THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA.

TALIA'S vales and fountains,

IT

Though beautiful ye be,

I love my soaring mountains
And forests more than ye;
And though a dreamy greatness rise
From out your cloudy years,
Like hills on distant stormy skies,
Seen dim through Nature's tears,
Still, tell me not of years of old,
Or ancient heart and clime;
Ours is the land and age of gold,

And ours the hallowed time!

The jewelled crown and sceptre
Of Greece have passed away;
And none, of all who wept her,
Could bid her splendour stay.
The world has shaken with the tread
Of iron-sandalled Crime-
And, lo! o'ershadowing all the dead,
The conqueror stalks sublime!
Then ask I not for crown and plume
To nod above my land;

The victor's footsteps point to doom,
Graves open round his hand!

Rome! with thy pillared palaces,
And sculptured heroes all,
Snatched, in their warm, triumphal days,
To Art's high festival;

Rome! with thy giant sons of power,
Whose pathway was on thrones,
Who built their kingdoms of an hour
On yet unburied bones,-

I would not have my land like thee,
So lofty-yet so cold!

Be hers a lowlier majesty,

In yet a nobler mould.

Thy marbles-works of wonder!
In thy victorious days,
Whose lips did seem to sunder
Before the astonished gaze;
When statue glared on statue there,
The living on the dead,—
And men as silent pilgrims were

Before some sainted head!
Oh, not for faultless marbles yet
Would I the light forego

That beams when other lights have set,
And Art herself lies low!

Oh, ours a holier hope shall be

Than consecrated bust,
Some loftier mean of memory

To snatch us from the dust.
And ours a sterner art than this,
Shall fix our image here,-
The spirit's mould of loveliness→→→

A nobler Belvidere !

Then let them bind with bloomless flowers The busts and urns of old,—

A fairer heritage be ours,

A sacrifice less cold!

Give honour to the great

and good,

And wreathe the living brow,

Kindling with Virtue's mantling blood,
And pay the tribute now!

So, when the good and great go down,
Their statues shall arise,

To crowd those temples of our own,
Our fadeless memories!

And when the sculptured marble falls,
And Art goes in to die,

Our forms shall live in holier halls,
The Pantheon of the sky!

S. Margaret Fuller.

GANYMEDE TO HIS EAGLE.*

UPON the rocky mountain stood the boy,

A goblet of pure water in his hand;

His face and form spoke him one made for joy,
A willing servant to sweet Love's command ;
But a strange pain was written on his brow,
And thrilled throughout his silver accents now:

'My bird," he cries, "my destined brother-friend, Oh, whither fleets to-day thy wayward flight?

* On seeing THORWALDSEN's statue of Ganymede.

"Hast thou forgotten that I here attend,
From the full noon until this sad twilight?
A hundred times, at least, from the clear spring,
Since the full noon o'er hill and valley glowed,
I've filled the vase which our Olympian king

Upon my care for thy sole use bestowed;
That, at the moment when thou shouldst descend,
A pure refreshment might thy thirst attend.
"Hast thou forgotten Earth-forgotten me,
Thy fellow-bondsman in a royal cause,
Who, from the sadness of infinity,

Only with thee can know that peaceful pause
In which we catch the flowing strain of love
Which binds our dim fates to the throne of Jove.

"Before I saw thee I was like the May,

Longing for Summer that must mar its bloom, Or like the Morning Star that calls the Day, Whose glories to its promise are the tomb; And as the eager fountain rises higher,

To throw itself more strongly back to earth, Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire,

More fondly it reverted to its birth;

For, what the rose-bud seeks tells not the roseThe meaning foretold by the boy the man cannot disclose. "I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt

Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit; Full feeling was the thought of what was feltIts music was the meaning of the lute:

But Heaven and Earth such life will still deny,

For Earth, divorced from Heaven, still asks the question, 'Why?'

"Upon the highest mountains my young feet

Ached, that no pinions from their lightness grew, My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet,

Yet win no greeting from the circling blue; Fair, self-subsistent, each in its own sphere,

They had no care that there was none for me: Alike to them that I was far or near,

Alike to them, time and eternity.

"But, from the violet of lower air,

Sometimes an answer to my wishing came, Those lightning-births my nature seemed to share, They told the secrets of its fiery frame

The sudden messengers of Hate and Love,

The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove,

And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the sacred

grove.

"Come in a moment, in a moment gone,

They answered me, then left me still more lone;

They told me that the thought which ruled the world
As yet no sail upon its course had furled,

That the creation was but just begun,

New leaves still leaving from the primal one,

But spoke not of the goal to which my rapid wheels would

run.

"Still, still my eyes, though tearfully, I strained
To the far future which my heart contained,
And no dull doubt my proper hope profaned.
At last, oh bliss! thy living form I spied,

'Then a mere speck upon a distant sky; Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride, And the full answer of that sun-filled eye: