to depict a scene so essentially august and sublime,―transcending, indeed, the limits of the loftiest intellect adequately to portray,— must of necessity fail to present it in all its stateliness and grandeur. Our poet BRAINARD's lines are, we think, among the best that have appeared on the subject:

The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain,
While I look upward to thee! It would seem

As if God poured thee from His "hollow hand,”
And hung His bow upon thine awful front;
And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake,
"The sound of many waters ;" and had bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,

And notch His centuries in the eternal rocks.
Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we,
That hear the question of that voice sublime!
Oh, what are all the notes that ever rung
From war's vain trumpet, by thy thundering side!
Yea, what is all the riot man can make,
In his short life, to thy unceasing roar !

And yet, bold babbler, wnat art thou to Him
Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains?-a light wave,

That breaks, and whispers of its Maker's might.

Brainard is not unknown to fame by his fine poem, The Connecticut River; which commences thus:

From that lone lake, the sweetest of the chain,
That links the mountain to the mighty main,
Fresh from the rock and swelling by the tree,
Rushing to meet, and dare, and breast the sea—
Fair, noble, glorious river! in thy wave
The sunniest slopes and sweetest pastures lave:

The mountain torrent, with its wintry roar,

Springs from its home and leaps upon thy shore:
The promontories love thee-and for this

Turn their rough cheeks, and stay thee for thy kiss.

The young
oak greets thee at the water's edge,
Wet by the wave, though anchored in the ledge.
'Tis there the otter dives, the beaver feeds,
Where pensive osiers dip their willowy weeds,
And there the wild-cat purs amid her brood,
And trains them, in the sylvan solitude,
To watch the squirrel's leap, or mark the mink
Paddling the water by the quiet brink;
Or to outgaze the gray owl in the dark,

Or hear the young fox practising to bark.

Dark as the frost-nipp'd leaves that strew'd the ground,

The Indian hunter here his shelter found;

Here cut his bow and shaped his arrows true,

Here built his wigwam and his bark canoe,
Spear'd the quick salmon leaping up the fall,
And slew the deer without the rifle-ball:
Here his young squaw her cradling-tree would choose,
Singing her chant to hush her swart pappoose:
Here stain her quills and string her trinkets rude,
And weave her warrior's wampum in the wood.
No more shall they thy welcome waters bless,
No more their forms thy moonlit banks shall press,
No more be heard, from mountain or from grove,
His whoop of slaughter, or her song of love.

*

Something of the Promethean fire of the Elizabethan age seems to glow in the following lines by PINKNEY, of Maryland :—

I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,

A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon;

To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven.
Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows
As one may see the burthened bee forth issue from the rose.
Affections are as thoughts to her, the measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy—the freshness of young flowers.

Her health and would on earth there stood some more of such a

frame,

That life might be all poetry, and weariness a name!

CUTTER, one of the poets of the West, is the author of this striking poem, entitled The Song of Steam:

Harness me down with your iron bands,

Be sure of your curb and rein,

For I scorn the power of your puny hands,
As the tempest scorns a chain.

How I laughed, as I lay concealed from sight
For many a countless hour,

At the childish boast of human might,
And the pride of human power!

When I saw an army upon the land,
A navy upon the seas,
Creeping along, a snail-like band,

Or waiting the wayward breeze;
When I marked the peasant faintly reel
With the toil which he daily bore,
As he feebly turned the tardy wheel,
Or tugged at the weary oar;

When I measured the panting courser's speed,
The flight of the carrier-dove,

As they bore the law a king decreed,
Or the lines of impatient love ;-

I could but think how the world would feel,
As these were outstripped afar,

When I should be bound to the rushing keel,
Or chained to the flying car.

Ha, ha, ha! they found me at last,

They invited me forth at length;

And I rushed to my throne with a thunder-blast,
And laughed in my iron strength.

The following graceful little melody is from the pen of GEORGE D. PRENTICE:

In Southern seas there is an isle,

Where earth and sky forever smile;

Where storms cast not their sombre hue

Upon the welkin's holy blue;

Where clouds of blessèd incense rise

From myriad flowers of myriad dyes,

And strange bright birds glance through the bowers,

Like mingled stars, or mingled flowers.

Oh, dear one! would it were our lot

To dwell upon that lovely spot,

To stray through woods with blossoms starred,

Bright as the dreams of seer or bard;

To hear each other's whispered words
Mid the wild notes of tropic birds,

And deem our lives, in those bright bowers,
One glorious dream of love and flowers!

These pleasing lines, on Olden Memories, are by CIST, of Cincinnati :

They are jewels of the mind; they are tendrils of the heart,
That with our being are entwined-of our very selves a part.
They the records are of youth, kept to read in after-years:
They are manhood's well of truth, filled with childhood's early tears.
Like the low and plaintive moan of the night-wind through the trees,
Sweet to hear, though sad and lone, are those olden memories!

In our days of mirth and gladness, we may spurn their faint control, But they come, in hours of sadness, like sweet music, to the soul: And in sorrow, o'er us stealing with their gentleness and calm, They are leaves of precious healing, they are fruits of choicest balm. Ever till, when life departs, death from dross the spirit frees, Cherish in thine heart of hearts, all thine olden memories.

Now let us in imagination turn our gaze towards the magnificent spectacle of an iceberg, which our American bard, BUCHANAN Read, so well portrays :

A fearless shape of brave device, our vessel drives through mist and

rain,

Between the floating fleets of ice-the navies of the northern main. These Arctic ventures, blindly hurled, the proofs of Nature's olden

force,

Like fragments of a crystal world long shattered from its skyey

course.

These are the buccaneers that fright the middle sea with dream of

wrecks,

And freeze the south winds in their flight, and chain the Gulf-stream to their decks.

At every dragon prow and helm there stands some Viking as of yore; Grim heroes from the boreal realm where Odin rules the spectral

shore.