Bear witness, Greece, thy living page,
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid;
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die.
'T were long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace;
Enough, no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.

ROME.

O ROME! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The
hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day -

cypress,

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchers lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow,
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride;
She saw her glories star by star expire,

And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site;
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,

O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,

And say,

"here was, or is," where all is doubly night?

The double night of ages, and of her,

Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap
All round us; we but feel our way to err:
The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map,
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap;
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap
Our hands, and cry "Eureka!" it is clear,
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.

Alas! the lofty city! and alas!

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page! — but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside, - decay.

Alas for Earth, for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

THE OCEAN.

ROLL on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, — roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin, - his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields

Are not a spoil for him, thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth :- there let him lay.

:

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake
They melt into thy yeast of waves,
which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.*

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee, Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts; —not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow, Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed, - in breeze, or gale, or storin,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving;

boundless, endless, and sublime,

This line refers to two historical naval battles in which the English were victorious.

The image of Eternity - the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made: each zone Obeys thee thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

:

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers, - they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, 't was a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane,

as I do here.

I SAW THEE WEEP.

I SAW thee weep, the big bright tear
Came o'er that eye of blue;

And then methought it did appear
A violet dropping dew;

I saw thee smile, the sapphire's blaze
Beside thee ceased to shine;

It could not match the living rays
That filled that glance of thine.

As clouds from yonder sun receive
A deep and mellow dye,

Which scarce the shade of coming eve

Can banish from the sky,

Those smiles unto the moodiest mind

Their own pure joy impart ;
Their sunshine leaves a glow behind
That lightens o'er the heart.

COOPER.

1789-1851.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, who may be called the first, and perhaps the most popular, of American novelists, was born in New Jersey in 1789 and died at Cooperstown, New York, in 1851. The best of his works are The Spy, The Prairie, The Pilot, and The Last of the Mohicans. His fame is owing mainly to the excellence of his delineation of Indian life and of maritime adventure. In these respects no writer has yet excelled him. His style is peculiarly interesting, being highly dramatic, and pure and scholarly in construction. No American writer has received more cordial treatment at the hands of foreign critics; Victor Hugo went so far as to pronounce him a greater novelist than Scott; the London Athenæum called him "the most original writer that America has yet produced"; and the Revue de Paris said: "Who is there writing English among our contemporaries, if not of him, of whom it can be said that he has a genius of the first order?" These panegyrics will hardly be accepted at their full value by literary authori ties of the present day, when American literature is far stronger and richer than at their date. But Mr. Cooper's title to a high, if not the first, place among our writers, is too strong to be impugned. In the assignment of his rank he should have the bencfi: of the cons deration that he was a pioneer in a specialty of authorship, before his time hardly approached by American writers, and which for many years he occupied and honored without a rival. He was intensely patriotic, and resented with spirited indignation the assaults of British writers upon American character and customs. Somewhat reserved and formal in manner, he made few warm personal friends, but his probity and high moral excellence commanded universal respect. Our first extract is from The Prairie, a story of Indian life; the second is from The Pilot, the best of Mr. Cooper's sea novels.

THE INDIAN ADOPTION.

A LOW, feeble, and hollow voice was heard rising on the ear, as if it rolled from the inmost cavities of the human chest, and gathered strength and energy as it issued into the air. A solemn stillness followed the sounds, and then the lips of the aged man were first seen to move.

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The day of Le Balafré is near its end," were the first words that were distinctly audible. 'He is like a buffalo on whom the hair will grow no longer. He will soon be ready to leave his lodge to go in search of another that is far from the villages of the Siouxes; therefore what he has to say concerns not him, but those he leaves behind him. His words are like the fruit on the tree, ripe and fit to be given ́ to chiefs.

66

Many snows have fallen since Le Balafré has been found on the war-path. His blood has been very hot, but it has had time to cool. The Wahcondah gives him dreams of war no longer; he sees that it is better to live in peace.

"My brothers, one foot is turned to the happy hunting-grounds, the other will soon follow, and then an old chief will be seen looking