such to stand,
In hammock, fort, or glen,

To load the sure, old rifle

To run the leaden ball-
To watch a battling husband's place,
And fill it, should he fall:

The mothers of our forest-land!

Such were their daily deeds.

Their monument!-where does it stand?
Their epitaph!--who reads?
No braver dames had Sparta,

No nobler matrons Rome-
Yet who or lauds or honours them,
E'en in their own green home?

The mothers of our forest-land!

They sleep in unknown graves:
And had they borne and nursed a band
Of ingrates, or of slaves,
They had not been more neglected!

But their graves shall yet be found,
And their monuments dot here and there
"The Dark and Bloody Ground."

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES is a son of the late ABIEL HOLMES, D. D., and was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the twenty-ninth day of August, 1809. He received his early education at the Phillips Exeter Academy, and entered Harvard University in 1825. On being graduated he commenced the study of the law, but relinquished it, after one year's appplication, for the more congenial pursuit of medicine, to which he devoted himself with ardour and industry. For the more successful prosecution of his studies, he visited Europe in the spring of 1833, passing the principal portion of his residence abroad at Paris, where Of he attended the hospitals, acquired an intimate knowledge of the language, and became personally acquainted with many of the most eminent physicians of France.

He returned to Boston near the close of 1835, and in the following spring commenced the practice of medicine in that city. In the autumn of the same year he delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, which was received with extraordinary and merited applause. In 1838 he was elected Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the medical institution connected with Dartmouth College, but resigned the place on his marriage, two years afterward. Devoting all his attention to his profession, he soon acquired a large and lucrative practice, and in 1847 he succeeded Dr. WARREN as Professor of Anatomy in the medical department of Harvard University. His principal medical writings are comprised in his "Boylston Prize Essays,"" Delusions in Medicine," and the "Theory and PracLectures on Popular tice," by himself and Dr. BIGELOW. His other compositions in prose consist of occasional addresses, and papers in the North American Review. The earlier poems of Dr. HOLMES appeared in "The Collegian." guished for correct and melodious versification than They were little less distinhis more recent and most elaborate productions. They attracted attention by their humour and originality, and were widely republished in the periodicals. But a small portion of them have been printed under his proper signature.

In 1831 a small volume appeared in Boston, entitled "Illustrations of the Athenæum Gallery of Paintings," and composed of metrical pieces, chiefly satirical, written by Dr. HOLMES and EPES SARGENT. It embraced many of our author's best humorous verses, afterward printed among his ac

"The Collegian" was a monthly miscellany published in 1830, by the undergraduates at Cambridge. Among the editors were HOLMES, the late WILLIAM H. SIMMONS, who will be remembered for his admirable lectures on the poets and orators of England, and JOHN O. SARGENT, who has distinguished himself as a lawyer and as a political writer.

knowledged works. His "Poetry, a Metrical Es-
say," was delivered before a literary society at
Cambridge. It is in the heroic measure, and in
its versification it is not surpassed by any poem
written in this country. It relates to the nature
and offices of poetry, and is itself a series of bril-
liant illustrations of the ideas of which it is an ex-
pression. Of the universality of the poetical feel-
ing he says:-

There breathes no being but has some pretence
To that fine instinct call'd poetic sense;
The rudest savage, roaming through the wild,
The simplest rustic, bending o'er his child,
The infant, listening to the warbling bird,
The mother, smiling at its half-formed word;
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land;
The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted chain,
Dreams of the palm-trees on his burning plain;
The hot-cheek'd reveller, tossing down the wine,
To join the chorus pealing "Auld lang syne;"
The gentle maid, whose azure eye grows dim,
While Heaven is listening to her evening hymn;
The jewell'd beauty, when her steps draw near
The circling dance and dazzling chandelier;
E'en trembling age, when spring's renewing air
Waves the thin ringlets of his silver'd hair-
All, all are glowing with the inward flame,
Whose wider halo wreathes the poet's name,
While, unembalm'd, the silent dreamer dies,
His memory passing with his smiles and sighs!
The poet, he contends, is

He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress,
What others feel, more fitly can express.

In another part of the essay is the following
fine description of the different English measures:
Poets, like painters, their machinery claim.
And verse bestows the varnish and the frame;
Our grating English, whose Teutonic jar
Shakes the rack'd axle of Art's rattling car,
Fits like Mosaic in the lines that gird
Fast in its place each many-angled word;
From Saxon lips ANACHREON's numbers glide,
As once they melted on the Teian tide,
And, fresh transfused, the Iliad thrills again
From Albion's cliffs as o'er Achaia's plain;
The proud heroic, with its pulse-like beat,
Rings like the cymbals, clashing as they meet;
The sweet Spenserian, gathering as it flows,
Sweeps gently onward to its dying close,
Where waves on waves in long succession pour,
Till the ninth billow melts along the shore;
The lonely spirit of the mournful lay,
Which lives immortal in the verse of GRAY,
In sable plumage slowly drifts along,
On eagle pinion, through the air of song;
The glittering lyric bounds elastic by,
With flashing ringlets and exulting eye,
While every image, in her airy whirl,
Gleams like a diamond on a dancing girl!

In 1843 Dr. HOLMES published "Terpsichore," a poem read at the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in that year; and in 1846, " Urania, a Rhymed Lesson," pronounced before the

Mercantile Library Association. The last is a collection of brilliant thoughts, with many local allusions, in compact but flowing and harmonious versification, and is the longest poem Dr. HOLMES has published since the appearance of his " Metrical Essay" in 1835.

Dr. HOLMES is a poet of art and humour and genial sentiment, with a style remarkable for its purity, terseness, and point, and for an exquisite

"Drink, JOHN," she said, "'t will do you good; poor

child, you'll never bear

This working in the dismal trench, out in the mid

And if-God bless me-you were hurt, 't would keep away the chill."

So Joux did drink-and well he wrought that
night at Bunker's hill!

I tell you, there was generous warmth in good old
English cheer;

I tell you, 'twas a pleasant thought to drink its
symbol here.

'Tis but the fool that loves excess: hast thou a

Thy bane is in thy shallow skull-not in my silver

I love the memory of the past-its press'd yet fra

The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on

Nay, this poor bauble it bequeath'd: my eyes

To think of all the vanish'd joys that danced

Then fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it straight

The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the liquidbe;
And may the cherubs on its face protect me from

That dooms one to those dreadful words- My dear, where have you been?"

KES

H

T

LEXINGTON.

SLOWLY the mist o'er the meadow was creeping,
Bright on the dewy buds glisten'd the sun,
When from his couch-while his children were
sleeping--

Rose the bold rebel and shoulder'd his gun.

Waving her golden veil

Over the silent dale,

Blithe look'd the morning on cottage and spire;
Hush'd was his parting sigh,

While from his noble eye

Flash'd the last sparkle of Liberty's fire.

On the smooth green where the fresh leaf is spring-
Calmly the first-born of glory have met: [ing
Hark! the death-volley around them is ringing-
Look! with their life-blood the young grass is wet.
Faint is the feeble breath,
Murmuring low in death-

"Tell to our sons how their fathers have died;"
Nerveless the iron hand,

Raised for its native land,

Lies by the weapon that gleams at its side.

Over the hillsides the wild knell is tolling,

From their far hamlets the yeomanry come;
As thro' the storm-clouds the thunder-burst rolling,
Circles the beat of the mustering drum.

Fast on the soldier's path
Darken the waves of wrath;

Long have they gather'd, and loud shall they fall:
Red glares the musket's flash,
Sharp rings the rifle's crash,
Blazing and clanging from thicket and wall.
Gayly the plume of the horseman was dancing,
Never to shadow his cold brow again;
Proudly at morning the war-steed was prancing,
Reeking and panting he droops on the rein;

Pale is the lip of scorn,
Voiceless the trumpet-horn
Torn is the silken-fring'd red cross on high;
Many a belted breast

Low on the turf shall rest,
Ere the dark hunters the herd have pass'd by.
Snow-girdled crags where the hoarse wind is raving,
Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail,
Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving,
Reel'd with the echoes that rode on the gale;

Far as the tempest thrills
Over the darken'd hills,

Far as the sunshine streams over the plain,
Roused by the tyrant band,
Woke all the mighty land,
Girded for battle, from mountain to main.
Green be the graves where her martyrs are lying!
Shroudless and tombless they sunk to their rest;
While o'er their ashes the starry fold flying,
Wraps the proud eagle they roused from his nest.

Borne on her northern pine,
Long o'er the foaming brine
Spread her broad banner to storm and to sun;
Heaven keep her ever free

Wide as o er land and sea
Floats the fair emblem her heroes have won!

27

A SONG OF OTHER DAYS.

As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet
Breathes soft the Alpine rose,

So, through life's desert springing sweet,
The flower of friendship grows;
And as, where'er the roses grow,

Some rain or dew descends,

"Tis Nature's law that wine should flow
To wet the lips of friends.

Then once again, before we part,
My empty glass shall ring;
And he that has the warmest heart
Shall loudest laugh and sing.

They say we were not born to eat;
But gray-haired sages think
It means-" Be moderate in your meat,
And partly live to drink."

For baser tribes the rivers flow

That know not wine or song;
Man wants but little drink below,
But wants that little strong.
Then once again, &c.

If one bright drop is like the
That decks a monarch's
One goblet holds a diadem

gem crown,

Of rubies melted down!
A fig for CESAR's blazing brow,
But, like the Egyptian queen,
Bid each dissolving jewel glow
My thirsty lips between.

Then once again, &c.

The Grecian's mound, the Roman's urn,
Are silent when we call,

Yet still the purple grapes return

To cluster on the wall;
It was a bright Immortal's head
They circled with the vine,
And o'er their best and bravest dead
They pour'd the dark-red wine.
Then once again, &c.
Methinks o'er every sparkling glass

Young EROS waves his wings,
And echoes o'er its dimples pass

From dead ANACREON'S strings;
And, tossing round its beaded brim

Their locks of floating gold,
With bacchant dance and choral hymn
Return the nymphs of old.

Then once again, &c.

A welcome, then, to joy and mirth,
From hearts as fresh as ours,

To scatter o'er the dust of earth

Their sweetly mingled flowers;
"Tis Wisdom self the cup that fills,
In spite of Folly's frown;
And Nature, from her vine-clad hills,
That rains her life-blood down!
Then once again, before we part,
My empty glass shall ring;
And he that has the warmest heart
Shall Joudest laugh and sing.