There is pleasant preaching in the following "discourse," and withal somewhat practical, to a certain class of hearers. The article, as a whole, is too long for our purpose, but we shall take the liberty to select

some stanzas:

"SERMON TO ANN. "When I saw thee first, I loved thee

As an eagle loves the sun;

But I found thee out, and proved thee
For a false and heartless one :

I have traced thee from thy glory,
From the zenith to the west,
And will tell thy treacherous story
As a warning to the rest.

، Thou wast born a thing of passion,
Which a smile to flame could turn;
Thou wast moulded in a fashion
Angels might look on and learn;
With an eye as blue as heaven,
In its utmost beauty spread,

And a lip like sunset riven

When the sunset is most red.

Guiling to the midway ocean

Barques that tremble by the shore; But I hush the dark emotion

And would punish thee no more.

"Can I bless thee? Doth a blessing

Lighten from the hall of death? Is the tomb a power possessing

To give kindly thoughts a breath? Can a heart, despoiled and broken, Yield an incense as before?— But I leave thee with a token,

I will trouble thee no more."

The following article was evidently hastily written, yet there are many beautiful passages in it, and the opening stanza is peculiarly bold and imposing:

"A battle-gun on the mighty sea

A tone to shake the main !

Slow rolls it on to the sleeping sky,
And thunders back again!

The bannery blaze that lightened from
The cannon's mouth is o'er,-

And the smoke, like incense, goes away

To slumber on the shore.

"The setting sun looks goldenly,

Upon the ocean's breast,

And the waters leap like living things

To meet their burning guest;
But where the melancholy north
Uprises blue and steep,

A snow-white sail is coming forth,
And dancing o'er the deep.

"And ever as a moving surge

Its form before her flings, She stoops and rises gracefully,

As one of living wings; But as she clears that shadowy isle, And sails toward the sun, That crimson belt that girdles her Is seen-the fearful one !

"And now each sailor's eye is bent
Toward that threatening form,
Which neareth to them, as a pent
And sudden coming storm:
And every cannon teems with death,
And every flag unfurled,

As they would waste in but a breath
The strength of half the world!

*

"The hungry waves are climbing up
The ship's o'er-leaning deck,
And for the hardy seaman's form
They seem to look and beck.
The sun is gone? the twilight sky
Is prodigal of cloud,
And the war-star glimmers fitfully
Beyond its misty shroud.

"But where was he-the Rover,

Who had held such fearful reign?

When the thunder's tone was over,

He was travelling on the main;

And the moon came out-the stars were bright,
And gemmed the whole blue sky-
And he went upon his way that night
As 'one not born to die.""

Among the many "welcomes" of the returning Spring, we rarely meet with one more beautiful than the following:

"SPRING.

"Again upon the grateful earth,

Thou mother of the flowers, The singing birds, the singing streams, The rainbow and the showers: And what a gift is thine!-thou mak'st A world to welcome thee; And the mountains in their glory smile, And the wild and changeful sea.

"Thou gentle Spring!-the brooding sky Looks welcome all around;

The moon looks down with a milder eye,
And the stars with joy abound;
And the clouds come up with softer glow,
Up to the zenith blown,

And float in pride o'er the earth below,
Like banners o'er a throne.

This statement is true, so far as it goes. In justice to our author, however, we will quote part of the article in question, that the reader may see what Rockwell does say. The first line is an unfortunate one, though appearing much worse when separated from its connection with the stanza.

"LIFE AND DEATH.

"When Life is gone, Death hastens on As evening when the sun is set ; But to the sun there is a dawn,

Then wherefore should our life forget, Though dim in death, to rise again? If alway on death's silent plain The parted soul be left-Whence come those generations forth, That grow and wane upon the earth, Successively bereft ?

*

"Life is a year-a changeful year,

Its bland and spring-time hour of youth,
Its early loves in feeling dear,

Its passion for the shrine of truth;
At such a time, how hope steals on,
With freshened wing from being's dawn,

Far down through distant years,
Nor thinks the brightness in that gloom
Is scattered from her own fair plume,

And that all else is-tears!

"Then comes life's autumn-season-and
Fade all the glories of all things;
A sallow hue pervades the land,
And frozen are the sea's blue wings:
The glories of the forest fall,
And cluster over nature's pall—
While in life's western sky,
The gathering mists come up to shed
Oblivion on the weary head

Of him who wished to die!"

Rockwell has written better lines than the following-but, to our mind, the article has some very good stanzas. They possess a tenderness, too, not always characteristic of our author's poems:

"I had a child, and it grew like a vine-
Fair as the rose of Damascus, was mine;
Fair-and I watched o'er her innocent youth,
As an angel from heaven would watch over truth.
She grew like her mother, in feature and form-
Her blue eye was languid, her cheek was too warm:
Seventeen summers had shone on her brow-
The seventeenth winter beheld her laid low!
Yonder they sleep in their graves, side by side,
A father-a mother-a daughter-a bride!

"When they had left me I stood here alone-
None of my race or my kindred were known!
Friends all forsaken, and hope all departed—
Sad and despairing, and desolate-hearted—
Feeling no kindness for aught that was human-
Hated by man, and detested by woman-
Bankrupt in fortune and ruined in name-
Onward I kept in the pathway of shame!
And till this hour, since my father went down,
My brow has but known a continual frown!

"Go to your children, and tell them the tale:
Tell them his cheek, too, was lividly pale:
Tell them his eye was all bloodshot and cold:
Tell them he passed through the world they are in,
Tell them his purse was a stranger to gold:
The victim of sorrow and misery and sin :
Tell them when life's shameful conflicts were past,
In horror and anguish he perished at last!"

"The Prisoner for Debt" we have never seen. But in an editorial notice of Willis's old "Monthly Magazine," we find the following extracts:

"When the summer sun was in the west,

Its crimson radiance fell,

Some on the blue and changeful sea,

And some in the prisoner's cell.

And then his eye with a smile would beam, And the blood would leave his brain, And the verdure of his soul return,

Like sere grass after rain !

"But when the tempest wreathed and spread A mantle o'er the sun,

He gathered back his woes again,

And brooded thereupon:
And thus he lived, till time one day
Led death to break his chain:
And then the prisoner went away,

And he was free again!"

We must pass by the "CONVERSATION WITH THE CLOUDS," and address "To THE COMET," &c. &c. though there are fine things in each of them. But we cannot leave the "ICEBERG" so hastily. Though it has faults, we think its many beauties fully compensate for them.

"THE ICEBERG.

""Twas night-our anchor'd vessel slept Out on the glassy sea;

And still as heaven the waters kept,

And golden bright—as he,

The setting sun, went sinking slow
Beneath the eternal wave:

And the ocean seemed a pall to throw

Over the monarch's grave!

"There was no motion of the air

To raise the sleeper's tress,

And no wave-building winds were there, On ocean's loveliness;

But ocean mingled with the sky

With such an equal hue,

That vainly strove the 'wildered eye
To part their gold and blue.

"And ne'er a ripple of the sea

Came on our steady gaze,

Save when some timorous fish stole out,
To bathe in the woven blaze,-
When flouting in the light that played
All over the resting main,

He would sink beneath the wave, and dart
To his deep blue home again.

"Yet while we gazed, that sunny eve,
Across the twinkling deep,

A form came ploughing the golden wave,
And rending his holy sleep:

It blushed bright red, while growing on
Our fixed, half-fearful gaze;

But it wandered down, with its golden crown,
And its robe of sunny rays.

"It seemed like molten silver, thrown
Together in floating flame;
And as we looked, we named it then,
The fount whence colors came :

There were rainbows, furled with a careless grace,
And the brightest red that glows;
The purple amethyst there had place,
And the hues of the full blown rose ;

"And the vivid green, as the sunlit grass,
Where the pleasant rain hath been;
And the ideal hues that thought-like pass
Through the minds of fanciful men ;

They beamed full clear-and that form moved on,
Like one from a burning grave;

And we dared not think it a real thing,

But for the rustling wave.

"The sun just lingered in our view,

From the burning edge of ocean,

When by our barque that bright one passed,
With a deep, disturbing motion:
The far down waters shrank away,
With a gurgling rush upheaving,

And the lifted waves grew wildly pale,

The ocean's bosom leaving.

"Yet as it passed our bending stern,
In its throne-like glory going,

It crushed on a hidden rock, and turned,
Like an empire's overthrowing!

The uptorn waves rolled hoar,—and huge
The far-thrown undulations

Swelled out in the sun's last, lingering smile,
And fell, like battling nations!"

The following is one of Rockwell's most popular effusions, and one with which, perhaps, the reader is already familiar.

"THE SUM OF LIFE.

"Searcher of gold, whose days and nights

All waste away in anxious care,
Estranged from all of life's delights,
Unlearned in all that is most fair,
Who sailest not with easy glide,
But delvest in the depths of tide,

And strugglest in the foam-
Oh! come and view this land of graves—
Death's northern sea of frozen waves-
And mark thee out thy home.

"Lover of woman, whose sad heart

Wastes like a fountain in the sun,
Clings most where most its pain does start,
Dies by the light it lives upon-
Come to the land of graves--for here
Are beauty's smile, and beauty's tear,
Gathered in holy trust;

Here slumber forms as fair as those
Whose cheeks, now living, shame the rose,
Their glory turned to dust.

"Lover of fame, whose foolish thought

Steals onward from the wave of time--
Tell me what goodness hath it brought,
Atoning for that restless crime?
The spirit-mansion desolate,
And opens to the storms of fate,

The absent soul in fear

Bring home thy thoughts, and come with me,
And see where all thy pride must be--

Searcher of fame, look here!

"And warrior, thou with snowy plume,
That goest to the bugle's call--
Come and look down-this lonely tomb
Shall hold thee and thy glories all:
The haughty brow--the manly frame-
The daring deeds-the sounding fame-
Are trophies but for death!

And millions who have toiled like thee
Are stayed, and here they sleep; and see,
Does glory lend them breath ?"

Our last selection is from the "Specimens of American Poetry," before referred to. There is more originality of thought in the first line of the article, than in many self-styled "poems" which daily meet our eyes:

"TO THE ICE MOUNTAIN.

"Grave of waters gone to rest!
Jewel, dazzling all the main!
Father of the silver crest!

Wandering on the trackless plain,
Sleeping 'mid the wavy roar,
Sailing 'mid the angry storm,
Ploughing ocean's oozy floor,
Piling to the clouds thy form!

"Wandering monument of rain

Prisoned by the sullen north!