The Poets and Poetry of America

Out-out are the lights-out all!

And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm, And the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
Its hero the Conqueror Worm.

THE HAUNTED PALACE.

Is the greenest of our valleys,

By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace
(Snow-white palace) rear'd its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion
It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
Banners, yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This, all this, was in the olden
Time, long ago.)

And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically,

To a lute's well-tuned law; Round about a throne, where, sitting (Porphyrogene!)

In state his glory well-befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace-door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, faxing,
And sparkling evermore,

A troop of echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assail'd the monarch's high estate;
(Ah! let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blush'd and bloom'd,
Is but a dim-remember'd story
Of the old time entomb'd.

And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows sec
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid, ghastly river,
Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out for ever,
And laugh-but smile no more.

THE SLEEPER.

AT midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapour, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain-top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the mist about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see, the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not for the world awake.
All beauty sleeps!-and, lo! where lies,
With casement open to the skies,
Irene and her destinies!

O, lady bright, can it be right,
This lattice open to the night?
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber, in and out,
And wave the curtain-canopy

So fitfully, so fearfully,

Above the closed and fringed lid

'Neath which thy slumbering soul lies hid, That o'er the floor and down the wall,

Like ghosts, the shadows rise and fall.
O, lady dear, hast thou no fear?

Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to our garden-trees!
Strange is thy pallor-strange thy dress-
Stranger thy glorious length of tress,
And this all-solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps. O, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Soft may the worns about her creep!
This bed, being changed for one more holy,
This room for one more melancholy,
I pray to Gon that she may lie
Forever with unclosed eye!
My love she sleeps. O, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall tomb unfold-
Some tomb that oft hath flung its black
And wing-like pannels, fluttering back,
Triumphant o'er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals,-
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone,-
Some vault from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Nor thrill to think, poor child of sin,
It was the dead who groan'd within.

MR. STREET was born in Poughkeepsie, one of the most beautiful of the many arge towns up on the Hudson, on the eighteenth of December, 1811. General RANDALL S. STREET, his father, was an officer in active service during our second war with England, and subsequently several years a representative in Congress; and his paternal grandfather was a direct and lineal descendant of the Reverend NICHOLAS STREET, who came to this country soon after the landing of JOHN CARVER, and was ordained minister of the first church His mother's father in New Haven, in 1659. was Major ANDREW BILLINGS, of the revolutionary army, who was connected by marriage with the influential and wealthy family of the LivINGSTONS, which has furnished for some two centuries so many eminent citizens of the State of New York.

When the poet was about fourteen years of age his father removed to Monticello, in the county of Sullivan. Up to this period he had been in an academy at Poughkeepsie, and had already written verses in which is exhibited some of that peculiar taste, and talent for description, for which his later works are so much distinguished. Sullivan is what is called a "wild county," though it is extremely fertile where well cultivated. Its scenery is magnificent, and its deep forests, streams as clear as dew-drops, gorges of piled rock and black shade, mountains and valleys, could hardly fail to waken into life all the faculties that slumbered in the brain of a youthful poet.

Mr. STREET studied law in the office of his father, and, in the first years after his admission to the bar, attended the courts of Sullivan county; but in the winter of 1839 he removed to Albany, and has since successfully practised his profession in that city.

His "Nature," a poem read before the literary societies of the college at Geneva, appeared in 1840; The Burning of Schenectady and other Poems," in 1843, and "Drawings and Tintings." a collection of pieces chiefly descriptive, in 1844. The last and most complete edition of his poems was published by Clark and Austin, of New York, in 1845.

Mr. STREET, as has been intimated above, is a descriptive poet, and in his particular department he has, perhaps, no superior in this country. He has a hearty love of rural sports and pastimes, a quick perception of the grand and beautiful, and he writes with apparent ease and freedom, from tne impulses of his own heart, and from actual cbservations of life and nature.

The greatest merits of any style of writing are Dit iseclearness, directness and condensation.

ness is even more objectionable in verse than in
prose, and in either is avoided by men of taste. A
needless word is worse than one ill chosen, and
so musical, which
scarcely any thing is more offensive than a line,
though never was other one
could be omitted without affecting the transpa-
rency or force of the attempted expression. The
be greater but for the use of epithets which serve
beauty of Mr. STREET's poems would sometimes
no other purpose than to fill his lines, and his sin-
gular minuteness, though the most extreme par-
ticularity is a fault in description only when it
lessens the distinctness and fidelity of the general
impression. Occasionally his pictures of still na-
ture remind us of the daguerreotype, and quite as
often of the masterly landscapes of our COLE and
DOUGHTY. Some of his exhibitions of the ordi-
nary phenomena of the seasons have rarely been
equalled. What, for example, could be finer than
these lines on a rain in June?-

Wafted up,

The stealing cloud with soft gray blinds the sky,
And, in its vapoury mantle, onward steps
The summer shower; over the shivering grass
It merrily dances, rings its tinkling bells
Upon the dimpling stream, and moving on,
It treads upon the leaves with pattering feet
And softly urmur'd music. Off it glides,
And as its misty robe lifts up, and melts,
The sunshine, darting. with a sudden burst,
Strikes o'er the scene a magic brilliancy.

His works are full of passages not less picturesque
and truthful. The remarkable fidelity of Mr.
STREET'S description and narrative is best appre-
ciated by persons who are familiar with new set-
To others he
tlements in our northern latitudes.
may seem always lashing himself into excitement,
to be extravagant, and to exaggerate beyond the
But within a rifle-shot of the
requirements of art.
little village where nearly all his life has been
passed, are centurial woods, from which the howl-
which he has tracked the bear and the deer, and
ings of wolves have disturbed his sleep, and in
roused from their nests their winged inhabitants.
In the spring time he has looked from his window
upon fallow fires, and in the summer upon fields
of waving grain, spotted by undecayed stumps of
forest giants, and on trees that stand, charred and
black, in mournful observation of the settler's inva-
sion. Scenes and incidents which the inhabitant
of the city might regard as extraordinary have been
to him common and familiar, and his writings are
valuable, as the fruits of a genuine American ex
perience, to which the repose, of which it is com.
plained that they are deficient, does not belong.
They are on some accounts among the most pecu.
479
liarly national works in our literature.

THE GRAY FOREST-EAGLE.

WITH storm-daring pinion and sun-gazing eye,
The gray forest-eagle is king of the sky!
O, little he loves the green valley of flowers,
Where sunshine and song cheer the bright sum-
mer hours,

For he hears in those haunts only music, and sees
Only rippling of waters and waving of trees;
There the red robin warbles, the honey-bee hums,
The timid quail whistles, the sly partridge drums;
And if those proud pinions, perchance, sweep along,
There's a shrouding of plumage, a hushing of song;
The sunlight falls stilly on leaf and on moss,
And there's naught but his shadow black gliding

across;

But the dark, gloomy gorge, where down plunges the foam

Of the fierce, rock-lash'd torrent, he claims as his home:

There he blends his keen shriek with the roar of the flood,

And the many-voiced sounds of he blast-smitten wood;

From the crag-grasping fir-top, where morn hangs its wreath,

He views the mad waters white writhing beneath: On limb of that moss-bearded hemlock far down, With bright azure mantle and gay mottled crown, The kingfisher watches, where o'er him his foe, The fierce hawk, sails circling, each moment more low:

Now poised are those pinions and pointed that beak, His dread swoop is ready, when, hark! with a shriek, His eye-balls red-blazing, high bristling his crest, His snake-like neck arch'd, talons drawn to his breast,

With the rush of the wind-gust, the glancing of light, The gray forest-eagle shoots down in his flight; One blow of those talons, one plunge of that neck, The strong hawk hangs lifeless, a blood-dripping wreck;

And as dives the free kingfisher, dart-like on high With his prey soars the eagle, and melts in the sky.

A fitful red glaring, a low, rumbling jar, Proclaim the storm demon yet raging afar: [red, The black cloud strides upward, the lightning more And the roll of the thunder more deep and more A thick pall of darkness is cast o'er the air, [dread; And on bounds the blast with a howl from its lair: The lightning darts zig-zag and fork'd through the gloom,

And the bolt launches o'er with crash, rattle, and boom;

The gray forest-eagle, where, where has he sped?
Does he shrink to his eyrie, and shiver with dread?
Does the glare blind his eye? Has the terrible blast
On the wing of the sky-king a fear-fetter cast?
No, no, the brave eagle! he thinks not of fright;
'The wrath of the tempest but rouses delight;
To the flash of the lightning his eye casts a gleam,
To the shriek of the wild blast he echoes his scream,
And with front like a warrior that speeds to the fray,
And a clapping of pinions, he's up all away!

Away, O, away, soars the fearless and free!
What recks he the sky's strife?-its monarch is he!
The lightning darts round him, undaunted his sight;
The blast sweeps against him, unwaver'd his flight;
High upward, still upward, he wheels, till his form
Is lost in the black, scowling gloom of the storm.
The tempest sweeps o'er with its terrible train,
And the splendour of sunshine is glowing again;
Again smiles the soft, tender blue of the sky,
Waked bird-voices warble, fann'd leaf-voices sigh;
On the green grass dance shadows, streams sparkle
and run,

The breeze bears the odour its flower-kiss has won,
And full on the form of the demon in flight
The rainbow's magnificence gladdens the sight!
The gray forest-eagle! O, where is he now,
While the sky wears the smile of its Gon on its
brow?

There's a dark, floating spot by yon cloud's pearly wreath,

With the speed of the arrow 't is shooting beneath! Down, nearer and nearer it draws to the gaze, Now over the rainbow, now blent with its blaze, To a shape it expands, still it plunges through air, A proud crest, a fierce eye, a broad wing are there; "Tis the eagle-the gray forest-eagle-once more He sweeps to his eyrie: his journey is o'er! Time whirls round his circle, his years roll away, But the gray forest-eagle minds little his sway; The child spurns its buds for youth's thorn-hidden bloom,

Seeks manhood's bright phantoms, finds age and a tomb;

But the eagle's eye dims not, his wing is unbow'd, Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud! The green, tiny pine-shrub points up from the moss, The wren's foot would cover it, tripping across; The beech-nut down dropping would crush it be neath,

But 'tis warm'd with heaven's sunshine, and fann'd by its breath;

The seasons fly past it, its head is on high,
Its thick branches challenge each mood of the sky;
On its rough bark the moss a green mantle creates,
And the deer from his antlers the velvet-down grates;
Time withers its roots, it lifts sadly in air
A trunk dry and wasted, a top jagg'd and bare,
Till it rocks in the soft breeze, and crashes to earth,
Its blown fragments strewing the place of its birth.
The eagle has seen it up-struggling to sight,
He has seen it defying the storm in its might,
Then prostrate, soil-blended, with plants sprouting
But the gray forest-eagle is still as of yore. [o'er,
His flaming eye dims not, his wing is unbow'd,
Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud!
He has seen from his eyrie the forest below
In bud and in leaf, robed with crimson and snow.
The thickets,deep wolf-lairs,the high crag his throne,
And the shriek of the panther has answer'd his own.
He has seen the wild red man the lord of the shades,
And the smoke of his wigwams curl thick in the
glades;

He has seen the proud forest melt breath-like away,
And the breast of the carth lying bare to the day:

ALFRED B. STREET.

He sees the green meadow-grass hiding the lair,
And his crag-throne spread naked to sun and to air;
And his shriek is now answer'd, while sweeping
along,

By the low of the herd and the husbandman's song;
He has seen the wild red man off-swept by his foes,
And he sees dome and roof where those smokes

once arose ;

But his flaming eye dims not, his wing is unbow'd,
Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud!
An emblem of Freedom, stern, haughty, and high,
Is the gray forest-eagle, that king of the sky!
It scorns the bright scenes, the gay places of earth-
By the mountain and torrent it springs into birth;
There rock'd by the wild wind, baptized in the foam,
It is guarded and cherish'd, and there is its home!
When its shadow steals black o'er the empires of
kings,

Deep terror, deep heart-shaking terror it brings;
Where wicked Oppression is arm'd for the weak,
Then rastles its pinion, then echoes its shrick;
Its eye flames with vengeance, it sweeps on its way,
And its talons are bathed in the blood of its prey.
O, that eagle of Freedom! when cloud upon cloud
Swathed the sky of my own native land with a
shroud,

When lightnings gleam'd fiercely, and thunder-
bolts rung,

How proud to the tempest those pinions were flung!
Though the wild blast of battle swept fierce
through the air

With darkness and dread, still the eagle was there;
Unquailing, still speeding, his swift flight was on,
Till the rainbow of Peace crown'd the victory won.
O, that eagle of Freedom! age dims not his eye,
He has seen Earth's mortality spring, bloom,and die!
He has seen the strong nations rise, flourish, and fall,
He mocks at Time's changes, he triumphs o'er all:
He has seen our own land with wild forests o'er-
spread,

He sees it with sunshine and joy on its head;
And his presence will bless this, his own, chosen
Till the archangel's fiat is set upon time.

FOWLING.

[clime,

And the turkey, too, smoothing his plumes in your
face,

Then ruffling so proud, as you bound from the place;
Ha ha! that old hen, bristling up mid her brood,
Has taught you a lesson, I hope, for your good;
By the wink of your eye, and the droop of your crest,
I see your maraudings are now put at rest.

The rail-fence is leap'd, and the wood-boughs are
round,

And a moss-couch is spread for my foot on the ground:
A shadow has dimm'd the leaves' amethyst glow,
The first glance of Autumn, his presence to show.
The beech-nut is ripening above in its sheath,
Which will burst with the black frost, and drop it
beneath.

The hickory hardens, snow-white, in its burr, [fir;
And the cones are full grown on the hemlock and
The hopple's red berries are tinging with brown,
And the tips of the sumach have darken'd their down;
The white, brittle Indian-pipe lifts up its bowl,
And the wild turnip's leaf curls out broad like a
scroll;

The cohosh displays its white balls and red stems,
And the braid of the mullen is yellow with gems;
While its rich, spangled plumage the golden-rod

shows,

And the thistle yields stars to each air-breath that

blows.

A quick, startling whirr now bursts loud on my ear,
The partridge! the partridge! swift pinion'd by fear,
Low onward he whizzes, Jupe yelps as he sees,
And we dash through the brushwood, to note
where he trees;

I see him! his brown, speckled breast is display'd
On the branch of yon maple, that edges the glade;
My fowling-piece rings, Jupe darts forward so fleet,
While loading, he drops the dead bird at my feet:
I pass by the scaurberries' drops of deep red,
In their green, creeping leaves, where he daintily fed,
And his couch near the root, in the warm forest-
mould,

Where he wallow'd, till sounds his close danger
foretold.

On yon spray, the bright oriole dances and sings,
With his rich, crimson bosom, and glossy black

wings;

And the robin comes warbling, then flutters away,
For I harm not God's creatures so tiny as they;
But the quail, whose quick whistle has lured me
along,

No more will recall his stray'd mate with his song,
And the hawk that is circling so proud in the blue,
Let him keep a look-out, or he'll tumble down too
He stoops-the gun echoes-he flutters beneath,
His yellow claws curl'd, and fierce eyes glazed ir
death:

Lie there, cruel Arab! the mocking-bird now
Can rear her young brood, without fear of thy blow
And the brown wren can warble his sweet little lay.
Nor dread more thy talons to rend and to slay;
And, with luck, an example I'll make of that crow,
Formy green,sprouting wheat knew no hungrier for:
But the rascal seems down from his summit to scoff,
And as I creep near him, he croaks, and is off.

The woods shrink away, and wide spreads the

morass,

With junipers cluster'd, and matted with grass; Trees, standing like ghosts, their arms jagged and bare,

And hung with gray lichens, like age-whiten'd hair.
The tamarack here and there rising between,
Its boughs clothed with rich, star-like fringes of
green,

And clumps of dense laurels, and brown-headed flags,

And thick, slimy basins, black dotted with snags: Tread softly now, Carlo! the woodcock is here, He rises-his long bill thrust out like a spear; The gun ranges on him-his journey is sped; Quick scamper, my spaniel! and bring in the dead! We plunge in the swamp-the tough laurels are round;

No matter; our shy prey not lightly is found; Another up-darts, but unharm'd is his flight; Confound it! the sunshine then dazzled my sight; But the other my shot overtakes as he flies: Come, Carlo! come, Carlo! I wait for my prize; One more still another-till, proofs of my sway, From my pouch dangle heads, in a ghastly array. From this scene of exploits, now made birdless, I pass;

Pleasant Pond gleams before me, a mirror of glass: The boat's by the marge, with green branches supplied,

From the keen-sighted duck my approaches to hide;

A flock spots the lake; now crouch, Carlo, below!
And I move with light paddle, on softly and slow,
By that wide lily-island, its meshes that weaves
Of rich yellow globules, and green oval leaves.
I watch them; how bright and superb is the sheen
Of their plumage, gold blended with purple and

green;

How graceful their dipping-how gliding their way!

Are they not all too lovely to mark as a prey? One flutters, enchain'd, in those brown, speckled

stems,

His yellow foot striking up bubbles, like gems, While another, with stretch'd neck, darts swiftly

across

To the grass, whose green points dot the mirrorlike gloss.

But I pause in my toil; their wise leader, the drake,
Eyes keen the queer thicket afloat on the lake;
Now they group close together-both barrels !-
O, dear!

What a diving, and screaming, and splashing are

here!

The smoke-curls melt off, as the echoes rebound, Hurrah! five dead victims are floating around!

But "cloud-land" is tinged now with sunset, and bright

On the water's smooth polish stretch long lines of light;

The headlands their masses of shade, too, have lain,

And I pull with my spoil to the margin again.

A FOREST WALK.

A LOVELY sky, a cloudless sur,

A wind that breathes of leaves and flowers
O'er hill, through dale, my steps have won,
To the cool forest's shadowy bowers;
One of the paths all round that wind,

Traced by the browsing herds, I choose,
And sights and sounds of human kind
In nature's lone recesses lose;
The beech displays its marbled bark,

The spruce its green tent stretches wide,
While scowls the hemlock, grim and dark,
The maple's scallop'd dome beside :
All weave on high a verdant roof,
That keeps the very sun aloof,
Making a twilight soft and green,
Within the column'd, vaulted scene.
Sweet forest-odours have their birth
From the clothed boughs and teeming earth:

Where pine-cones dropp'd, leaves piled and dead,
Long tufts of grass, and stars of fern,
With many a wild flower's fairy urn,

A thick, clastic carpet spread;
Here, with its mossy pall, the trunk,
Resolving into soil, is sunk;
There, wrench'd but lately from its throne,

By some fierce whirlwind circling past,
Its huge roots mass'd with earth and stone,
One of the woodland kings is cast.
Above, the forest-tops are bright
With the broad blaze of sunny light:
But now a fitful air-gust parts

The screening branches, and a glow
Of dazzling, startling radiance darts

Down the dark stems, and breaks below;
The mingled shadows off are roll'd,
The sylvan floor is bathed in gold:
Low sprouts and herbs, before unseen,
Display their shades of brown and green:
Tints brighten o'er the velvet moss,
Gleams twinkle on the laurel's gloss;
The robin, brooding in her nest,

Chirps as the quick ray strikes her breast;
And, as my shadow prints the ground,

I see the rabbit upward bound,

With pointed ears an instant look,

Then scamper to the darkest nook,

Where, with crouch'd limb, and staring eye.
He watches while I saunter by.

A narrow vista, carpeted

With rich green grass, invites my tread;
Here showers the light in golden dots,
There sleeps the shade in ebon spots,
So blended, that the very air
Seems network as I enter there.
The partridge, whose deep-rolling drum
Afar has sounded on my ear,
Ceasing his beatings as I come,

Whirrs to the sheltering branches near;
The little milk-snake glides away,
The brindled inarmot dives from day;
And now, between the boughs. a space
Of the blu, laughing sky I trace:

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