of regions "consecrate to eldest time ?" Is there nothing in man, considered abstractedly from the distinctions of this world-nothing in a being who is in the infancy of an immortal life—who is lackeyed by "a thousand liveried angels" -who is even "splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave" →to awaken ideas of permanence, solemnity and grandeur? Are there no themes sufficiently exalted for poetry in the midst of death and life--in the desires and hopes which have their resting-place near the throne of the Eternal-in affections, strange and wondrous in their working, and unconquerable by time, or anguish, or destiny? Such objects, though not arrayed in any adventitious pomp, have a real and innate grandeur.

Ex. XCVI.-TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

GRENVILLE MELLEN.

WAKE your harp's music !-louder,-higher,
And pour your strains along;

And smite again each quivering wire,
In all the pride of song!

Shout like those godlike men of old,

Who, daring storm and foe,

On this blest soil their anthem rolled,
Two hundred years ago!

From native shores by tempests driven,
They sought a purer sky,

And found, beneath a milder heaven,
The home of liberty!

An altar rose,-and prayers,- -a ray
Broke on their night of woe,-

The harbinger of freedom's day,
Two hundred years ago!

They clung around that symbol, too,

Their refuge and their all;

And swore, while skies and waves were blue,
That altar should not fall.

They stood upon the red man's sod,

'Neath heaven's unpillared bow,

With home, a country, and a God,
Two hundred years ago!

Oh! 't was a hard, unyielding fate
That drove them to the seas,
And persecution strove with hate,
To darken her decrees:

But safe above each coral grave,
Each blooming ship did go,-
A God was on the western wave,
Two hundred years ago!

They knelt them on the desert sand,

By waters cold and rude, Alone upon the dreary strand

Of oceaned solitude!

They looked upon the high blue air,
And felt their spirits glow,
Resolved to live or perish there,-
Two hundred years ago!

The warrior's red right arm was bared,
His eyes flashed deep and wild:
Was there a foreign footstep dared

To seek his home and child?

The dark chiefs yelled alarm,—and swore

The white man's blood should flow,

And his hewn bones should bleach their shore,Two hundred years ago!

But lo! the warrior's eye grew dim,

His arm was left alone,

The still black wilds that sheltered him,
No longer were his own!

Time fled, and on the hallowed ground
His highest pine lies low,—

The cities swell where forests frowned,
Two hundred years ago!

Oh! stay not to recount the tale,-
'Twas bloody,—and 't is past;

The firmest cheek might well grow pale,
To hear it to the last.

The God of heaven, who prospers us,
Could bid a nation grow,

And shield us from the red man's curse,
Two hundred years ago!

Come then,-great shades of glorious men,
From your still glorious grave;
Look on your own proud land again,
O, bravest of the brave!

We call you from each moldering tomb,
And each blue wave below,

To bless the world ye snatched from doom,
Two hundred years ago!

Then to your harps,-yet louder,-higher,
And pour your strains along,—
And smite again each quivering wire,
In all the pride of song!

Shout for those godlike men of old,
Who, daring storm and foe,

On this blest soil their anthem rolled

Two hundred years ago!

Ex. XCVII.-NEW ENGLAND'S DEAD.

ISAAC M'LELLAN, JR.

"I shall enter into no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is; behold her, and judge for yourselves.-There is her history. The world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain for ever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every state, from New England to Georgia; and there they will remain for ever."-Webster's Speech.

NEW ENGLAND's dead! New England's dead!

On

On every hill they lie;

every field of strife made red

By bloody victory.

Each valley, where the battle poured

Its red and awful tide,

Beheld the brave New England sword

With slaughter deeply dyed.

Their bones are on the northern hill,
And on the southern plain,

By brook and river, lake and rill,
And by the roaring main.

The land is holy where they fought,
And holy where they fell;

9

For by their blood that land was bought,
The land they loved so well.
Then glory to that valiant band,
The honored saviours of the land!
Oh! few and weak their numbers were,-
A handful of brave men;

But to their God they gave their prayer,
And rushed to battle then.

The God of battles heard their cry,
And sent to them the victory.

They left the plowshare in the mold,
Their flocks and herds without a fold,
The sickle in the unshorn grain,
The corn, half garnered, on the plain,
And mustered, in their simple dress,
For wrongs to seek a stern redress.

To right those wrongs, come weal, come woe,
To perish, or o'ercome their foe.

And where are ye, O fearless men?
And where are ye to-day?

I call:-the hills reply again

That ye have passed away;

That on old Bunker's lonely height,

In Trenton, and in Monmouth ground,
The grass grows green, the harvest bright,
Above each soldier's mound.

The bugle's wild and warlike blast
Shall muster them no more;

An army now might thunder past,

And they not heed its roar.

The starry flag, 'neath which they fought,

In many a bloody day,

From their old graves shall rouse them not,
For they have passed away.

Ex. XCVIII.-THE CONVICT SHIP.

MORN on the waters!-and purple and bright
Bursts on the billows the flushing of light;

HERVEY.

O'er the glad waves, like a child of the sun,
See! the tall vessel goes gallantly on;

Full to the breeze she unbosoms her sail,

And her pennon streams onward, like hope, in the gale;
The winds come around her in murmur and song,
And the surges rejoice as they bear her along;
See! she looks up to the golden-edged clouds,
And the sailor sings gayly aloft in the shrouds;
Onward she glides, amid ripple and spray,
Over the waters,-away, and away!
Bright as the visions of youth, ere they part,
Passing away, like a dream of the heart!
Who, as the beautiful pageant sweeps by,-
Music around her, and sunshine on high,-
Pauses to think, amid glitter and glow,
O, there be hearts that are breaking below!

Night on the waves!—and the moon is on high,
Hung, like a gem, on the brow of the sky,
Treading its depths in the power of her might,
And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light!
Look to the waters!-asleep on their breast,
Seems not the ship like an island of rest?
Bright and alone on the shadowy main,

Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain!
Who, as she smiles in the silvery light,
Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,
Alone on the deep, as the moon in the sky,

A phantom of beauty, could deem, with a sigh,
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,

And that souls that are smitten lie bursting within ?—
Who, as he watches her silently gliding,
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever,
Hearts which are parted and broken for ever?—
Or deems that he watches, afloat on the wave,
The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit's grave?

'Tis thus with our life, while it
passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amid sunshine and song!
Gayly we glide, in the gaze of the world,

With streamers afloat, and with canvas unfurled;
All gladness and glory to wandering eyes,

Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs.