But this was all a dream of sleep,

And I have said, when morning shone, Oh! why should fairy Fancy keep These wonders for herself alone?,

I knew not then that Fate had lent
Such tones to one of mortal birth;
I knew not then that Heaven had sent
A voice, a form, like thine on earth!

And yet, in all that flowery maze
Through which my life has loved to tread,
When I have heard the sweetest lays

From lips of dearest lustre shed ;

When I have felt the warbled word

From Beauty's mouth of perfume sighing, Sweet as music's hallow'd bird

Upon a rose's bosom lying!

Though form and song at once combined

Their loveliest bloom and softest thrill, My heart hath sigh'd, my heart hath pined For something softer, lovelier still!

Oh! I have found it all, at last,

In thee, thou sweetest living lyre, Through which the soul hath ever pass'd Its harmonizing breath of fire!

All that my best and wildest dream, In Fancy's hour, could hear or see Of Music's sigh or Beauty's beam, Are realized, at once, in thee!

Oh! I have thought, and thinking sigh'd-
How like to thee, thou restless tide!
May be the lot, the life of him,
Who roams along thy water's brim!
Through what alternate shades of woe
And flowers of joy my path may go!
How many an humble, still retreat
May rise to court my weary feet,
While still pursuing, still unblest,
I wander on, nor dare to rest!
But, urgent as the doom that calls
Thy water to its destined falls,
I see the world's bewildering force
Hurry my heart's devoted course
From lapse to lapse, till life be done,
And the lost current cease to run!
Oh! may my falls be bright as thine!
May Heaven's forgiving rainbow shine
Upon the mist that circles me,
As soft as now it hangs o'er thee!

CLORIS AND FANNY.
CLORIS! if I were Persia's king,
I'd make my graceful queen of thee;
While Fanny, wild and artless thing,
Should but thy humble handmaid be.
There is but one objection in it-
That, verily, I'm much afraid

I should, in some unlucky minute,
Forsake the mistress for the maid!

There is a dreary and savage character in the country immediately above these falls, which is much more in harmony with the wildness of such a scene, than the cultivated lands in the neighbourhood of Niagara. See the drawing of them in Mr WELD's book. According to him, the perpendicular height of the Cohos Fall is fifty feet; but the Marquis de Chastellux makes it seventy-six.

The fine rainbow, which is continually forming and dissolving as the spray rises into the light of the sun, is perhaps the most interesting beauty which these wonderful cataracts exhibit.

Think'st thou, when Julia's lip and breast

Inspired my youthful tongue,

I coldly spoke of lips unprest,

Nor felt the Heaven I sung?

No, no, the spell that warm'd so long
Was still my Julia's kiss,
And still the girl was paid in song
What she had given in bliss!

Then beam one burning smile on me,
And I will sing those eyes;

Let me but feel a breath from thee,

And I will praise thy sighs.

That rosy mouth alone can bring
What makes the bard divine-
Oh, Lady! how my lip would sing,
If once 't were prest to thine!

SONG

OF THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE WOODS."

Qua via difficilis, quaque est via nulla........
QVID. Metam. lib. iii, v. 227.

Now the vapour, hot and damp,
Shed by day's expiring lamp,
Through the misty ether spreads
Every ill the white man dreads:
Fiery fever's thirsty thrill,
Fitful ague's shivering chill!
Hark! I hear the traveller's song,
As he winds the woods along,
Christian! 't is the song of fear;
Wolves are round thee, night is near,
And the wild, thou darest to roam-
Oh!'t was once the Indian's home. 2

Hither, sprites, who love to harm,
Wheresoe'er you work your charm,
By the creeks, or by the brakes,
Where the pale witch feeds her snakes,
And the cayman 3 loves to creep,
Torpid, to his wintry sleep :
Where the bird of carrion flits,
And the shuddering murderer sits 4
Lone beneath a roof of blood,
While upon his poison'd food,

The idea of this poem occurred to me in passing through the very dreary wilderness between Batavia, a new settlement in the midst of the woods, and the little village of Buffalo upon Lake Erie. This is the most fatiguing part of the route, in travelling through the Genesee country to Niagara.

The Five Confederated Nations (of Indians) were settled along the banks of the Susquehannah and the adjacent country, until the year 1779, when General Sullivan, with an army of 4,000 men, drove them from their country to Niagara, where, being obliged to live on salted provisions, to which they were unaccustomed, great numbers of them died. Two hundred of them, it is said, were buried in one grave, where they had encamped.-MORSE's American Geography.

The alligator, who is supposed to lie in a torpid state all the winter in the bank of some creek or pond, having previously swallowed a large number of pine knots, which are his only sustenance, during the time.

From the corpse of him he slew,
Drops the chill and gory dew!.

Hither bend you, turn you hither
Eyes that blast and wings that wither!
Cross the wandering Christian's way,
Lead him, ere the glimpse of day,
Many a mile of maddening error
Through the maze of night and terror,
Till the morn behold him lying
O'er the damp earth, pale and dying!
Mock him, when his eager sight
Seeks the cordial cottage-light;
Gleam then like the lightning-bug,
Tempt him to the den that 's dug
For the foul and famish'd brood
Of the she-wolf, gaunt for blood!
Or, unto the dangerous pass
O'er the deep and dark morass,
Where the trembling Indian brings
Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings,
Tributes, to be hung in air

To the Fiend presiding there!'
Then, when night's long labour past
Wilder'd, faint he falls at last,
Sinking where the causeway's edge
Moulders in the slimy sedge,

There let every noxious thing
Trail its filth and fix its sting;
Let the bull-toad taint him over,
Round him let musquitoes hover,
In his cars and eye-balls tingling,
With his blood their poison mingling,
Til!, beneath the solar fires,
Rankling all, the wretch expires!

1 See the story in APULEIUS. With respect to this beautiful allegory of Love and Psyche, there is an ingenious idea suggested by the senator BUONAROTTI, in his Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi. He thinks the fable is taken from some very occult mysteries, which had long been celebrated in honour of Love; and he accounts, upon this supposition, for the silence of the more ancient authors upon the subject, as it was not till towards the decline of Pagan superstition that writers could venture to reveal or discuss such ceremonies; accordingly, he observes, we find Lucian and Plutarch treating, without reserve, of the Dea Syria, and Isis and Osiris; and APULEIUS, who has given us the story of Cupid and Psyche, has also detailed some of the mysteries of Isis.-See the Giornale di Litterati d'Italia, tome xxvii, articol. 1. See also the Observations upon the ancient gems in the Museum Florentinum, vol. i, p. 156.

I cannot avoid remarking here an error into which the French Encyclopédistes have been led by M. Spon, in their article Psyché.They say, Petron fait un récit de la pompe nuptiale de ces deux amans (Amour et Psyché). Déjà, dit-il, etc. etc. The Psyche of PETRONICS, however, is a servant-maid, and the marriage which he describes is that of the young Pannychis. See SPON's Recherches Curienses, etc. dissertat. 5.

2 Allusions to Mrs T-Gue's poem.

3 Constancy.

And dear shall be the night we parted'

Oh! if regrets, however sweet,

Must with the lapse of time decay, Yet still, when thus in mirth you meet, Fill high to him that's far away!

Long be the flame of memory found
Alive within your social glass;
Let that be still the magic round
O'er which oblivion dares not pass!

EPISTLE VIII.

TO THE HONOURABLE W. R. SPENCER.

Nec venit ad duros musa vocata Getas.
OVID. ex Ponto, lib. i, ep. 5.

FROM BUFFALO, UPON LAKE ERIE.

THOU oft hast told me of the fairy hours
Thy heart has number'd, in those classic bowers
Where fancy sees the ghost of ancient wit
'Mid cowls and cardinals profanely flit,
And pagan spirits, by the Pope unlaid,
Haunt every stream and sing through every shade!
There still the bard, who (if his numbers be
His tongue's light echo) must have talk'd like thee,
The courtly bard, from whom thy mind has caught
Those playful, sunshine holidays of thought,
In which the basking soul reclines and glows,
Warm without toil and brilliant in repose.
There still he roves, and laughing loves to see
How modern monks with ancient rakes agree;
How mitres hang where ivy wreaths might twine,
And heathen Massic 's damn'd for stronger wine!
There too are all those wandering souls of song
With whom thy spirit hath communed so long,
Whose rarest gems are every instant hung
By memory's magic on thy sparkling tongue.
But here, alas! by Eric's stormy lake,
As far from thee my lonely course I take,
No bright remembrance o'er the fancy plays,
No classic dream, no star of other days
Has left that visionary glory here,
That relic of its light, so soft, so dear,
Which gilds and hallows even the rudest scene,
The humblest shed, where genius once has been!

All that creation's varying mass assumes
Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms;
Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow,
Bright lakes expand, and conquering' rivers flow;
Mind, mind alone, without whose quickening ray,
The world's a wilderness, and man but clay,

This epithet was suggested by CHARLEVOIX's striking description of the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi :- I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much of the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waves to the opposite shore without mixing them: afterwards it gives its colour to the Missis

-Letter xxvii.

Mind, mind alone, in harren, still repose,
Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows!
Take Christians, Mohawks, Democrats, and all
From the rude wig-wam to the congress-hall,
From man the savage, whether slaved or free,
To man the civilized, less tame than he!
'T is one dull chaos, one unfertile strife
Betwixt half-polish'd and half-barbarous life;
Where every
ill the ancient world can brew
Is mix'd with every grossness of the new;
Where all corrupts, though little can entice,
And nothing's known of luxury, but vice!

Is this the region, then, is this the clime
For golden fancy! for those dreams sublime,
Which all their miracles of light reveal

To heads that meditate and hearts that feel?
No, no-the Muse of inspiration plays
O'er every scene; she walks the forest-maze,
And climbs the mountain; every blooming spot
Burns with her step, yet man regards it not!
She whispers round, her words are in the air,
But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there,
Without one breath of soul, divinely strong,
One ray of heart to thaw them into song!

Yet, yet forgive me, oh you sacred few!
Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew;
Whom, known and loved through many a social eve,
'T was bliss to live with, and 't was pain to leave!!
Less dearly welcome were the lines of yore
The exile saw upon the sandy shore,

When his lone heart but faintly hoped to find
One print of man, one blessed stamp of mind!
Less dearly welcome than the liberal zeal,
The strength to reason, and the warmth to feel,
The manly polish and the illumined taste,
Which, 'mid the melancholy, heartless waste
My foot has wandered, oh you sacred few!
I found by Delaware's green banks with you.
Long may you hate the Gallic dross that runs
O'er your fair country and corrupts its sons;
Long love the arts, the glories which adorn

Those fields of freedom, where your sires were born;
Oh! if America can yet be great,

If, neither chain'd by choice, nor damn'd by fate
To the mob-mania which imbrutes her now,
She yet can raise the bright but temperate brow
Of single majesty, can grandly place
An empire's pillar upon Freedom's base,
Nor fear the mighty shaft will feebler prove
For the fair capital that flowers above!—
If yet, released from all that vulgar throng,
So vain of dullness and so pleased with wrong,
Who hourly teach her, like themselves, to hide
Folly in froth, and barrenness in pride,

In the society of Mr Dennie and his friends, at Philadelphia, I passed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States afforded me. Mr Dennie has succeeded in diffusing through this elegant little circle that love for good literature and sound politics, which be feels so zealously himself, and which is so very rarely the characteristic of his countrymen. They will not, I trust, accuse me of illiberality for the picture which I have given of the ignorance and corruption that surround them. If I did not hate, as I ought, the rabble to which they are opposed, I could not value, as I do, the spirit with which they defy it; and in learning from them what Americans can be, I but see with the more indignation what Americans are.

She yet can rise, can wreathe the attic charms
Of soft refinement round the pomp of arms,
And see her poets flash the fires of song,
To light her warriors' thunderbolts along!
It is to you, to souls that favouring Heaven
Has made like yours, the glorious task is given-
Oh! but for such Columbia's days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quicken'd without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,

Her fruits would fall, before her spring were o'er!

Believe me, Spencer, while I wing'd the hours
Where Schuylkill undulates through banks of flowers,
Though few the days, the happy evenings few,
So warm with heart, so rich with mind they flew,
That my full soul forgot its wish to roam,
And rested there, as in a dream of home!
And looks I met, like looks I loved before,
And voices too, which, as they trembled o'er
The chord of memory, found full many a tone
Of kindness there in concord with their own!
Oh! we had nights of that communion free,
That flush of heart, which I have known with thee
So oft, so warmly; nights of mirth and mind,
Of whims that taught, and follies that refined :
When shall we both renew them? when, restored
To the pure feast, and intellectual board,
Shall I once more enjoy with thee and thine
Those whims that teach, those follies that refine?
Even now, as, wandering upon Erie's shore,
I hear Niagara's distant cataract roar,

I sigh for England-oh! these weary feet
Have many a mile to journey cre we meet !
Ω πατρίς, ως σου καρτα νυν μνείαν έχω.

TO

A WARNING.

On fair as Heaven and chaste as light!
Did Nature mould thee all so bright,
That thou shouldst ever learn to weep
O'er languid Virtue's fatal sleep,
O'er shame extinguish'd, honour fled,
Peace lost, heart wither'd, feeling dead?

No, no! a star was born with thee,
Which sheds eternal purity!
Thou hast within those sainted eyes
So fair a transcript of the skies,
In lines of fire such heavenly lore,
That man should read them and adore!
Yet have I known a gentle maid
Whose early charms were just array'd
In Nature's loveliness like thine,
And wore that clear, celestial sign,
Which seems to mark the brow that's fair
For Destiny's peculiar care!

Whose bosom too was once a zone
Where the bright gem of Virtue shone;
Whose eyes were talismans of fire
Against the spell of man's desire!
Yet, hapless girl, in one sad hour

Her charms have shed their radiant flower;

The

gem has been beguiled away;
Her eyes have lost their chastening ray;
The simple fear, the guiltless shame,
The smiles that from reflection came,
All, all have fled, and left her mind
A faded monument behind!

Like some wave-beaten, mouldering stone,
To memory raised by hands unknown,
Which, many a wintry hour, has stood
Beside the ford of Tyra's flood,

To tell the traveller, as he cross'd,
That there some loved friend was lost;
Oh! 't was a sight I wept to see-

Heaven keep the lost-one's fate from thee!

Whose harp around my altar swells, The sweetest of a thousand shells?.

"T was thus the deity, who treads
The arch of Heaven, and grandly sheds
Day from his eye-lids!-thus he spoke,
As through my cell his glories broke:

Who is the maid, with golden hair, With eyes of fire and feet of air, Whose harp around my altar swells, The sweetest of a thousand shells?

Aphelia is the Delphic fair,'
With eyes of fire and golden hair,
Aphelia's are the airy feet,
And hers the harp divinely sweet;

For foot so light has never trod
The laurel'd caverns of the god,
Nor harp so soft has
eyer given
A strain to earth or sigh to Heaven!

Then tell the virgin to unfold, In looser pomp, her locks of gold, And bid those eyes with fonder fire Be kindled for a god's desire; 3 Since He, who lights the path of yearsEven from the fount of morning's tears, To where his setting splendours burn Upon the western sea-maid's urnCannot, in all his course, behold Such eyes of fire, such hair of gold! Tell her he comes in blissful pride, His lip yet sparkling with the tide That mantles in Olympian bowls, The nectar of eternal souls! For her, for her he quits the skies, And to her kiss from nectar flies.

nation towards any fair visitor of the shrine, and at the same time felt a diffidence in his own powers of persuasion, he had but to proclaim that the God himself was enamoured of her, and had signified his divine will that she should sleep in the interior of the temple. Many a pious husband connived at this divine assignation, and even declared himself proud of the selection with which his family had been distinguished by the deity. In the temple of Jupiter Belas there was a splendid bed for these occasions. In Egyptian Thebes the same mockery was practised; and at the oracle of Patara in Lycia, the priestess never could prophecy till an interview with the deity was allowed her. The story which we read in JOSEPHUS (lib. xviii, cap. 3) of the Roman matron Paulina, whom the priests of Isis, for a bribe, betrayed in this manner to Mundus, is a singular instance of the impudent excess to which credulity suffered these impostures to be carried. This story has been put into the form of a little novel, under the name of La Pudicitia Schernita, by the licentious and unfortunate PALLAVICINO. See his Opere Scelte, tom. i.-I have made my priest bere prefer a cave to the temple.

In the 9th Pythic of Pindar, where Apollo, in the same manner, requires of Chiron some information respecting the fair Cyrene, the Centaur, in obeying, very gravely apologises for telling the god what bis omniscience must know so perfectly already:

Ει δε γε χρη και παρ σοφον αντιφεριξαι
Ερεω.

3 Αλλ' εις δαφνωση γυαλα βήσομαι ταδε.--EURIPID.

Ion. v. 76.

Ne deve partorir ammiratione ch' egli si pregiasse di baver una Deità concorrente nel possesso della moglie; mentre anche noi nei nostri secoli, non ostante così rigorose legge d'onore, trovasi chi s'ascrive à gloria il veder la moglie honorata da gl' amplessi di un Principe.-PALLAVICINO.