And when the leading voice is lost, Receding from the shore, His brother boatmen swell the strain, In chorus with the oar. The following is from the account of a visit to Quebec, in 1836, in The Notes of a Traveller. TO THE URSULINES. Oh pure and gentle ones, within your ark Blue be the sky above—your quiet bark— Still toil in duty and commune with heaven, God to his humblest creatures room has given, And space to be. Space for the eagle in the vaulted sky To plume his wing Space for the ring-dove by her young to lie, Space for the sun-flower, bright with yellow glow Space for the violet, where the wild woods grow, To live and die. Space for the ocean in its giant might, To swell and rave Space for the river, tinged with rosy light, Space for the sun, to tread his path in might, Space for the glow-worm, calling by her light, Then pure and gentle ones, within your ark Blue be the skies above, and your still bark MRS. CAROLINE H. GLOVER, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Gilman, has also acquired distinction in the popular literature of the Magazines, by a number of productions marked by their spirit and domestic sentiment. She was born in 1823, in Charleston; was married in 1840, and since the death of her husband in 1846, has resided with her parents. Under the nom de plume of "Caroline Howard," her mother's maiden name, she has contributed largely to literature for children, and also written several poems and tales, which have appeared in many of the leading magazines of the day. In autumn months came floating, floating down, To form a carpet, as they formed a crown For you, ye forest kings. Well may you bend with proud and haughty sweep, For sunbeams love to lie Upon your boughs, the breeze you captive keep, Last eve the moon on modest twilight smiled, She swept the wave, deliciously it gleamed, A few soft notes to sing. God of the April flowers, how large thy gift- That spans the changing clouds with footstep swift— Oh, not content with beauty rich and fair, That loads with burden sweet the tender air, God of the Spring-time hours! what give we Thee, Thou owest us naught, we owe Thee all we seeEnjoyment, hope, thought, health, eternity, The life-beat of each heart. This morn came birds on pinions bright and fleet, To Winter as he slept-but other voices sweet To greet the waking Spring. Thus trees, and birds, and buds, and skies conspire To speak unto the heart, Renew thy strength, be fresh, be pure, desire To be new touched with purifying fire, That evil's growth depart." God of the Seasons! from our bosoms blow CARLOS WILCOX. CARLOS WILCOX was the son of a farmer of Newport, New Hampshire, where he was born, October 23, 1794. In his fourth year his parents removed to Orwell, Vermont. He entered Middlebury College soon after its organization, and on the completion of his course delivered the valedictory oration. He then went to Andover, where his studies were frequently interrupted by the delicate state of his health. He commenced preaching in 1818, but was obliged after a few Carlos Wilesy months' trial to desist. The following two years were spent, with intervals of travelling, with a friend at Salisbury, Connecticut. His chief occupation was the composition of his poem, Tho Age of Benevolence, the first book of which he published at his own expense in 1822. In 1824 he accepted a call from the North Church at Hartford. He resigned this situation in 1826 on account of his health. This being somewhat reestablished by travel during the summer months, he accepted a call to Danbury at the end of the year. Here he died on the 29th of the following May. His Remains were published in 1828. The volume contains two poems, The Age of Benevolence and The Religion of Taste, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and fourteen Sermons. Both of the poems are incomplete. It was the author's design that the first should extend to five books, of which he only lived to complete the first and portions of the three following. These are entitled, Benevolence, the Glory of Heaven; Benevolence on Earth, the resemblance of Heaven; the Need of Benevolence, and the Rewards of Benevolence. The second poem extends to one hundred and seven Spenserian stanzas. The poems of Wilcox abound in passages of rural description of remarkable accuracy. The greater portion is, however, occupied with reflections on the power and beneficence of the Deity in the constitution of the material universe and the human mind. His verse always maintains correctness and dignity of expression, and often rises to passages of sublimity. SPRING IN NEW ENGLAND FROM THE AGE OF BENEVOLENCE. The spring, made dreary by incessant rain, Was well nigh gone, and not a glimpse appeared Of vernal loveliness, but light-green turf Round the deep bubbling fountain in the vale, Or by the rivulet on the hill-side, near Its cultivated base, fronting the south, Where in the first warm rays of March it sprung Amid dissolving snow:-save these mere specks Of earliest verdure, with a few pale flowers, In other years bright blowing soon as earth Unveils her face, and a faint vermeil tinge On clumps of maple of the softer kind, Was nothing visible to give to May, Though far advanced, an aspect more like her's Than like November's universal gloom. All day beneath the sheltering hovel stood The drooping herd, or lingered near to ask The food of winter. A few lonely birds, Of those that in this northern clime remain Throughout the year, and in the dawn of spring, At pleasant noon, from their unknown retreat Come suddenly to view with lively notes, Or those that soonest to this clime return From warmer regions, in thick groves were seen, But with their feathers ruffled, and despoiled Of all their glossy lustre, sitting mute, Or only skipping, with a single chirp, In quest of food. Whene'er the heavy clouds, That half way down the mountain side oft hung, As if o'erloaded with their watery store, Were parted, though with motion unobserved, Through their dark opening, white with snow appeared Its lowest, e'en its cultivated, peaks. With sinking heart the husbandman surveyed *Remains of the Rev. Carlos Wilcox, late Pastor of the North Congregational Church in Hartford, with a Memoir of his Life. Hartford: Edward Hopkins, 1528. 8vo. pp. 430. With spirits by hope enlivened he Moved by their secret force, the vital lymph On the first morn, light as an open plain Is lovely nature, as in her blest prime. Hillock and fence, with motion serpentine, Her strain repeating. With sonorous notes First peeping out, then starting forth at once And the fair prospect of a fruitful year, When loosened from the plough and homeward turned, He follows slow and silent, stopping oft WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT Was born at Cummington, Hampshire County, Mass., November 3, 1794. His father, a physician, and a man of strength of character and literary culture, took pride in his son's early ability, and cherished the young poet with paternal affection. We have heard the anecdote of his reciting the poem "Thanatopsis" at the house of one of his friends, with tears in his eyes. "The father taught the son," we are told in a valuable notice of the poet's life and writings,* "the value of correctness and compression, and enabled him to dis An article on Bryant, which appeared in the Southern Lit. Mess, for 1843. It is from the pen of Mr. James Lawson, an old friend of the poet. tinguish between true poetic enthusiasm and fustian." We may here quote the passage which follows in the article just referred to, for its personal details of the poet's family, and the apposite citations from his verse. "He who carefully reads the poems of the man, will see how largely the boy has profited by these early lessons-and will appreciate the ardent affection with which the son so beautifully repays the labor of the sire. The feeling and reverence with which Bryant cherishes the memory of his father, whose life was Marked with some act of goodness every day, is touchingly alluded to in several poems, and directly spoken of, with pathetic eloquence, in the Hymn to Death, written in 1825. Alas! I little thought that the stern power Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus Before the strain was ended. It must ceaseFor he is in his grave who taught my youth The art of verse, and in the bud of life Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off Untimely when thy reason in its strength, Ripened by years of toil and studious search And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught Thy hand to practise best the lenient art To which thou gavest thy laborious days, And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes, And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, which thou Shalt not, as wont, o'erlook, is all I have Again, in To the Past, written in 1827, from which we quote: Thou hast my better years, Thou hast my earlier friends-the good-the kind, Yielded to thee with tears The venerable form-the exalted mind. My spirit yearns to bring The lost ones back-yearns with desire intense, Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence. Till the slow plague shall bring the fatal hour." Bryant early displayed the poetical faculty, and fastened upon the genial influences of nature about him. He began to write verses at nine, and at ten composed a little poem to be spoken at a public school, which was published in a country newspaper. At the age of fourteen he prepared a collection of poems, which was published in Boston in 1809.* The longest of these is entitled the Embargo, a reflection in good set heroic measure of the prevalent New England antiJeffersonian Federalism of the times. This was a second and enlarged edition of the "Embargo," which had appeared the year previous in a little pamphlet by itself. It is noticeable that never since that early publication, while actively engaged in public life, has the poet employed his muse upon the politics of the day, though the general topics of liberty and independence have given occasion to some of his finest poems. By the side of this juvenile production are an Ode to Connecticut River, and some verses entitled Drought, which show a characteristic observation of nature. Plunged amid the limpid waters, And evaporates the rill. Wrap in gloom, the sky serene; Or beneath the cooling shade; Bryant studied at Williams College, which he left to prosecute the study of the law, a profession in which he was engaged in practice at Plainfield for one year, and afterwards for nine years at Great Barrington. In 1816 his poem of Thanatopsis, written in his nineteenth year, was published in the North American Review. Its sonorous blank verse created a marked sensation at the time, and the imitations of it have not ceased since.‡ In 1821 he delivered the * The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times. A Satire. The second edition, corrected and enlarged, together with the Spanish Revolution, and other Poems. By William Cullen Bryant. Boston: Printed for the Author by E. G. House, No. 5 Court street. 1809. 12mo., pp. 36. The poem received the following notice at the time from the Monthly Anthology for June, 1808:-"If the young bard has met with no assistance in the composition of this poem, he certainly bids fair, should he continue to cultivate his talent, to gain a respectable station on the Parnassian mount, and to reflect credit on the literature of his country." A story is told of the first publication of this poem in the Review, in connexion with Richard H. Dana, of which we are enabled to give the correct version. Dana was then a member of the club which conducted the Review, and received two Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard, his composition entitled the Ages, a didactic poem, viewing the past world's progress by the torch-light of liberty, and closing with a fair picture of American nature, and its occupation by the new race. This he published in that year with other poems at Cambridge. In 1825, abandoning the law for literature, he came to New York and edited a monthly periodical, the New York Review and Athenæum Magazine, which in 1826 was merged in a new work of a similar character, also conducted by him, the United States Review and Literary Gazette, which closed with its second volume in September of the following year. In these works appeared many just and forcible criticisms, and a number of his best known poems, including The Death of the Flowers, The Disinterred Warrior, The African Chief, The Indian Girl's Lament. These periodicals were supported by contributions from Richard H. Dana, the early friend of Bryant, who wrote both in prose and verse, by Sands, and by Halleck, whose Marco Bozzaris, Burns, and Wyoming appeared in their pages. Mr. Bryant was also a contributor of several prose articles to the early volumes of the North American Review. In 1824 a number of his poems, The Murdered Traveller, The Old Man's Funeral, The Forest Hymn, March, and others, appeared in the United States Literary Gazette, a weekly review published at Boston, at first edited by Theophilus Parsons, and afterwards by James G. Carter. * In 1826 Bryant became permanently connected with the Evening Post, a journal in which his clear, acute prose style has been constantly employed since; enforcing a pure and simple administration of the government within the confines of its legitimate powers, steadily opposing the corruptions of office, advocating the principles of free trade in political economy both in its foreign and domestic relations, generous and unwearied in support of the interests of art and literature, uncompromising in the rebuke of fraud and oppression of whatever clime or race. On the completion of the half century of the Evening Post, Mr. Bryant published in that papert a history of its career. Its first number was dated November 16, 1801, when it was founded by William Coleinan, a barrister from poems, Thanatopsis and a Fragment, which now bears the title, "Inscription on the Entrance to a Wood." The first was somehow understood to be from the father; the other from the son. When Dana learnt the name, and that the author of Thanatopsis, Dr. Bryant, was a member of the State Legislature, he proce ded to the Senate-room to observe the new poet. He saw there a man of a dark complexion, with quite dark if not black hair, thick eyebrows, well developed forehead, well featured, with an uncommonly intellectual expression, though he could not discover in it the poetic faculty. He went away puzzled and mortified at his lack of discernment. When Bryant afterwards came to Cambridge to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa Poem, and Dana spoke of his father's Thanatopsis, the real author explained the matter, and became known as the writer of the two poems. In this innocent perplexity the acquaintance between these poets began. *Mr. Theophilus Parsons, son of the eminent Judge Parsons, Dane Professor of Law at Cambridge, was also one of the early contributors to the North American Review under the editorship of Everett. He published a volume of "Essays" which reached a second edition in 1847. The subjects of these-Life, Providence, Correspondence, The Human Form, Religion, the New Jerusalem-indicate the Swedenborgian religious and philosophic views of the author. Mr. Carter, alluded to in the text, was much interested in the subject of Education, and took an active part in the introduction of normal schools into this country, in Massachusetts. + No. for November 13, 1851. Massachusetts, with the support of the leading members of the Federal party, to which, till the close of the war with England, it was a devoted adherent. In 1826 Mr. Bryant began to write for its columns. On the death of Coleman in 1829, William Leggett was employed as assistant editor, and remained with the paper till 1836, when he retired on the return of Mr. Bryant from Europe. It now remained in Mr. Bryant's sole editorial hands, assisted by various contributors, including the regular aid of his son-in-law, Mr. Parke Godwin, till the purchase by Mr. John Bigelow of a share of the paper in 1850, since which time he has been associated in the editorship. In the first years of his engagement in these editorial duties, Bryant wrote, in conjunction with his friends Sands and Verplanck, The Talisman, in three annual volumes, 1827-29-30; the collection entitled, "Tales of the Glauber Spa," in 1832. His contributions to the "Talisman," besides a few poems, were an Adventure in the East Indies, The Cascade of Melsingah, Recollections of the South of Spain, A Story of the Island of Cuba, The Indian Spring, The Whirlwind, Phanette des Gaulelmes, and the Marriage Blunder. He also assisted in writing The Legend of the Devil's Pulpit, and Reminiscences of New York. For the Tales of the Glauber Spa, he wrote the Skeleton's Cave and Medfield. He has since from time to time published new poems in the periodicals of the day, which he has collected at intervals in new editions.* In the Evening Post have also appeared several series of Letters from Europe, the Southern States, M6. Ryants and the West Indies, which mark the period of the author's travels at various times from 1834 to • The first general collection was published by Elam Bliss, a bookseller of great liberality and worth, a gentleman by nature, and a warm friend of the poet, in 1882; followed by another in Boston; others subsequently in New York from the press of the Harpers. In 1846 a richly illustrated edition, with engravings from original designs, by the painter Leutze, was published by Carey and Hart in Philadelphia. New editions of the poems, in three different forms, wore published by the Appletons in New York, in 1855. 1853. The last tour extended to the Holy Land. A collection of these papers has been published by Putnam, entitled Letters of a Traveller; or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America. Among Mr. Bryant's separate publications should be mentioned his Eulogy of his friend Thomas Cole, the artist, delivered in New York in 1848, and a similar tribute to the genius of Cooper the novelist, in 1852. The style of these addresses, and of the author's other prose writings, is remarkable for its purity and clearness. Its truthfulness, in accuracy of thought and diction, is a constant charm to those who know the value of words, and have felt the poverty of exaggerated language. This extends to the daily articles written by the author in his newspaper, where no haste or interruptions are suffered to set aside his fastidious and jealous guardianship, not merely of sincere statement but of its pure expression. The style must have been formed at the outset by a vigorous nature, which can thus resist the usually pernicious influences of more than a quarter of a century of editorial wear and tear. The poems of Bryant may be classed, with regard to their subjects:-those expressing a universal interest, relative to the great conditions of humanity, as Thanatopsis, The Ages, Hymn to Death, The Past; types of nature symbolical of these, as the Winds; poems of a national and patriotic sentiment, or expressive of the heroic in character, as the Song of Marion's Men, the Indian Poems, and some foreign subjects mingled with translations. Of these, probably the most enduring will be those which draw their vitality more immediately from the American soil. In these there is a purity of nature, and a certain rustic grace, which speak at once the nature of the poet and his subject. Mr. Bryant has been a close student of English poetry through its several periods, and while his taste would lead him to admire those who have minutely painted the scenes of nature, his fidelity to his own thoughts and experiences has preserved him from imitation of any. Mr. Dana, in his preface to his reprint of his "Idle Man," speaks of a poetic influence in the early period of Bryant's career. "I shall never forget," says he, "with what feeling my friend Bryant, some years ago,* described to me the effect produced upon him by his meeting for the first time with Wordsworth's Ballads. He lived, when quite young, where but few works of poetry were to be had; at a period, too, when Pope was still the great idol of the Temple of Art. He said, that upon opening Wordsworth, a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in his heart, and the face of nature, of a sudden, to change into a strange freshness and life." This may have been a seed sown in a generous nature, but the predetermined quality of the soil has marked the form and fragrance of the plant. It is American air we breathe, and American nature we see in his verses, and "the plain living and high thinking" of what should constitute American sentiment inspire them. Bryant, whose songs are thoughts that bless This was written in 1883. |