TO A WATERFOWL

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side?

There is a power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, The desert and illimitable air

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

THE HURRICANE

Lord of the winds! I feel thee nigh,
I know thy breath in the burning sky!
And I wait, with a thrill in every vein,
For the coming of the hurricane!

And lo! on the wing of the heavy gales, Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails; Silent, and slow, and terribly strong,

The mighty shadow is borne along,
Like the dark eternity to come;

While the world below, dismayed and dumb,
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.

They darken fast-and the golden blaze
Of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze,
And he sends through the shade a funeral ray-
A glare that is neither night nor day,

A beam that touches, with hues of death,
The clouds above and the earth beneath.
To its covert glides the silent bird,

While the hurricane's distant voice is heard,
Uplifted among the mountains round,

And the forests hear and answer the sound.
He is come! he is come! do ye not behold
His ample robes on the wind unrolled?
Giant of air! we bid thee hail!—

How his gray skirts toss in the whirling gale;
How his huge and writhing arms are bent,
To clasp the zone of the firmament,

And fold, at length, in their dark embrace,
From mountain to mountain the visible space.
Darker still darker! the whirlwinds bear
The dust of the plains to the middle air:
And hark to the crashing, long and loud,
Of the chariot of God in the thunder-cloud!
You may trace its path by the flashes that start
From the rapid wheels where'er they dart,

As the fire-bolts leap to the world below,
And flood the skies with a lurid glow.

What roar is that?-'Tis the rain that breaks,
In torrents away from the airy lakes,
Heavily poured on the shuddering ground,
And shedding a nameless horror round.

Ah! well-known woods, and mountains, and skies,
With the very clouds !-ye are lost to my eyes.
I seek ye vainly, and see in your place

The shadowy tempest that sweeps through space,
A whirling ocean that fills the wall

Of the crystal heaven, and buries all.
And I, cut off from the world, remain
Alone with the terrible hurricane.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest, when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night;

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,

Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

(Compare with this Freneau's The Wild Honeysuckle, supra, p. 53, and Wordsworth's To the Small Celandine.)

Knickerbocker's History, books V, VI, and VII.

The Christmas Dinner, in The Sketch Book.
The Stout Gentleman, in Bracebridge Hall.
Westminster Abbey.

For Collateral Reading

Longfellow, H. W.: In the Churchyard at Tarrytown.
Thackeray, W. M.: Nil Nisi Bonum.

II. COOPER

For Further Illustration

The Deerslayer, chapters XXVII to XXXI.

The Pilot, chapters I to IV.

The Pioneers, chapters III and XXVIII.

Corporal Flint's Murder, in The Oak Openings.

For Collateral Reading

Bryant's Memorial Address, in Orations and Addresses of W. C. Bryant.

For Further Illustration

III. WEBSTER

First Bunker Hill Oration.

Reply to Hayne.

Second Bunker Hill Oration.

For Collateral Reading

Whittier, J. G.: Ichabod. The Lost Occasion.

For Further Illustration

IV. POE

A Descent into the Maelstrom

The Fall of the House of Usher Prose.
William Wilson

For Collateral Reading

Boner, J. H.: Poe's Cottage at Fordham.

Whitman, Sarah Helen: Sonnets, in Stedman's An American Anthology.

For Further Illustration

V. BRYANT

A Lifetime (Biographical.)

The Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood.

The Planting of the Apple Tree.

The Song of Marion's Men.

For Collateral Reading

Lowell, J. R.: On Board the '76. A Fable for Critics. (His characterization of Bryant.)

Whitman, W.: My Tribute to Four Poets (in Specimen Days).

II. Of Lesser Note

From the time of Irving to the rise of the brilliant New England group about the middle of the century, New York was the loadstar that attracted the man of letters. Here he could get work on one or several of the many periodicals that flourished during these years, and here he could find congenial companions, men of similar tastes and talents.

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867) and Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) were two of the early New York group of writers. The friendship of these men is one of the most interesting in all literary history. Halleck is remembered to-day for his beautiful lines written on the death of his friend, and Drake for his poem The American Flag, of which the four concluding lines were written by Halleck.

I. Fitz-Greene Halleck

ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE

Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days!