But on the Tigris' winding banks, though night

Still lingers round, two early mortals greet

The first faint gleam with prayer; and bathed and dight

As travellers came forth. The morn rose sweet. And rushing by them as the spirits past,

In tinted vapours while the pale star sets; The younger asked, "Whence are these odours cast, The breeze has waked from beds of violets!"

SONG.*

DAY, in melting purple dying,
Blossoms, all around me sighing,
Fragrance, from the lilies straying,
Zephyr, with my ringlets playing,
Ye but waken my distress;
I am sick of loneliness.

Thou, to whom I love to hearken,
Come, ere night around me darken;
Though thy softness but deceive me,
Say thou 'rt true, and I'll believe thee;

Veil, if ill, thy soul's intent,
Let me think it innocent!

Save thy toiling, spare thy treasure:
All I ask is friendship's pleasure;
Let the shining ore lie darkling,
Bring no gem in lustre sparkling:
Gifts and gold are nought to me,
I would only look on thee!

Tell to thee the high-wrought feeling,
Ecstasy but in revealing;

Paint to thee the deep sensation,
Rapture in participation,

Yet but torture, if comprest
In a lone, unfriended breast.

Absent still! Ah! come and bless me!
Let these eyes again caress thee;
Once, in caution, I could fly thee:
Now, I nothing could deny thee;

In a look if death there be,
Come, and I will gaze on thee!

THE MOON OF FLOWERS.

O, MOON of flowers! sweet moon of flowers!†
Why dost thou mind me of the hours
Which flew so softly on that night,
When last I saw and felt thy light?

O, moon of flowers! thou moon of flowers!
Would thou couldst give me back those hours,
Since which a dull, cold year has fled,
Or show me those with whom they sped!

O, moon of flowers! O, moon of flowers!
In scenes afar were past those hours,
Which still with fond regret I
And wish my heart could change like thee!

*From "Zophiel."

see,

The savages of the northern part of America sometimes count by moons. May is called by them the moon of flowers, and October the moon of falling leaves.

MORNING.

How beauteous art thou, O thou morning sun!-
The old man, feebly tottering forth, admires
As much thy beauty, now life's dream is done,
As when he moved exulting in his fires.
The infant strains his little arms to catch

The rays that glance about his silken hair; And Luxury hangs her amber lamps, to match Thy face, when turn'd away from bower and palace fair.

Sweet to the lip the draught, the blushing fruit;
Music and perfumes mingle with the soul;
How thrills the kiss, when feeling's voice is mute!
And light and beauty's tints enhance the whole.
Yet each keen sense were dulness but for thee:
Thy ray to joy, love, virtue, genius warms;
Thou never weariest; no inconstancy

But comes to pay new homage to thy charms. How many lips have sung thy praise, how long!

Yet, when his slumbering harp he feels thee woo, The pleasured bard pours forth another song,

And finds in thee, like love, a theme forever new.
Thy dark-eyed daughters come in beauty forth,
In thy near realms; and, like their snow-wreaths
fair,

The bright-hair'd youths and maidens of the north
Smile in thy colours when thou art not there.
"T is there thou bidst a deeper ardour glow,
And higher, purer reveries completest;
As drops that farthest from the ocean flow,
Refining all the way, from springs the sweetest.
Haply, sometimes, spent with the sleepless night,
Some wretch, impassion'd, from sweet morning's

breath,

Turns his hot brow, and sickens at thy light; But Nature, ever kind, soon heals or gives him death.

MARRIAGE.

THE bard has sung, God never form'd a soul
Without its own peculiar mate, to meet
Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole
Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most com-
plete!

But thousand evil things there are that hate

To look on happiness; these hurt, impede, [fate, And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine and pant

and bleed.

And as the dove to far Palmyra flying,

From where her native founts of Antioch beam, Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream;

So many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, Love's pure,congenial spring unfound, unquaff'd, Suffers, recoils, then, thirsty and despairing

Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught.

JAMES GATES PERCIVAL, the most prolife and fanciful of our poets, was born in Berlin, Connecticut, on the fifteenth of September, 1795. His father, an intelligent physician, superintended his early education, and saw in his correct taste, and manly character, and the remarkable facility with which he acquired knowledge, the promise of a brilliant life. He died in 1807, and the young stu. dent was intrusted to other guardians; but his mental culture was carefully attended to, and he entered Yale College in 1811, far advanced in classical and general learning.

In his early devotion to study originated the love of seclusion which forms one of the distinguishing features in his character. From his youth he has been more fond of his own fancies than of society, and has therefore enjoyed few of the opportunities of observation which are found by mingling with the world. To his early habits of day-dreaming he has himself alluded in a poem on the Pleasures of Childhood:

"Along the stream,

That flowed in summer's mildness o'er its bed
Of rounded pebbles, with its scanty waves
Encircling many an islet, and its banks
In bays and havens scooping, I would stray,
And, dreaming, rear an empire on its shores.
There cities rose, and palaces and towers
Caught the first light of morning; there the fleet
Lent all its snowy canvass to the wind,
And bore, with awful front, against the foe;
There armies marshall'd their array, and join'd
In mimic slaughter: there the conquer'd fled-
I follow'd their retreat, until, secure,
They found a refuge in their country's walls;
The triumphs of the conqueror were mine,-
The bounds of empire widen'd, and the wealth
Torn from the helpless hands of humbled foes;
There many a childish hour was spent; the world,
That moved and fretted round me, had no power
To draw me from my musings, but the dream
Enthrall'd me till it seem'd reality;
And, when I woke, I wonder'd that a brook
Was babbling by, and a few rods of soil,
Cover'd with scanty herbs, the arena where
Cities and empires, fleets and armies rose."

He began to write at a very early age; but I believe he published very little before he went to reside at New Haven, when he became a frequent contributor to the periodicals. He devoted his leisure hours, for several weeks before he was graduated, to the composition of "Zamor," a tragedy, which was performed by the students at the annual commencement in the summer of 1815, and afterward printed. I have not read this, but a competent critic speaks of it as a poor imitation of Doctor YOUNG's "Revenge," and far below any of our author's other productions. The first volume of his poems was published at New Haven, in 1820; and in the following year, at Charleston, where he had gone on account of his health, which had been

impaired by too constant study, appeared the first number of "Clio." On his return to Connecticut he published the second number of "Clio," and his longest work, "Prometheus," a poem of more than three thousand lines, in the stanza of SPENSER. An edition of his select writings was published, in a large octavo volume, in New York, in 1823, and soon after reprinted in London. He had now reached the highest point in his reputation as a poet.

After passing the customary period in preparatory study, PERCIVAL received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, in 1823; but his devotion to literature and the sciences prevented his engaging in the practice of his profession. In 1824, he was appointed a professor in the United States Military Academy at West Point. Ill health compelled him to relinquish this office, and he removed to Boston, where he was for a considerable time connected with the army, as a surgeon. In this period he contributed several poems to the United States Literary Gazette, a magazine published at Cambridge, in which appeared some of the earliest effusions of BRYANT, LONGFELLOW and DAWES.

In 1825, he delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College, and in 1827, the third number of "Clio" was published in New York. The Greek revolution was still in progress, and the poet shared in the general enthusiasm which pervaded this country in behalf of the oppressed descendants of the fathers of civilization. Several of the poems embraced in that collection are appeals to the Christian nations to give to the Greeks their ancient liberty.

There are in America few more learned men than PERCIVAL. He is familiar with the natural sciences, and the literature of Greece, Rome, and the oriental nations, and writes with fluency in all the modern languages of Europe.

Since the publication of his last volume of poetry, he has furnished valuable aid to the wellknown philologist, Doctor WEBSTER, in the preparation of his American Dictionary of the English Language; translated MALTE-BRUN'S Geography, and some other works; and edited several important publications for the booksellers. He has also been a frequent writer for the magazines. His latest productions are the beautiful Classic Melodies, in the Token for the present year. resides at New Haven, and his attention is almost

exclusively devoted to scientific pursuits.*

He

He has all the natural qualities of a great poet, but he lacks the artistic skill, or declines the labour, without which few authors gain immortality. He has a brilliant imagination, remarkable

*He was recently appointed by the Governor of Connecticut to make a geological survey of that state.

command of language, and an exhaustless fountain of ideas. He writes with a facility but rarely equalled, and when his thoughts are once committed to the page, he shrinks from the labour of revising, correcting, and condensing. He remarks in one of his prefaces, that his verse is "very far from bearing the marks of the file and the burnisher," and that he likes to see "poetry in the full ebullition of feeling and fancy, foaming up with the spirit of life, and glowing with the rainbows of a glad inspiration." If by this he means that a poet should reject the slow and laborious process by which a polished excellence is attained, he errs. Nothing truly great was ever accomplished without long and patient toil.

He possesses in an eminent degree the creative faculty, and his genius is versatile. He has been

an admirer and a student of nature, and he describes the visible world, in its minutest details, with feeling and accuracy. The moral tendency of his writings is generally correct; but in one or two poems there is a strain of misanthropy, and in some of his earliest ones there were intimations of skepticism.-His later works are free from such blemish, and I believe he no longer entertains the doubts he once cherished in regard to religion,

PERCIVAL has few associates. He lives apart from society, among his books, or in the fields. One who has been admitted to his friendship remarks, that with the simplicity he unites the purity of childhood. He resides at New Haven, and is still as diligent a student as when he was an under-graduate in the college of that beautiful city.

LIBERTY TO ATHENS.

THE flag of Freedom floats once more
Around the lofty Parthenon;

It waves, as waved the palm of yore,
In days departed long and gone;
As bright a glory, from the skies,

Pours down its light around those towers, And once again the Greeks arise,

As in their country's noblest hours;
Their swords are girt in Virtue's cause,
MINERVA'S sacred hill is free-
O! may she keep her equal laws,

While man shall live, and time shall be.

The pride of all her shrines went down ; The Goth, the Frank, the Turk, had reft The laurel from her civic crown;

Her helm by many a sword was cleft: She lay among her ruins low

Where grew the palm, the cypress rose, And, crushed and bruised by many a blow, She cower'd beneath her savage foes; But now again she springs from earth, Her loud, awakening trumpet speaks; She rises in a brighter birth,

And sounds redemption to the Greeks.

It is the classic jubilee

Their servile years have rolled away; The clouds that hover'd o'er them flee, They hail the dawn of Freedom's day; From heaven the golden light descends, The times of old are on the wing, And Glory there her pinion bends,

And Beauty wakes a fairer spring; The hills of Greece, her rocks, her waves, Are all in triumph's pomp array'd; A light that points their tyrant's graves, Plays round each bold Athenian's blade.

The Parthenon, the sacred shrine, Where Wisdom held her pure abode:

The hill of Mars, where light divine
Proclaimed the true but unknown God;
Where Justice held unyielding sway,
And trampled all corruption down,
And onward took her lofty way

To reach at truth's unfading crown:
The rock, where liberty was full,

Where eloquence her torrents roll'd,
And loud, against the despot's rule,
A knell the patriot's fury toll'd:
The stage, whereon the drama spake,

In tones that seem'd the words of Heaven,
Which made the wretch in terror shake,
As by avenging furies driven:

The groves and gardens, where the fire
Of wisdom, as a fountain, burned,
And every eye, that dared aspire

To truth, has long in worship turned:
The halls and porticoes, where trod
The moral sage, severe, unstain'd,
And where the intellectual god

In all the light of science reign'd:
The schools, where rose in symmetry

The simple, but majestic pile, Where marble threw its roughness by,

To glow, to frown, to weep, to smile, Where colours made the canvass live,

Where music roll'd her flood along, And all the charms that art can give,

Were blent with beauty, love, and song: The port, from whose capacious womb Her navies took their conquering road, The heralds of an awful doom

To all who would not kiss her rod:

On these a dawn of glory springs,
These trophies of her brightest fame;
Away the long-chain'd city flings

Her weeds, her shackles, and her shame; Again her ancient souls awake,

HARMODIUS bares anew his sword; Her sons in wrath their fetters break, And Freedom is their only lord.

THE SUN.

CENTRE of light and energy! thy way

Is through the unknown void; thou hast thy throne,

Morning, and evening, and at noon of day,

Far in the blue, untended and alone:

Ere the first-waken'd airs of earth had blown, On thou didst march, triumphant in thy light;

Then thou didst send thy glance, which still

hath flown

Wide through the never-ending worlds of night, And yet thy full orb burns with flash as keen and bright.

We call thee Lord of Day, and thou dost give
To earth the fire that animates her crust,
And wakens all the forms that move and live,
From the fine, viewless mould which lurks in
dust,

To him who looks to heaven, and on his bust
Bears stamp'd the seal of Gon, who gathers there
Lines of deep thought, high feeling, daring trust
In his own center'd powers, who aims to share
In all his soul can frame of wide, and great, and fair.

Thy path is high in heaven; we cannot gaze
On the intense of light that girds thy car;
There is a crown of glory in thy rays,

Which bears thy pure divinity afar,
To mingle with the equal light of star,—
For thou, so vast to us, art in the whole

One of the sparks of night that fire the air,
And, as around thy centre planets roll,
So thou, too, hast thy path around the central soul.

I am no fond idolater to thee,

One of the countless multitude, who burn, As lamps, around the one Eternity,

In whose contending forces systems turn Their circles round that seat of life, the urn Where all must sleep, if matter ever dies:

Sight fails me here, but fancy can discern
With the wide glance of her all-seeing eyes,
Where, in the heart of worlds, the ruling Spirit lies.

And thou, too, hast thy world, and unto thee
We are as nothing; thou goest forth alone,
And movest through the wide, aerial sea,

Glad as a conqueror resting on his throne
From a new victory, where he late had shown
Wider his power to nations; so thy light
Comes with new pomp, as if thy strength had

grown

With each revolving day, or thou, at night,
Had lit again thy fires, and thus renew'd thy might.
Age o'er thee has no power: thou bring'st the same
Light to renew the morning, as when first,
If not eternal, thou, with front of flame,

On the dark face of earth in glory burst,
And warm'd the seas, and in their bosom nursed
The earliest things of life, the worm and shell;
Till, through the sinking ocean, mountains
pierced,

And then came forth the land whereon we dwell, Rear'd, like a magic fane, above the watery swell.

And there thy searching heat awoke the seeds
Of all that gives a charm to earth, and lends
An energy to nature; all that feeds

On the rich mould, and then, in bearing, bends
Its fruits again to earth, wherein it blends
The last and first of life; of all who bear

Their forms in motion, where the spirit tends, Instinctive, in their common good to share, Which lies in things that breathe, or late were living there.

They live in thee: without thee, all were dead And dark; no beam had lighted on the waste, But one eternal night around had spread

Funereal gloom, and coldly thus defaced This Eden, which thy fairy hand hath graced With such uncounted beauty; all that blows

In the fresh air of spring, and, growing, braced Its form to manhood, when it stands and glows In the full-temper'd beam, that gladdens as it goes.

Thou lookest on the earth, and then it smiles;

Thy light is hid, and all things droop and mourn; Laughs the wide sea around her budding isles, When through their heaven thy changing car is borne ;

Thou wheel'st away thy flight, the woods are shorn

Of all their waving locks, and storms awake;
All, that was once so beautiful, is torn
By the wild winds which plough the lonely lake,
And, in their maddening rush, the crested moun-
tains shake.

The earth lies buried in a shroud of snow;

Life lingers, and would die, but thy return Gives to their gladden'd hearts an overflow Of all the power that brooded in the urn Of their chill'd frames, and then they proudly spurn

All bands that would confine, and give to air

Hues, fragrance, shapes of beauty, till they burn, When, on a dewy morn, thou dartest there Rich waves of gold to wreathe with fairer light the fair.

The vales are thine; and when the touch of spring Thrills them, and gives them gladness, in thy light They glitter, as the glancing swallow's wing Dashes the water in his winding flight,

And leaves behind a wave that crinkles bright, And widens outward to the pebbled shore,—

The vales are thine; and when they wake from

night,

The dews that bend the grass-tips, twinkling o'er Their soft and oozy beds, look upward, and adore.

The hills are thine: they catch thy newest beam,

And gladden in thy parting, where the wood Flames out in every leaf, and drinks the stream, That flows from out thy fulness, as a flood Bursts from an unknown land, and rolls the food Of nations in its waters: so thy rays

Flow and give brighter tints than ever bud, When a clear sheet of ice reflects a blaze Of many twinkling gems, as every gloss'd bough plays.

Thine are the mountains, where they purely lift
Snows that have never wasted, in a sky
Which hath no stain; below, the storm may drift
Its darkness, and the thunder-gust roar by;
Aloft in thy eternal smile they lie,
Dazzling, but cold; thy farewell glance looks there;
And when below thy hues of beauty die,
Girt round them, as a rosy belt, they bear,
Into the high, dark vault, a brow that still is fair.
The clouds are thine, and all their magic hues
Are pencill'd by thee; when thou bendest low,
Or comest in thy strength, thy hand imbues
Their waving fold with such a perfect glow
Of all pure tints, the fairy pictures throw
Shame on the proudest art; the tender stain

Hung round the verge of heaven, that as a bow
Girds the wide world, and in their blended chain
All tints to the deep gold that flashes in thy train:
These are thy trophies, and thou bend'st thy arch,
The sign of triumph, in a seven-fold twine,
Where the spent storm is hasting on its march,
And there the glories of thy light combine,
And form with perfect curve a lifted line,
Striding the earth and air; man looks, and tells
How peace and mercy in its beauty shine,
And how the heavenly messenger impels
Her glad wings on the path, that thus in ether
swells.

The ocean is thy vassal; thou dost sway

His waves to thy dominion, and they go Where thou, in heaven, dost guide them on their way,

Rising and falling in eternal flow;

Thou lookest on the waters, and they glow; They take them wings, and spring aloft in air, And change to clouds, and then, dissolving, throw

Their treasures back to earth, and, rushing, tear The mountain and the vale, as proudly on they

bear.

I, too, have been upon thy rolling breast,

Widest of waters; I have seen thee lie Calm, as an infant pillow'd in its rest

On a fond mother's bosom, when the sky,
Not smoother, gave the deep its azure dye,
Till a new heaven was arch'd and glass'd below;
And then the clouds, that, gay in sunset, fly,
Cast on it such a stain, it kindled so,

As in the cheek of youth the living roses grow.
I, too, have seen thee on thy surging path,
When the night-tempest met thee: thou didst
dash

Thy white arms high in heaven, as if in wrath,

Threatening the angry sky; thy waves did lash
The labouring vessel, and with deadening crash
Rush madly forth to scourge its groaning sides;
Onward thy billows came, to meet and clash
In a wild warfare, till the lifted tides
Mingled their yesty tops, where the dark storm-
cloud rides.

In thee, first light, the bounding ocean smiles,
When the quick winds uprear it in a swell,

That rolls, in glittering green, around the isles, Where ever-springing fruits and blossoms dwell; O! with a joy no gifted tongue can tell,

I hurry o'er the waters, when the sail

Swells tensely, and the light keel glances well Over the curling billow, and the gale Comes off the spicy groves to tell its winning tale. The soul is thine: of old thou wert the power Who gave the poet life; and I in thee Feel my heart gladden at the holy hour When thou art sinking in the silent sea; Or when I climb the height, and wander free In thy meridian glory, for the air

Sparkles and burns in thy intensity,

I feel thy light within me, and I share
In the full glow of soul thy spirit kindles there.

CONSUMPTION.

THERE is a sweetness in woman's decay,
When the light of beauty is fading away,
When the bright enchantment of youth is gone,
And the tint that glow'd, and the eye that shone,
And darted around its glance of power,
And the lip that vied with the sweetest flower
That ever in Pæstum's garden blew,
Or ever was steep'd in fragrant dew,
When all that was bright and fair is fled,
But the loveliness lingering round the dead.

O! there is a sweetness in beauty's close,
Like the perfume scenting the wither'd rose;
For a nameless charm around her plays,
And her eyes are kindled with hallow'd rays;
And a veil of spotless purity

Has mantled her cheek with its heavenly dye,
Like a cloud whereon the queen of night
Has pour'd her softest tint of light;
And there is a blending of white and blue,
Where the purple blood is melting through
The snow of her pale and tender cheek;
And there are tones that sweetly speak
Of a spirit who longs for a purer day,
And is ready to wing her flight away.

In the flush of youth, and the spring of feeling,
When life, like a sunny stream, is stealing
Its silent steps through a flowery path,
And all the endearments that pleasure hath
Are pour'd from her full, o'erflowing horn,
When the rose of enjoyment conceals no thorn,
In her lightness of heart, to the cheery song
The maiden may trip in the dance along,
And think of the passing moment, that lies,
Like a fairy dream, in her dazzled eyes,
And yield to the present, that charms around
With all that is lovely in sight and sound;
Where a thousand pleasing phantoms flit,
With the voice of mirth, and the burst of wit,
And the music that steals to the bosom's core,
And the heart in its fulness flowing o'er
With a few big drops, that are soon repress'd,
For short is the stay of grief in her breast:

Biferique rosaria Pæsti.-Virg.