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ON REVISITING THE COUNTRY.

And where the season's milder fervours beat,

And gales, that sweep the forest borders, bear The song of bird, and sound of running stream, Am come awhile to wander and to dream.

Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake,
In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen.
The maize leaf and the maple bough but take,

From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green.
The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray,
Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away.

The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all
The wide earth knows-when, in the sultry time,
He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall,

He seems the breath of a celestial clime;

As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow,
Health and refreshment on the world below.

SONNET-MUTATION.

THEY talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so-
Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of

Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,

peace.

Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease:
Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase

Are fruits of innocence and blessedness:

Thus joy, o'erborne and bound, doth still release

His young limbs from the chains that round him press.

Weep not that the world changes-did it keep

A stable changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.

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HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

THE sad and solemn night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;

All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:
Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.
Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,

Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there ;*

There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls

The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High towards the star-lit sky

Towns blaze--the smoke of battle blots the sun—
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud-

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,

Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,

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Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,
Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER.

WILD was the day; the wintry sea

Moaned sadly on New-England's strand,

When first, the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land.

They little thought how pure a light,

With years, should gather round that day; How love should keep their memories bright, How wide a realm their sons should sway.

Green are their bays; but greener still

Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, And regions, now untrod, shall thrill

With reverence, when their names are breathed.

Till where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,
The children of the pilgrim sires

This hallowed day like us shall keep.