No shouting charioteer, in transport flings
Ten thousand anthems, from tumultuous strings:
And round and round no flesh-plumed echoes dance,
No airy minstrels in the flush-light glance:

No rushing melody comes strong and deep:
And far away no fading ringlets sweep:
No boundless hymning o'er the blue sky rings,
In hallelujahs to the King of kings:

No youthful hours are seen. No riband-lash
Flings its gay stripings like a rainbow-flash,
While starry crowns and constellations fade
Before the glories of that cavalcade,
Whose trappings are the jewelry of heaven,
Embroidered thickly on the clouds of even.

and light,

No! no!-he comes not thus in pomp
A new creation bursting out of night!
But he comes darkly forth! in storm arrayed-
Like the red tempest marshalled in her shade,

When mountains rock; and thunders travelling round
Hold counsel in the sky,—and midnight trumps resound.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Is the most popular, and the most truly national, of the American poets. He has no competitor that can approach the simple and affecting beauty with which he delineates the striking features of an American landscape. His originality of thought is equalled by his felicity of expression; and he would be truly fastidious that could find scope for censure in Bryant's noble sentiments and exquisite diction.

THE MURDERED TRAVELLER.

WHEN spring to woods and wastes around
Brought bloom and joy again,

The murdered traveller's bones were found,
Far down a narrow glen.

The fragrant birch above him hung
Her tassels in the sky;

And many a vernal blossom sprung,
And nodded careless by.

The red-bird warbled as he wrought
His hanging nest o'er head,
And fearless near the fatal spot
Her young the partridge led.

But there was weeping far away;
And gentle eyes, for him,

With watching many an anxious day,
Grew sorrowful and dim.

They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,
Unarmed and hard beset;--

Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,
The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole
To banquet on the dead;-

Nor how, when strangers found his bones
They dressed the hasty bier,

And marked his grave with nameless stones,
Unmoistened by a tear.

But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home;

And dreamed, and started as they slept,
For joy that he was come.

So long they looked-but never spied
His welcome step again,
Nor knew the fearful death he died
Far down that narrow glen.

SONG OF THE STARS

WHEN the radiant morn of creation broke,
And the world in the smile of God awoke,
And the empty realms of darkness and death

Were moved through their depths by His mighty breath;
And orbs of beauty, and spheres of flame,

From the void abyss by myriads came,

In the joy of youth, as they darted away

Through the widening wastes of space to play,
Their silver voices in chorus rung,

And this was the song the bright ones sung:

Away, away, through the wide, wide sky,

The fair blue fields that before us lie:

Each sun with the worlds that round us roll,
Each planet poised on her turning pole,

With her isles of green, and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.

For the Source of Glory uncovers his face,
And the brightness o'erflows unbounded space;
And we drink, as we go, the luminous tides
In our ruddy air and our blooming sides;
Lo, yonder the living splendours play!
Away, on your joyous path, away!

Look, look, through our glittering ranks afar,
In the infinite azure, star after star,

How they brighten and bloom as they swiftly pass!
How the verdure runs o'er each rolling mass,

And the path of the gentle winds is seen,

When the small waves dance, and the young woods lean.
And see, where the brighter day-beams pour,
How the rainbows hang in the sunny shower!
And the morn and the eve, with their pomp of hues,
Shift o'er the bright planets and shed their dews!
And 'twixt them both, o'er the teeming ground,
With her shadowy cone, the night goes round.
Away, away!-in our blossoming bowers,
In the soft air wrapping these spheres of ours,
In the seas and fountains that shine with morn,
See, love is brooding, and life is born,

And breathing myriads are breaking from night,
To rejoice, like us, in motion and light.

Glide on in your beauty, ye youthful spheres!
To weave the dance that measures the years.
Glide on in the glory and gladness sent
To the farthest wall of the firmament,
The boundless visible smile of Him,

To the veil of whose brow our lamps are dim.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and

sere,

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie

dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crew, through all the gloomy

day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves: the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie: but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the wild-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty
stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague

on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade,

and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home, When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

And then I think of one, who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair, meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side:
In the cold, moist earth we laid her when the forest cast the
leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was, that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK

Is a very pleasing writer. He has not written much; but what he has written is nearly faultless. He possesses warm feeling, rich, yet playful, fancy, a copious flow of words, and very melodious versification. He is, however, valued in America, more for his humorous than his serious poetry.

MARCO BOZZARIS1.

Ar midnight, in his guarded tent,
The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power;

In dreams, through camp and court he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;

In dreams his song of triumph heard;
There wore his monarch's signet-ring,-
Then pressed that monarch's throne,- -a king;
As wild his thoughts and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden-bird.