Others, like vessels gilt with burnish'd gold,
Their flitting, airy way are seen to hold,
All gallantly equipp'd with streamers gay,
While hands unseen, or chance directs their way;
Around, athwart, the pure ethereal tide,
With swelling purple sail, they rapid glide,
Gay as the bark where Egypt's wantor queen
Reclining on the shaded deck was seen,
At which as gazed the uxorious Roman fool,
The subject world slipt from his dotard rule.
Anon, the gorgeous scene begins to fade,
And deeper hues the ruddy skies invade;
The haze of gathering twilight nature shrouds,
And pale, and paler wax the changeful clouds.
Then sunk the breeze into a breathless calm;
The silent dews of evening dropp'd like balm;
The hungry night-hawk from his lone haunt hies,
To chase the viewless insect through the skies;
The bat began his lantern-loving flight,
The lonely whip-poor-will, our bird of night,
Ever unseen, yet ever seeming near,
His shrill note quaver'd in the startled ear;
The buzzing beetle forth did gayly hic,
With idle hum, and careless, blundering eye;
The little trusty watchman of pale night,
The firefly, trimm'd anew his lamp so bright,
And took his merry airy circuit round
The sparkling meadow's green and fragrant bound,
Where blossom'd clover, bathed in palmy dew,
In fair luxuriance, sweetly blushing grew.

CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES.

As look'd the traveller for the world below,
The lively morning breeze began to blow;
The magic curtain roll'd in mists away,
And a gay landscape smiled upon the day.
As light the fleeting vapours upward glide,
Like sheeted spectres on the mountain side,
New objects oper. to his wondering view
Of various form, and combinations new.
A rocky precipice, a waving wood,

Deep, winding dell, and foaming mountain flood,
Each after each, with coy and sweet delay,
Broke on his sight, as at young dawn of day,
Bounded afar by peak aspiring bold,
Like giant capp'd with helm of burnish'd gold.
So when the wandering grandsire of our race
On Ararat had found a resting-place,
At first a shoreless ocean met his eye,
Mingling on every side with one blue sky;
But as the waters, every passing day,
Sunk in the earth or roll'd in mists away,
Gradual, the lofty hills, like islands, peep
From the rough bosom of the boundless deep,
Then the round hillocks, and the meadows green,
Each after each, in freshen'd bloom are seen,
Till, at the last, a fair and finish'd whole
Combined to win the gazing patriarch's soul.
Yet, oft he look'd, I ween, with anxious eye,
In lingering hope somewhere, perchance, to spy,

Within the silent world, some living thing,
Crawling on earth, or moving on the wing,
Or man, or beast-alas! was neither there
Nothing that breathed of life in earth or air;
"Twas a vast, silent, mansion rich and gay,
Whose occupant was drown'd the other day;
A churchyard, where the gayest flowers oft bloom
Amid the melancholy of the tomb;

A charnel-house, where all the human race
Had piled their bones in one wide resting-place;
Sadly he turn'd from such a sight of wo,
And sadly sought the lifeless world below.

THE OLD MAN'S CAROUSAL.

DRINK! drink! to whom shall we drink?
To friend or a mistress? Come, let me think!
To those who are absent, or those who are here?
To the dead that we loved, or the living still dear!
Alas! when I look, I find none of the last!
The present is barren-let's drink to the past.
Come! here's to the girl with a voice sweet and low,
The eye all of fire and the bosom of snow,
Who erewhile in the days of my youth that are fled,
Once slept on my bosom, and pillow'd my head!
Would you know where to find such a delicate prize?
Go seek in yon churchyard, for there she lies.
And here's to the friend, the one friend of my youth,
With a head full of genius, a heart full of truth,
Who travell'd with me in the sunshine of life,
And stood by my side in its peace and its strife!
Would you know where to seek a blessing so rare!
Go drag the lone sca, you may find him there.
And here's to a brace of twin cherubs of mine,.
With hearts like their mother's, as pure as this wine,
Who came but to see the first act of the play,
Grew tired of the scene, and then both went away.
Would you know where this brace of bright
cherubs have hied?

Go seek them in heaven, for there they abide.

A bumper, my boys! to a gray-headed pair,
Who watched o'er my childhood with tenderest care,
God bless them, and keep them, and may they look

down,

On the head of their son, without tear, sigh, or frown! Would you know whom I drink to go seek mid

the dead,

You will find both their names on the stone at their head.

And here's-but, alas! the good wine is no more,
The bottle is emptied of all its bright store;
Like those we have toasted, its spirit is fled,
And nothing is left of the light that it shed.
Then, a bumper of tears, boys! the banquet hers
ends,

With a health to our dead, since we've no living friends.

MR. ALLSTON was born in South Carolina, of a family which has contributed some eminent names to our annals, though none that sheds more lustre upon the parent stock than his own. When very

young, by the advice of physicians, he was sent to Newport, Rhode Island, where he remained until he entered Harvard College in 1796. In his boy. hood he delighted to listen to the wild tales and traditions of the negroes upon his father's plantation; and while preparing for college, and after his removal to Cambridge, no books gave him so much pleasure as the most marvellous and terrible creations of the imagination. At Newport he became acquainted with MALBONE, the painter, and was thus, perhaps, led to the choice of his profession. He began to paint in oil before he went to Cambridge, and while there divided his attention between his pencil and his books. Upon being graduated he returned to South Carolina, to make arrangements for prosecuting his studies in Europe. He had friends who offered to assist him with money, and one of them, a Scottish gentleman named BoWMAN, who had seen and admired a head which he had painted of Peter hearing the cock crow, pressed him to accept an annuity of one hundred pounds while he should remain abroad; but he declined it, having already sold his paternal estate for a sum sufficient to defray his lookedfor expenses; and, with his friend MALBONE, embarked for England in the summer of 1801.

Soon after his arrival in London, he became a student of the Royal Academy, then under the presidency of our countryman, WEST, with whom he contracted an intimate and lasting friendship. His abilities as an artist, brilliant conversation, and gentlemanly manners, made him a welcome guest at the houses of the great painters of the time; and within a year from the beginning of his residence in London, he was a successful exhibitor at Somerset House, and a general favourite with the most distinguished members of his profession.

In 1804, having been three years in England. he accompanied JOHN VANDERLYN to Paris. After passing a few months in that capital, he proceeded to Italy, where he remained four years. Among his fellow-students and intimate associates here, were VANDERLYN and the Danish sculptor THоRWALDSEN. Another friend with whom he now became acquainted, was COLERIDGE. In one of his letters he says: "To no other man do I owe so much, intellectually, as to Mr. COLERIDGE, with whom I became acquainted in Rome, and who has honoured me with his friendship for more than five-and-twenty years. He used to call Rome the silent city; but I never could think of it as such, while with him; for meet him when or where I would, the fountain of

his mind was never dry, but, like the far-reaching aqueducts that once supplied this mistress of the world, its living stream seemed specially to flow for every classic ruin over which we wandered. And when I recall some of our walks under the pines of the villa Borghese, I am almost tempted to dream that I had once listened to PLATO in the groves of the Academy."

In 1809 ALLSTON returned to America, and was soon after married at Boston to a sister of Dr. CHANNING. In 1811 he went a second time to England. His reputation as a painter was now well established, and he gained by his picture of the "Dead Man raised by the Bones of Elisha"* a prize of two hundred guineas, at the British Institution, where the first artists in the world were his competitors. A long and dangerous illness succeeded his return to London, and he removed to the village of Clifton, where he wrote "The Sylphs of the Seasons," and some of the other poems included in a volume which he published in 1813. Within two weeks after the renewal of his residence in the metropolis, in the last-mentioned year, his wife died,.very suddenly; and the event, inducing the deepest depression and melancholy, caused a temporary suspension of his labours.

In 1818 he accompanied LESLIE to Paris, and in the autumn of the following year came back to America, having been previously elected an associate of the English Royal Academy. In 1830 he married a sister of RICHARD H. DANA, and the remainder of his life was tranquilly passed at Cambridgeport, near Boston, where he was surrounded by warm and genial friends, in assiduous devotion to his art. He died very suddenly, on the night of the eighth of July, 1843.

As a painter ALLSTON had no superior, perhaps not an equal, in his age. He differed from his contemporaries, as he said of MONALDI, "no less in kind than in degree. If he held any thing in common with others, it was with those of ages past, with the mighty dead of the fifteenth century From them he had learned the language of his art, but his thoughts, and their turn of expression, were his own.' Among his principal works are "The Dead Man restored to Life by Elisha;" the "Angel liberating Peter from Prison;" "Jacob's Dream;"Elijah in the Desert;" the Trium phant Song of Miriam;" «The Angel Uriel in the Sun;""Saul and the Witch of Endor;" "Spalatro's Vision of the bloody Hand;" "Gabriel setting the Guard of the Heavenly Host;" "Anne Page and Slender;" "Rosalie;" "Donna Marcia in the Robber's Cave;" and "Belshazzar's Feast, or the

This work he subsequently sold to the Pennsylvanta Academy of Fine Arts, for thirty-five hundred dollars.

Handwriting on the Wall." The last work, upon which he had been engaged at intervals for nearly twenty years, he left unfinished.

Besides the volume of poems already mentioned, and many short pieces which have since been given to the public, Mr. ALLSTON was the author of MONALDI," a story of extraordinary power and interest, in which he displays a deep sensibility to beauty, and philosophic knowledge of human passion. He wrote also a series of discourses on art, which have been printed since his death.

Although ALLSTON owed his chief celebrity to his paintings, which will preserve for his name a place in the list of the greatest artists of all the nations and ages, his literary works alone would have given him a high rank among men of genius. A great painter, indeed, is of necessity a poet, though he may lack the power to express fittingly his conceptions in language. ALLSTON had in remarkable perfection all the faculties required for either art. "The Sylphs of the Seasons," his longest poem, in which he describes the scenery

of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, and the effects of each season on the mind, show that he regarded nature with a curious eye, and had power to exhibit her beauties with wonderful distinctness and fidelity. 66 The Two Painters" is

an admirable satire, intended to ridicule attempts to reach perfection in one excellency in the art of painting, to the neglect of every other; the "Paint King" is a singularly wild, imaginative story; and nearly all his minor poems are strikingly original and beautiful. It was in his paintings, however, that the power and religious grandeur of his imagination were most strongly developed.

When this work was originally published, I dedicated it to Mr. ALLSTON, with whom I had the happiness to be personally acquainted, addressing him as "the eldest of the living poets, and the most illustrious of the painters" of our country. That dedication, which has been retained in previous editions, was an expression of the admiration and reverence in which I, in common with all who knew him, held his genius and character.

THE PAINT KING.

FAIR Ellen was long the delight of the young,
No damsel could with her compare; [tongue,
Her charms were the theme of the heart and the
And bards without number in ecstasies sung
The beauties of Ellen the fair.

Yet cold was the maid; and though legions advanced,
All drill'd by Ovidean art,

And languish'd, and ogled, protested and danced,
Like shadows they came, and like shadows they
From the hard polish'd ice of her heart. [glanced
Yet still did the heart of fair Ellen implore
A something that could not be found;
Like a sailor she seem'd on a desolate shore,
With nor house, nor a tree, nor a sound but the roar
Of breakers high dashing around.

From object to object still, still would she veer,
Though nothing, alas, could she find; [clear,
Like the moon, without atmosphere, brilliant and
Yet doom'd, like the moon, with no being to cheer
The bright barren waste of her mind.

But rather than sit like a statue so still

When the rain made her mansion a pound, Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill, And pat every stair, like a woodpecker's bill,

From the tiles of the roof to the ground. One morn, as the maid from her casement inclined, Passed a youth, with a frame in his hand. The casement she closed-not the eye of her mind; For, do all she could, no, she could not be blind; Still before her she saw the youth stand. Ah, what can he do," said the languishing maid, Ah, what with that frame can he dɔ ?" And she knelt to the goddess of secrets and pray'd, When the youth pass'd again, and again he display'd The frame and a picture to view.

"Oh, beautiful picture!" the fair Ellen cried, "I must see thee again or I die." Then under her white chin her bonnet she tied, And after the youth and the picture she hied,

When the youth, looking back, met her eye. "Fair damsel," said he, (and he chuckled the while,) "This picture I see you admire :

Then take it, I pray you, perhaps 'twill beguile
Some moments of sorrow; (nay, pardon my smile)
Or, at least, keep you home by the fire."
Then Ellen the gift with delight and surprise

From the cunning young stripling received,
But she knew not the poison that enter'd her eyes,
When sparkling with rapture they gazed on her
Thus, alas, are fair maidens deceived! [prize-

"T was a youth o'er the form of a statue inclined,
And the sculptor he seem'd of the stone;
Yet he languish'd as though for its beauty he pined,
And gazed as the eyes of the statue so blind
Reflected the beams of his own.

"T was the tale of the sculptor Pygmalion of old, Fair Ellen remember'd and sigh'd;

"Ah, couldst thou but lift from that marble so cold, Thine eyes too imploring, thy arms should enfold And press me this day as thy bride."

She said: when, behold, from the canvas arose
The youth, and he stepp'd from the frame:
With a furious transport his arms did enclose
The love-plighted Ellen: and, clasping, he froze
The blood of the maid with his flame!
She turn'd and beheld on each shoulder a wing.
Oh, Heaven!" cried she, "who art thou!"
From the roof to the ground did his fierce answer
ring,

As, frowning, he thunder'd "I am the PAINT KING!
And mine, lovely maid, thou art now

Then high from the ground did the grim monster lift
The loud-screaming maid like a blast;
And he sped through the air like a meteor swift,
While the clouds, wand'ring by him, did fearfully drift
To the right and the left as he pass'd.
Now suddenly sloping his hurricane flight,
With an eddying whirl he descends;
The air all below him becomes black as night,
And the ground where he treads, as if moved with
Like the surge of the Caspian, bends. [affright,
"I am here!" said the fiend, and he thundering
At the gates of a mountainous cave; [knocked
The gates open flew, as by magic unlock'd,
While the peaks of the mount, reeling to and fro,
Like an island of ice on the wave. [rocked

"Oh, mercy!" cried Ellen, and swoon'd in his arms, But the PAINT-KING, he scoff'd at her pain. Prithee, love," said the monster, "what mean these alarms?"

She hears not, she sees not the terrible charms,
That work her to horror again.

She opens her lids, but no longer her eyes

Behold the fair youth she would woo; Now appears the PAINT-KING in his natural guise; His face, like a palette of villanous dyes,

Black and white, red and yellow, and blue. On the skull of a Titan, that Heaven defied, Sat the fiend, like the grim giant Gog, While aloft to his mouth a hugh pipe he applied, Twice as big as the Eddystone Lighthouse, descried As it looms through an easterly fog.

And anon, as he puff'd the vast volumes, were seen, In horrid festoons on the wall, Legs and arms, heads and bodies emerging between, Like the drawing-room grim of the Scotch Sawney By the Devil dressed out for a ball. [Beane, "Ah me!" cried the damsel, and fell at his feet, "Must I hang on these walls to be dried?" "Oh, no!" said the fiend, while he sprung from his "A far nobler fortune thy person shall meet; [seat, Into paint will I grind thee, my bride!" Then, seizing the maid by her dark auburn hair, An oil jug he plunged her within; Seven days, seven nights, with the shrieks of despair, Did Ellen in torment convulse the dun air, All covered with oil to the chin.

On the morn of the eighth, on a huge sable stone Then Ellen, all reeking, he laid;

With a rock for his muller he crushed every bone,
But, though ground to jelly, still, still did she groan;
For life had forsook not the maid.

Now reaching his palette, with masterly care
Each tint on its surface he spread;

The blue of her eyes, and the brown of her hair,
And the pearl and the white of her forehead so fair,
And her lips' and her cheeks' rosy red.
Then, stamping his foot, did the monster exclaim,
"Now I brave, cruel fairy, thy scorn!"
When lo! from a chasm wide-yawning there came
A light tiny chariot of rose-colour'd flame,

By a team of ten glow-worms upborne.

Enthroned in the midst on an emerald bright,
Fair Geraldine sat without peer;

Her robe was a gleam of the first blush of light,
And her mantle the fleece of a noon-cloud white,
And a beam of the moon was her spear.

In an accent that stole on the still charmed air
Like the first gentle language of Eve,
Thus spake from her chariot the fairy so fair:
"I come at the call, but, oh Paint-King, beware,
Beware if again you deceive."

«"T is true," said the monster, "thou queen of my
Thy portrait I oft have essay'd;
[heart,
Yet ne'er to the canvas could I with my art
The least of thy wonderful beauties impart ;
And my failure with scorn you repaid.
"Now I swear by the light of the comet-king's tail!"
And he tower'd with pride as he spoke,

If again with these magical colours I fail,
The crater of Etna shall hence be my jail,
And my food shall be sulphur and smoke.
"But if I succeed, then, oh, fair Geraldine!
Thy promise with justice I claim,
And thou, queen of fairies, shalt ever be mine,
The bride of my bed; and thy portrait divine
Shall fill all the earth with my fame."

He spake; when, behold, the fair Geraldine's form
On the canvas enchantingly glow'd;

His touches they flew like the leaves in a storm;
And the pure pearly white and the carnation warm
Contending in harmony flow'd.

And now did the portrait a twin-sister seem
To the figure of Geraldine fair:
With the same sweet expression did faithfully teem
Each muscle, each feature; in short not a gleam
Was lost of her beautiful hair.

"T was the fairy herself! but, alas, her blue eyes Still a pupil did ruefully lack;

And who shall describe the terrific surprise
That seized the PAINT-KING when, behold, he des-
Not a speck on his palette of black! [cries

"I am lost!" said the fiend, and he shook like a leaf; When, casting his eyes to the ground,

He saw the lost pupils of Ellen with grief
In the jaws of a mouse, and the sly little thief
Whisk away from his sight with a bound.

"I am lost!" said the fiend, and he fell like a stone; Then rising the fairy in ire

With a touch of her finger she loosen'd her zone, (While the limbs on the wall gave a terrible groan,) And she swell'd to a column of fire.

Her spear, now a thunder-bolt, flash'd in the air,
And sulphur the vault fill'd around:
She smote the grim monster; and now by the hair
High-lifting, she hurl'd him in speechless despair
Down the depths of the chasm profound.
Then over the picture thrice waving her spear,
"Come forth!" said the good Geraldine;
When, behold, from the canvas descending, appea
Fair Ellen, in person more lovely than e'er,
With grace more than ever divine!

THE SYLPHS OF THE SEASONS, A POET'S DREAM.

LONG has it been my fate to hear
The slave of Mammon, with a sneer,
My indolence reprove.
Ah, little knows he of the care,
The toil, the hardship that I bear
While lolling in my elbow-chair,

And seeming scarce to move:

For, mounted on the poet's steed,
I there my ceaseless journey speed
O'er mountain, wood, and stream:
And oft, within a little day,

Mid comets fierce, 't is mine to stray,
And wander o'er the milky-way
To catch a poet's dream.

But would the man of lucre know
What riches from my labours flow-
A DREAM is my reply.

And who for wealth has ever pined,
That had a world within his mind,
Where every treasure he may find,
And joys that never die!

One night, my task diurnal done,
(For I had travell'd with the sun

O'er burning sands, o'er snows,) Fatigued, I sought the couch of rest; My wonted prayer to Heaven address'd; But scarce had I my pillow press'd, When thus a vision rose

Methought, within a desert cave,
Cold, dark, and solemn as the grave,
I suddenly awoke.

It seem'd of sable night the cell,
Where, save when from the ceiling fell
An oozing drop, her silent spell
No sound had ever broke.

There motionless I stood alone,
Like some strange monument of stone
Upon a barren wild;

Or like (so solid and profound

The darkness seem'd that wall'd me round) A man that's buried under ground,

Where pyramids are piled.

Thus fix'd, a dreadful hour I pass'd,
And now I heard, as from a blast,

A voice pronounce my name:
Nor long upon my ear it dwelt,
When round me 'gan the air to mel:
And motion once again I felt

Quick circling o'er my frame.
Again it call'd; and then a ray,
That seem'd a gushing fount of day,
Across the cavern stream'd.
Half-struck with terror and delight,
I hair'd the little blessed light,
And follow'd till my aching sight
An orb of darkness seem'd.

Nor long I felt the blinding pain;
For soon upon a mountain plain

I gazed with wonder new.
There high a castle rear'd its head;
And far below a region spread,
Where every season seem'd to shed
Its own peculiar hue.

Now, at the castle's massy gate,
Like one that's blindly urged by fate,
A bugle-horn I blew.

The mountain-plain it shook around,
The vales return'd a hollow sound,
And, moving with a sigh profound,
The portals open flew.

Then entering, from a glittering hall
I heard a voice seraphic call,

That bade me "Ever reign!

All hail!" it said in accent wild, "For thou art Nature's chosen child, Whom wealth nor blood has e'er defiled,

Hail, lord of this domain !"

And now I paced a bright saloon, That seem'd illumined by the moon,

So mellow was the light.
The walls with jetty darkness teem'd,
While down them crystal columns stream'd
And each a mountain torrent seem'd,
High-flashing through the night.

Rear'd in the midst, a double throne
Like burnish'd cloud of evening shone;
While, group'd the base around,
Four damsels stood of fairy race;
Who, turning each with heavenly grace
Upon me her immortal face,

Transfix'd me to the ground.

And thus the foremost of the train:
"Be thine the throne, and thine to reign
O'er all the varying year!

But ere thou rulest, the Fates command,
That of our chosen rival band

A Sylph shall win thy heart and hand,
Thy sovereignty to share.

"For we, the sisters of a birth,
Do rule by turns the subject earth
To serve ungrateful man ;
But since our varied toils impart
No joy to his capricious heart,
"Tis now ordain'd that human art
Shall rectify the plan."

Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene,
""T is I thy joyous heart, I ween,
With sympathy shall move:
For I with living melody
Of birds in choral symphony,
First waked thy soul to poesy,
To piety and love.

"When thou, at call of vernal breeze,
And beckoning bough of budding trees,
Hast left thy sullen fire.