And again:

The ship works hard; the seas run high
Their white tops, flashing through the night
Give to the eager, straining eye

A wild and shifting light.'

Again, as a more general instance, and a more sublime one; speaking of the prospect of immortality:

'Tis in the gentle moonlight;

'Tis floating mid day's setting glories; Night,
Wrapp'd in her sable robe, with silent step
Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears.
Night, and the dawn, bright day and thoughtful eve,

All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse,

As one vast mystic instrument, are touch'd

By an unseen living hand, and conscious chords
Quiver with joy in this great jubilee.'

In these respects-in the power of giving in one word, as it were, a whole picture; in his admirable skill in the perspective, and in the faculty of chaining down the vast and the infinite to the mind's observation, he reminds us both of Collins and of Milton. But, above all, we admire Mr. Dana, more than any other American poet, because he has aimed not merely to please the imagination, but to rouse up the soul to a solemn consideration of its future destinies."

(2.) JAMES A. HILLHOUSE, of Boston, born 1789, died 1841. His best poem is "Hadad," a sacred drama, breathing the lofty thoughts and the majestic style of the ancient Hebrew prophets, to the study of which he was ardently devoted. "As a poet," says Griswold, "he possessed qualities seldom found united a masculine strength of mind and a most delicate perception of the beautiful. The grand characteristic of his writings is their classical beauty. Every passage is polished to the utmost; yet there is no exuberance, no sacrifice to false taste."

His style may be seen in the following extract from his poem, "The Judgment:"

'Nearer the mount stood MoSES; in his hand

The rod which blasted with strange plagues the realm
Of Misraim, and from its time-worn channels
Upturn'd the Arabian sea. Fair was his broad,
High front, and forth from his soul-piercing eye

Did legislation look; which full he fix'd
Upon the blazing panoply, undazzled.
No terrors had the scene for him, who oft,
Upon the thunder-shaken hill-top, veil'd

With smoke and lightnings, with Jehovah talk'd,
And from his fiery hand received the law.
Beyond the Jewish ruler, banded close, I saw
The twelve apostles stand. O, with what looks
Of ravishment and joy, what rapturous tears,
What hearts of ecstasy, they gazed again
On their beloved Master! What a tide
Of overwhelming thoughts press'd to their souls,
When now, as He so frequent promised, throned,
And circled by the hosts of heaven, they traced
The well-known lineaments of Him who shared
Their wants and sufferings here! Full many a day
Of fasting spent with Him, and night of prayer,
Rush'd on their swelling hearts.

Turn now, where stood the spotless Virgin: sweet
Her azure eye, and fair her golden ringlets;
But changeful as the hues of infancy

Her face. As on her son, her GOD, she gazed,
Fix'd was her look-earnest and breathless; now
Suffused her glowing cheek; now, changed to pale;
First, round her lip a smile celestial play'd,
Then, fast, fast rain'd the tears. Who can interpret
Perhaps some thought maternal cross'd her heart,
"hat mused on days long past, when on her breast
1. e helpless lay, and of His infant smile;

Or on those nights of terror, when, from worse
Than wolves, she hasted with her babe to Egypt."

SECTION IV.

(1.) CHARLES SPRAGUE, of Boston, has displayed ex quisite taste in some of his poems. Read the follow ing account of a death and burial at sea.

"Return! alas! he shall return no more,

To bless his own sweet home, his own proua snore
Look once again-cold in his cabin now,
Death's finger-mark is on his pallid brow;
No wife stood by, her patient watch to keep,
To smile on him, then turn away to weep;
Kind woman's place rough mariners supplied,
And shared the wanderer's blessing when he dieo.
Wrapp'd in the raiment that it long must wear,
His body to the deck they slowly bear;
Even there the spirit that I sing is true;
The crew look on with sad, but curious view

The setting sun flings round his farewell rays;
O'er the broad ocean not a ripple plays.
How eloquent, how awful in its power,
The silent lecture of death's sabbath hour!
One voice that silence breaks-the prayer is said,
And the last rite man pays to man is paid;
The plashing waters mark his resting-place,
And fold him round in one long, cold embrace:
Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o'er,
Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more;
Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep,
With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep.'

None but a man of strong domestic and social affections could have written thus. Of these affections there may be seen delightful evidence in "The Brothers," and the "Family Meeting;" also in his " Centennial Ode," and "Lines to a Young Mother."

(2.) CARLOS WILCOX, of New-Hampshire, deserves honorable mention. G. B. Cheever, one of the best prose writers in this country, remarks that "Wilcox resembled Cowper in many respects; in the gentleness and tenderness of his sensibilities-in the modest and retiring disposition of his mind-in its fine culture and its original poetica. cast, and not a little in the character of his poetry. It has been said with truth, that if he had given himself to poetry as his chief occupation, he might. have been the Cowper of NewEngland.

SECTION V.

(1.) WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, of Massachusetts, born in 1794. At ten years of age he began to write poetry for the press. When fourteen years old he published a volume of poems, which was so well received as to attain a second edition in the following year. The North American Review furnishes what seems to be a just criticism upon Bryant as a poet, a part of which is here subjoined. "His poetry has truth, delicacy, and correctness, as well as uncommon vigor and richness; he is always faithful to nature; he selects his groups and images with judgment. Nothing is borrowed, nothing artificial; his pictures have

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d originality which could come ature alone. He is less the poet of nature and the feelings. There e heart as well as for the underin all he writes; something which ility, and awakens deep-toned, sa

irms us by his simplicity. His pictures are never vercharged. His strains, moreover, are exquisitely finished. Besides, no sentiment or expression ever drops from him which the most rigid moralist would wish to blot."

"Thanatopsis" has been already referred to. We forbear to quote it, merely because it has been so often copied, and may, perhaps, be familiar. But we hesitate not to say that the language of poetry presents not a sweeter page than that which is occupied with Mr Bryant's address to the "Evening Wind.”

TO THE EVENING WIND.

SPIRIT that breathest through my lattice, thou
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day,
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow;
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play,

Riding all day the wild blue waves till now,

Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray. And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee

To the scorch'd land, thou wanderer of the sea!"

Nor I alone: a thousand bosoms round
Inhale thee in the fullness of delight;

And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night;
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound,
Lies the vast inland stretch'd beyond the sight.
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth,
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth.”

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest,

Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse
The wide old wood from his majestic rest,

Summoning from the innumerable boughs
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast;
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass,

And 'twixt the o'ershadowing branches and the grass

The faint old man shall lean his silver head

To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep,
And dry the moisten'd curls that overspread

His temples, while his breathing grows more deep;
And they who stand about the sick man's bed,
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep,

And softly part his curtains to allow
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow."

Go-but the circle of eternal change,

That is the life of Nature, shall restore,
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range,
Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more;
Sweet odors in the sea air, sweet and strange,
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore;
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem

He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

We would be glad to quote Bryant's pieces on the "Death of the Flowers" and "Autumn Woods," but our prescribed limits forbid. We shall be obliged, also, to be more brief in the notices and quotations that follow, in respect to other authors, only adding the fine description given of Bryant, that "he is the translator of the silent language of Nature to the world,” and the remark that his poems are valuable, not only for their intrinsic excellence, but for the purifying influence their wide circulation is calculated to exercise on national feelings and manners.

(2.) FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, Connecticut, born 1795. He is author of the beautiful lines in memory of his friend Dr. Drake, the poet, beginning with

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"Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days;

None knew thee but to love thee,
None named thee but to praise."

Fanny," ""Alnwick Castle," ""Marco Bozzaris," are the best known of his productions. He is distinguished by a talent for satire. Says Bryant, "He delights in ludicrous contrasts. He venerates the past and laughs at the present. His poetry, whether serious or sprightly, is remarkable for the melody of the numbers; it is not the melody of monotonous and strictly regular measurement. He understands that the rivulet is made musical by obstructions in its channel."