The deeper still beneath it all

Lurked the keen jags of anguish; The more the laurels clasped his brow Their poison made it languish. Seemed it that like the nightingale Of his own mournful singing, The tenderer would his song prevail While most the thorn was stinging.

So never to the desert-worn

Did fount bring freshness deeper, Than that his placid rest this morn Has brought the shrouded sleeper. That rest may lap his weary head

Where charnels choke the city, Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed The wren shall wake its ditty; But near or far, while evening's star Is dear to hearts regretting, Around that spot admiring thought Shall hover, unforgetting.

And if this sentient, seething world
Is, after all, ideal,

Or in the immaterial furled

Alone resides the real,

Freed one! there's a wail for thee this hour
Through thy loved elves' dominions;
Hushed is each tiny trumpet-flower,
And droopeth Ariel's pinions;
Even Puck, dejected, leaves his swing,
To plan, with fond endeavor,
What pretty buds and dews shall keep
Thy pillow bright for ever.

And higher, if less happy, tribes-
The race of early childhood-
Shall miss thy whims of frolic wit,

That in the summer wild-wood,

Or by the Christmas hearth, were hailed,

And hoarded as a treasure

Of undecaying merriment

And ever-changing pleasure.

Things from thy lavish humor flung
Profuse as scents, are flying

This kindling morn when blooms are born
As fast as blooms are dying.

Sublimer art owned thy control

The minstrel's mightiest magic,

With sadness to subdue the soul,

Or thrill it with the tragic.
Now listening Aram's fearful dream,
We see beneath the willow

That dreadful thing, or watch him steal,
Guilt-lighted, to his pillow.

559

Now with thee roaming ancient groves,
We watch the woodman felling
The funeral elm, while through its boughs
The ghostly wind comes knelling.

Dear worshipper of Dian's face
In solitary places,

Shalt thou no more steal, as of yore,
To meet her white embraces ?
Is there no purple in the rose

Henceforward to thy senses?

For thee have dawn and daylight's close
Lost their sweet influences?
No! by the mental night untamed
Thou took'st to death's dark portal,
The joy of the wide universe

Is now to thee immortal!

How fierce contrasts the city's roar

With thy new-conquered quiet!— This stunning hell of wheels that pour With princes to their riot! Loud clash the crowds-the busy clouds With thunder-noise are shaken, While pale, and mute, and cold, afar

Thou liest, men-forsaken.

Hot life reeks on, nor recks that one
-The playful, human-hearted —
Who lent its clay less earthiness,

Is just from earth departed.

BARTHOLOMEW SIMMONS.

On the Death of Joseph Rodman

Drake.

"The good die first,

And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket."-WORDSWORTH.

GREEN be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.