THE BIRTH OF A POET.

BY J. NEAL.

On a blue summer night,

While the stars were asleep,

Like gems of the deep,

In their own drowsy light;

While the newly mown hay

On the green earth lay,

And all that came near it went scented away;
From a lone woody place,

There looked out a face,

With large blue eyes,

Like the wet warm skies,

Brim full of water and light;

A profusion of hair

Flashing out on the air,

And a forehead alarmingly bright:

"Twas the head of a poet! He grew

As the sweet strange flowers of the wilderness grow,
In the dropping of natural dew,
Unheeded-alone

Till his heart had blown

As the sweet strange flowers of the wilderness blow;

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THE BIRTH OF A POET.

Till every thought wore a changeable strain
Like flower-leaves wet with the sunset rain :
A proud and passionate boy was he,
Like all the children of Poesy;

With a haughty look and a haughty tread,

And something awful about his head;

With wonderful eyes

Full of wo and surprise,

Like the eyes of them that can see the dead.

Looking about,

For a moment or two he stood

On the shore of the mighty wood;

Then ventured out,

With a bounding step and a joyful shout,
The brave sky bending o'er him!

The broad sea all before him!

MARCO BOZZARIS.

BY F. G. HALLECK.

[He fell in an attack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platæa, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory. His last words were: "To die for liberty, is a pleasure, not a pain."]

At 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;
Then 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.

At midnight, in the forest shades,
Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,

There had the glad earth drunk their blood