Only when our souls are fed

By the Fount which gave them birth,
And by inspiration led,

Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain

Swelling till they meet and run,
Shall be all absorbed again,

Melting, flowing into one.

1840.

THE BOBOLINKS.

[The Bird and the Bell, with other Poems. 1875.]

WHEN Nature had made all her birds,

With no more cares to think on,

She gave a rippling laugh, and out
There flew a Bobolinkon.

She laughed again; out flew a mate;

A breeze of Eden bore them

Across the fields of Paradise,

The sunrise reddening o'er them.

Incarnate sport and holiday,

They flew and sang forever;

Their souls through June were all in tune,
Their wings were weary never.

Their tribe, still drunk with air and light,

And perfume of the meadow,

Go reeling up and down the sky,

In sunshine and in shadow.

One springs from out the dew-wet grass;
Another follows after;

The morn is thrilling with their songs
And peals of merry laughter.

From out the marshes and the brook,

They set the tall reeds swinging,

And meet, and frolic in the air,

Half prattling and half singing.

When morning winds sweep meadow-lands

In green and russet billows,

And toss the lonely elm-tree's boughs,

And silver all the willows,

1866.

Hope springs with you: I dread no more
Despondency and dullness;

For Good Supreme can never fail
That gives such perfect fullness.

The life that floods the happy fields
With song and light and color
Will shape our lives to richer states,
And heap our measures fuller.

IF DEATH BE FINAL.

[Ariel and Caliban, with other Poems. 1887.]

F death be final, what is life, with all

IF

Its lavish promises, its thwarted aims,

Its lost ideals, its dishonored claims,

Its uncompleted growth? A prison wall,

Whose heartless stones but echo back our call;
An epitaph recording but our names;

A puppet-stage where joys and griefs and shames
Furnish a demon jester's carnival;

A plan without a purpose or a form;

A roofless temple; an unfinished tale.

And men like madrepores through calm and storm

Toil, die to build a branch of fossil frail,

And add from all their dreams, thoughts, acts, belief,
A few more inches to a coral-reef.

Henry Theodore Tuckerman.

BORN in Boston, Mass., 1813. DIED in New York, N. Y.,

THE FIRST AMERICAN NOVELIST.

[Essays, Biographical and Critical. 1857.]

1871.

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN was the first American who

manifested a decided literary genius in a form which has survived with anything like vital interest. His native fondness and capacity for literature is not only shown by his voluntary adoption of its pursuit at a time and in a country offering no inducement to such a career, but they are still more evident from the unpropitious social circumstances and