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And well the poet at her shrine,

May bend, and worship while he woos;
To him she is a thing divine,

The inspiration of his line,

His loved one, and his muse.

If to his song the echo rings

Of fame, 'tis woman's voice he hears;
If ever from his lyre's proud strings
Flow sounds, like rush of angel wings,
'Tis that she listens while he sings,
With blended smiles and tears:

Smiles, tears,-whose blest and blessing power
Like sun and dew o'er summer's tree,
Alone keeps green through time's long hour
That frailer thing than leaf or flower-
A poet's immortality.

THE MINSTREL GIRL.-WHITTIER

She leaned against her favorite tree,
The golden sunlight melting through
The twined branches as the free
And easy pinioned breezes flew
Around the bloom and greenness there;
Awakening all to life and motion,
Like unseen spirits sent to bear
Earth's perfume to the barren ocean,-
That occan lay before her then

Like a broad lustre to send back
The scattered beams of day again
To burn along its sunset track!
And broad and beautiful it shone,

As quickened by some spiritual breath,
Its very waves seemed dancing on
To music whispered underneath.

And there she leaned,—that minstrel girl,
The breeze's kiss was soft and meek,
Where coral melted into pearl

On parted lips, and glowing cheek;

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Her dark and lifted eye had caught
Its lustre from the spirits gem;
And round her brow the light of thought
Was like an angel's diadem;

For genius, as a living coal,

Had touched her heart with living flame,
And on the altar of her soul

The fire of inspiration came.
And she had learned to love

Each holy charm to nature given,—
The changing earth-the skies above,

Were prompters to her dreams of heaven;
She loved the earth, the streams that wind
Like music from its hills of
green-
The stirring boughs above them twined,
The shifting light-and shades between,-
The fall of waves-the fountain gush—
The sigh of winds-the music heard
At even tide, from air and bush-
The minstrelsy of leaf and bird.
But chief she loved the sunset sky-
Its golden clouds, like curtains drawn

To form the gorgeous canopy

Of monarchs to their slumbers gone.

AMERICAN HISTORY.-VERPLANCK.

The study of the history of most other nations, fills the mind with sentiments not unlike those which the American traveler feels on entering the venerable and lofty cathedral of some proud old city of Europe. Its solemn grandeur, its vastness, its obscurity, strikes awe to his heart. From the richly painted windows, filled with sacred emblems and strange antique forms, a dim religious light falls around. A thousand recollections of romance and poetry, and legendary story, come thronging in upon him. He is surrounded by the tombs of the mighty dead, rich with the labors of ancient art and emblazoned with the pomp of heraldry.

What names does he read upon them? Those of princes and nobles who are now remembered only for their vices; and of sovereigns, at whose death no tears were shed, and whose memories live not an hour in the affections of their people.

There, too, he sees other names long familiar to him for their guilty or ambiguous fame. There rest, the blood-stained soldier of fortune-the orator, who was ever the ready apologist of tyranny-great scholars, who were the pensioned flatterers of power and poets, who profaned the high gift of genius, to pamper the vices of a corrupted court.

Our own history, on the contrary, like that poetical temple of fame, reared by the imagination of Chaucer, and decorated by the taste of Pope, is almost exclusively dedicated to the memory of the truly great. Or rather, like the Pantheon of Rome, it stands in calm and severe beauty amid the ruins of ancient magnificence and the " toys of modern state." Within, no idle ornament encumbers its bold simplicity. The pure light of heaven enters from above and sheds an equal and serene radiance around. As the eye wanders about its extent, it beholds the unadorned monuments of brave and good men who have greatly bled or toiled for their country, or it rests on votive tablets inscribed with the names of the best benefactors of mankind.

"Patriots are here, in Freedom's battles slain,

Priests, whose long lives were closed without a stain,
Bards worthy him who breathed the poet's mind,
Founders of arts that dignify mankind,

And lovers of our race, whose labors gave
Their names a memory that defies the grave.

NOURMAHAL.-MOORE.

There's a beauty, for ever unchangingly bright,
Like the long, sunny lapse of a summer day's light,
Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender,
Till love falls asleep in its sameness of splendor,
This was not the beauty-oh! nothing like this,
That to young Nourmahal gave such magic of bliss ;
But that loveliness, ever in motion, which plays
Like the light upon autumn's soft shadowy days,
Now here and now there, giving warmth as it flies
From the lips to the cheek, from the cheek to the eyes;
Now melting in mist and now breaking in gleams,
Like the glimpses a saint has of heaven in dreams!
When pensive, it seemed as if that very grace,
That charm of all others, was born with her face;

And when

angry, for e'en in the tranquillest climes Light breezes will ruffle the flowers sometimesThe short, passing anger but seemed to awaken New beauty, like flowers that are sweetest when shaken. If tenderness touched her, the dark of her eye

At once took a darker, a heavenly dye,

From the depth of whose shadow, like holy revealings
From innermost shrines, came the light of her feelings!
Then her mirth-oh! 'twas sportive as ever took wing
From the heart with a burst, like the wild-bird in spring;
Illumined by a wit that would fascinate sages,

Yet playful as Peris just loosed from their cages.
While her laugh, full of life, without any control,
But the sweet one of gracefulness, rung from her soul,
And where it most sparkled no glance could discover,
In lip, cheek, or eyes, for she brightened all over,
Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon,

When it breaks into dimples and laughs in the sun.
Such, such were the peerless enchantments, that gave
Nourmahal the proud lord of the east for her slave.

PLEASURES.-BURNS.

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is sped;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white-then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place;
'Or like the rainbow's lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.

GENIUS-WILLIS

Oh how poor

Seems the rich gift of genius, when it lies,
Like the adventurous bird that hath out-flown
His strength upon the sea, ambition-wrecked—
A thing the thrush might pity, as she sits
Brooding in quiet on her lowly nest.

MARIA.-COLERIDGE.

Her early youth passed away in sorrow: she grew up in tears, a stranger to the amusements of youth and its more delightful schemes and imaginations. She was not however unhappy; she attributed, indeed, no merit to herself for her virtues, but for that reason were they the more her reward. The peace which passeth all understanding, disclosed itself in all her looks and movements. It lay on her countenance, like a steady unshadowed moonlight; and her voice, which was naturally at once sweet and subtle, came from her, like the fine flute-tones of a masterly performer, which, still floating at some uncertain distance, seem to be created by the player rather than to proceed from the instrument. If you had listened to it in one of those brief sabbaths of the soul, when the activity and discursiveness of the thoughts are suspended, and the mind quietly eddies round, instead of flowing onward-(as at late evening in the spring I have seen a bat wheel in silent circles round and round a fruit-tree in full blossom, in the midst of which, as within a close tent of the purest white, an unseen nightingale was piping its sweetest notes)-in such a mood you might have half-fancied, half-felt, that her voice had a separate being of its own-that it was a living something, whose mode of existence was for the ear only: so deep was her resignation, so entirely had it become the unconscious habit of her nature, and in all she did or said, so perfectly were both her movements and her utterance without effort and without the appearance of effort.

"MOTHER WHAT IS DEATH?"-MRS GILMAN.

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