Mont Blanc,' in the roar of his mad avalanches, Belted with beech, and ensandall'd with palm- Or the superior splendors of song, Greater than thou, in thy mystery mantled— Thou, the sole monarch of African mountains, BAYARD TAYLOR. BAYARD TAYLOR, the noted American traveler and poet, was born in the village of Kennett Square, Chester county, Pennsylvania, on the 11th of January, 1825. At the age of seventeen he became an apprentice in a printing office in Westchester; and about the same period wrote verses, which appeared in the "New York Mirror” and “Graham's Magazine." He collected and published. a small volume of his poems in 1844, and visited Europe the samne year. Having passed two years in Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and France, he returned home; published an account of his travels under the title of "Views a-Foot" settled in New York; and in 1848, soon after publishing" Rhymes of Travel," secured a place as a permanent writer for "The Tribune," in which journal the greater part of his recent productions have been first printed. He visited California in 1849, returned by the way of Mexico in 1850, and soon after published his "Eldorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire." His "Book of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs," which appeared in 1851, greatly increased his reputation as a poet. The same year he set out on a protracted tour in the East, upon which he was absent two years and four months, traveling more than fifty thousand miles. His spirited, graphic, and entertaining history of this journey is given in three works, entitled "A Journey to Central Africa," "The Land of the Saracen,” and “India, Loo Choo, and Japan.” “Poems of the Orient" appeared in 1854, embracing only such pieces as were written while he was on his passage round the world. Glowing with the warm light of the East, they contain passages "rich, sensuous, and impetuous, as the Arab sings in dreams," with others gentle, tender, and exquisitely modulated. During the past two years Mr TAYLOR has traveled in the extreme north of Europe. 'Mont Blane (mồng bỏng ). Orizaba (o re sa bở). * Chim bo ra zo 1. 150. MORNING HYMN TO MONT BLANC. AST thou a charm to stay the morning star HAST In his steep course?-so long he seems to pause Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form! O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer Yet like some sweet, beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thoughts As in her natural form, swell'd vast to Heaven. 5. Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink: Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy And who commanded,—and the silence came,- 5. Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 66 "GOD!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 6. "GOD!" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice Utter fōrth "GOD!" and fill the hills with praise. 7. Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peak, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast,— Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth! COLERIDGE. SAMUEL TAYLOr Coleridge, one of the most imaginative and original of poets, remarkable for his colloquial eloquence and metaphysical and critical powers, the youngest son of the vicar of St. Mary Ottery, in Devonshire, England, was born at that place in October, 1772. Left an orphan in his ninth year, he was educated for seven years at Christ's Hospital; and in 1791 he became student of Jesus College, Cambridge. His reading, though desultory and irregular, embraced almost numberless books, especially on theology, metaphysics, and poetry. In 1794 was published the drama called "The Fall of Robespierre," of which the first act was COLERIDGE's, and the other two were SOUTHEY's; and the two poets, then entertaining those extreme opinions which they afterward so thoroughly abandoned, occupied themselves at Bristol in planning a new social community, which they were to found in the United States. At this town and elsewhere, COLERIDGE delivered courses of public lectures, both religious and political; and he also preached in Unitarian pulpits. In 1795 he married Miss FRICKER, whose sister soon afterward became Mrs. SOUTHEY; and in the same year he became acquainted with WORDSWORTH. About the same period he went to reside in a cottage at Stowey, Somersetshire, about two miles from the residence of the latter; and the poets bound themselves in the closest friendship. He here wrote some of his most beautiful poetry-his "Ode on the Departing Year," "Tears in Solitude," "France, an Ode," "Frost at Midnight," the first part of "Christabel," "The Ancient Mariner," and his tragedy of "Remorse." In 1798 he went to Germany to complete his education, and resided for fourteen mouths at Ratzburg and Gottingen. On his return to England he resided in the lake district near SOUTHEY and WORDSWORTH, and contributed political articles and poems for the "Morning Post" newspaper, which was followed, some years later, by similar employinent in the "Courier.' For fifteen months, in 1804 and 1805, he was secretary to Sir ALEXANDER BALL, the governor of Malta. In 1816 he found a quiet and friendly home in the house of Mr. GILLMAN, surgeon of Highgate, where, after a residence of eighteen years, he died in July, 1834. There both mind and body were restored from the excitement and ill health caused by the use of opium, first taken in illness, and afterward used habitually. His numerous productions in prose and verse, as well as his unsurpassed TableTalk, have since been published, proving a perpetual delight; and, like Nature, furnishing subjects of admiration and imitation for the refined and observing. 151. ELEMENTS OF THE SWISS LANDSCAPE. PASSING out through a forest of larches, whose dark verdurc is peculiarly appropriate to it, and going up toward the bafhs of Leuk,' the interest of the landscape does not at all diminish. What a concentration and congregation of all elements of sublimity and beauty are before you! what surprising contrasts of light and shade, of form and color, of softness and ruggedness! Here are vast heights above you, and vast depths below, villages hanging to the mountain sides, green pasturages and winding paths, lovely meadow slopes enameled with flowers, deep immeasurable ravines', torrents thundering down them; colossal, overhanging, castellated' reefs of granite; snowy peaks with the setting sun upon them. 2. You command a view far down over the valley of the Rhone, with its villages and castles, and its mixture of rich farms and vast beds and heaps of mountain fragments, deposited by furious torrents. What affects the mind věry powerfully on first entering upon these scenes, is the deep dark blue, so intensely deep and overshadowing, of the gorge at its upper end, and at the magnificent proud sweep of the granite barrier, which there shuts it in, apparently without a passage. The mountains rise like vast supernatural intelligences taking a material shape, and drawing around themselves a drapery of awful grandeur; there is a forehead of power and majesty, and the likeness of a kingly crown above it. 3. Amidst all the grandeur of this scenery, I remember to have been in no place more delighted with the profuse richness, delicacy, and beauty of the Alpine flowers. The grass of the meadow slopes in the gorge of the Dala had a depth and power of verdure, a clear, delicious greenness, that in its effect upon the mind was like that of the atmosphere in the brightest autumnal morning of the year; or rather, perhaps, like the colors of the sky at sunset. There is no such grass-color in the world as that of these mountain meadows. It is just the same at the 1 Leuk (loik), a village and celebrated bathing-place of Switzerland, canton of Valais, on the Rhone, and 5000 feet above the sea. Cas' tel la ted, inclosed; adorned with turrets and battlements, like a castle. |