wildly around, cried, "Oh! the bird! the bird! the eagle! the eagle has carried off my bonnie wee Walter! is there nane to pursue?" A neighbor put her baby to her breast, and, shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered creature said, in a low voice, "Am I wauken? oh! tell me if I am wauken? or if a' this be the wark o' a fever, and the delirium o' a dream!

1.

2.

3.

CX. THE DEAD EAGLE.

IT is a desolate eve;

Dim, cheerless is the scene my path around;
+Patters the rain; the breeze-stirred forests grieve;
And wails the scene with melancholy sound,
While at my feet, behold,

With vigorous talons *clinched, and bright eyes shut,
With proud, curved beak, and wiry *plumage bold,
Thou liest, dead eagle of the desert; but

Preserving yet, in look, thy tameless mood,

As if, though stilled by death, thy heart were unsubdued.

How cam'st thou to thy death?

Did lapsing years o'ercome, and leave thee weak,
Or whirlwinds, on thy heaven-descending path,

Dash thee against the precipice's peak?

'Mid rack and floating cloud,

Did scythe-winged lightning flash 'athwart thy brain,
And drive thee from thy elevation proud,

Down whirling, lifeless, to the dim-seen plain?

I know not, may not guess; but here alone

Lifeless thou liest, outstretched beside the desert stone.

A proud life hath been thine:

High on the herbless rock, thou 'wok'st to birth,
And, gazing down, saw far beneath thee shine
Outstretched, horizon-girt, the map-like earth.
What rapture must have gushed

Warm round thy heart, when first thy wings essayed,
+Adventurously, their heavenward flight, and rushed
Up toward day's blazing eye-star, undismayed,
Above thee, space's vacancy unfurled,

And, far receding down, the dim, material world!

4.

5.

6

7.

How fast, how far, how long,

Thine hath it been, from cloud-veiled *aerie high,
To swoop, and still the wood-lark's lyric song,
The leveret's gambols, and the lambkin's cry?
The terror-stricken dove

+Cowered down amid the oak-wood's central shade, While ferny glens below, and cliffs above,

To thy fierce shriek, tresponsive echo made, Carrying the wild alarm from vale to vale,

That thou, the forest king, wert out upon the gale!

When wooded glens were dark,

And o'er moist earth, glowed morning's rosy star,
High o'er the scarce tinged clouds, 't was thine to mark
The orient chariot of the sun afar:

And oh how grand to soar

Beneath the full moon, on full pinion driven; To pierce the regions of gray cloud-land o'er, And drift amid the star-isled seas of heaven! Even like a courier, sent from earth to hold

With space-dissevered worlds, unawed, communion bold.

Dead king bird of the waste!

And is thy curbless span of freedom o'er? No more shall thine ascending form be traced? And shall the hunter of the hills no more Hark to thy regal cry,

While soaring o'er the stream-girt vales, thy form, Lessening, commingles with the azure sky,

Glimpsed 'mid the masses of the gathering storm, As if it were thy proud resolve to see,

Betwixt thee and dim earth, the zigzag lightnings flee?

A child of freedom thou,

Thy birthright the tall cliff and sky beyond:

Thy feet were fetterless; thy fearless brow,
Ne'er quailing, tyrant man's dominion owned.
But nature's general law

The slave and freeman must alike obey:
Pride reels; and Power, that kept a world in awe,
The dreadful summons hears; and where are they?
Vanished, like night-dreams, from the sleeper's mind,
Dust, 'mid dissolving day, or clouds before the wind!

CXI.-NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

FROM SPRAGUE.

1. NOT many generations ago, where you now sit, *encircled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here, lived and loved another race of beings. Beneath the same sun that rolls over your head, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his *dusky mate. Here, the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, and the council-fire glared on the wise and daring. Now, they dipped their noble limbs in your *sedgy lakes, and now, they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here, they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and when the tiger-strife was over, here, curled the smoke of peace.

2. Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a dark bosom went up a fervent prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not written his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of Revelation, but the God of the *universe he acknowledged in every thing around. He beheld him in the star that sank in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his midday throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine that defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid *warbler that never left its native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired *pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his feet; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious source he bent in humble, though blind adoration.

3. And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face, a whole, peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. Here and there, a

stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamable *progenitors. The Indian of *falcon glance and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawls upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck.

+

Their

4. As a race, they have withered from the land. arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast fading to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the *structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of persons they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues, as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate, as a people.

CXII. RED JACKET, THE INDIAN CHIEF.
FROM HALLECK.

FITZ GREENE HALLECK, a native of Connecticut; he has written little. but ranks high among American poets.

ROB ROY and ROBIN HOOD; celebrated outlaws, the one of Scotland, the other of England. UPAS; a poisonous tree which grows in India. 1. THOU wert a monarch born. Tradition's pages Tell not the planting of thy parent tree, But that the forest tribe have bent for ages, To thee, and to thy sires, the subject knee.

2. Thy name is princely, though no poet's magic
Could make Red Jacket grace an English rhyme,
Unless he had a genius for the tragic,
And introduced it into pantomime.

3. Yet it is music in the language spoken

Of thine own land; and on her herald roll,

As nobly fought for, and as proud a token

As 'CŒUR DE LION'S, of a warrior's soul.

4. Thy garb—though Austria's bosom-star would frighten
That metal pale, as diamonds the dark mine,
And George the Fourth wore in the dance at Brighton,
A more becoming evening dress than thine;

5. Yet 't is a brave one, scorning wind and weather,
And fitted for a couch on field and flood,

As Rob Roy's tartan for the Highland *heather,
Or forest green for England's Robin Hood.

6. Is strength a monarch's merit, like a whaler's?
Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong
As earth's first kings-the Argo's gallant sailors,
+Heroes in history, and gods in song.

7. Is eloquence? Her spell is thine, that reaches
The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches—
The secret of their mastery-they are short.

8. Is beauty? Thine has with thy youth departed;
But the love-legends of thy manhood's years,
And she who perished, young and broken-hearted,
Are-but I rhyme for smiles, and not for tears.
9. The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding,
The godlike power, the art Napoleon,

Of winning, fettering, molding, wielding, banding,
The hearts of millions till they move as one;

10. Thou hast it. At thy bidding, men have crowded
The road to death as to a festival;

And minstrel-minds, without a blush, have shrouded
With banner-folds of glory, their dark pall.

11. Who will believe-not I-for in deceiving

Lies the dear charm of life's delightful dream;
I can not spare the luxury of believing

That all things beautiful are what they seem:

12. Who would believe that, with a smile whose blessing Would, like the patriarch's, soothe a dying hour, With voice as low, as gentle, as *caressing,

As e'er won maiden's lip in moonlight bower;

1 Cœur de Lion, (pro. Kur de Lee'on,) lion-hearted, a name given to Richard I, of England.