Let our youth of feeling out

To the youth of Nature shout,

While the waves repeat our voice—
"Welcome, Spring! rejoice! rejoice!"

William Gilmore Simms.

THE LOST PLEIAD.

OT in the sky,

NOT

Where it was seen,

Nor on the white tops of the glistering wave,

Nor in the mansions of the hidden deep,-
Though green,

And beautiful its caves of mystery,—

Shall the bright watcher have

A place and, as of old, high station keep.

Gone, gone!

Oh, never more to cheer

The mariner who holds his course alone
On the Atlantic, through the weary night,
When the stars turn to watchers and do sleep,
Shall it appear,

With the sweet fixedness of certain light,
Down-shining on the shut eyes of the Deep.

Vain, vain!

Hopeful most idly then, shall he look forth,

That mariner from his bark

Howe'er the North

Doth. raise his certain lamp when tempests lower-

He sees no more that perished light again!

And gloomier grows the hour

Which may not, through the thick and crowding dark,

Restore that lost and loved one to her tower.

He looks,—the shepherd on Chaldea's hills,
Tending his flocks,—

And wonders the rich beacon doth not blaze,
Gladdening his gaze;

And, from his dreary watch along the rocks,
Guiding him safely home through perilous ways!
How stands he in amaze,

Still wondering, as the drowsy silence fills
The sorrowful scene, and every hour distils
Its leaden dews-how chafes he at the night,
Still slow to bring the expected and sweet light,
So natural to his sight!

And lone,

Where its first splendours shone,

Shall be that pleasant company of stars:

How should they know that death

Such perfect beauty mars;

And, like the earth, its common bloom and breath,

Fallen from on high,

Their lights grow blasted by its touch, and die

All their concerted springs of harmony

Snapped rudely, and the generous music gone?

A strain- -a mellow strain

Of wailing sweetness, filled the earth and sky;
The Stars lamenting in unborrowed pain
That one of the selectest ones must die;

Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest!
Alas! 'tis ever more the destiny,

The hope, heart-cherished, is the soonest lost;
The flower first budded soonest feels the frost :
Are not the shortest-lived still loveliest?
And, like the pale star shooting down the sky,
Look they not ever brightest when they fly
The desolate home they blessed?

THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP.

IS a wild spot, and hath a gloomy look;

'TIS

The bird sings never merrily in the trees,
And the young leaves seem blighted, A rank growth
Spreads poisonously round, with power to taint

With blistering dews the thoughtless hand that dares
To penetrate the covert.

Cypresses

Crowd on the dank, wet earth; and, stretched at length, -a fit dweller in such home

The cayman

Slumbers, half-buried in the sedgy grass.

Beside the green ooze, where he shelters him,
A whooping crane erects his skeleton form,

And shrieks in flight. Two summer ducks, aroused
To apprehension, as they hear his cry,

Dash up from the lagoon, with marvellous haste,
Following his guidance. Meetly taught by these,
And startled at our rapid, near approach,
The steel-jawed monster, from his grassy bed,
Crawls slowly to his slimy, green abode,

Which straight receives him. You behold him now,

His ridgy back uprising as he speeds

In silence to the centre of the stream,

Whence his head peers alone. A butterfly,

That, travelling all the day, has counted climes
Only by flowers, to rest himself a while,
Lights on the monster's brow. The surly mute
Straightway goes down so suddenly, that he,

The dandy of the summer flowers and woods,
Dips his light wings, and spoils his golden coat,
With the rank water of that turbid pond.
Wondering and vexed, the plumed citizen
Flies, with a hurried effort, to the shore,
Seeking his kindred flowers: but seeks in vain-
Nothing of genial growth may there be seen,
Nothing of beautiful! Wild, ragged trees,
That look like felon spectres-fetid shrubs,
That taint the gloomy atmosphere--dusk shades,
That gather, half a cloud and half a fiend
In aspect, lurking on the swamp's wild edge,-
Gloom with their sternness and forbidding frowns
The general prospect. The sad butterfly,
Waving his lackered wings, darts quickly on,
And, by his free flight, counsels us to speed
For better lodgings, and a scene more sweet
Than these drear borders offer us to-night.

Ann S. Stephens.

DROPPING LEAVES.

THE leaves are dropping, dropping,

And I watch them as they go;

Now whirling, floating, stopping,

With a look of noiseless woe. Yes, I watch them in their falling, As they tremble from the stem, With a stillness so appalling—

And my heart goes down with them!

Yes, I see them floating round me

Mid the beating of the rain,

Like the hopes that still have bound me
To the fading past again.

They are floating through the stillness,
They are given to the storm-
And they tremble off like phantoms
Of a joy that has no form.

But the proud tree stands up prouder,
While its branches cast their leaves-
And the cold wind whispers louder,
Like a sobbing breath that grieves ;

A heart that's long in breaking,
As a single flower may cling,
All withered, shorn, and quaking,
On the naked stalk till spring.

Then I thought-"That tree is human,
And its boughs are human too;