11.

They have passed from the shadows that haunt us round,
From the clouds that enthral existence,

When we look at Youth in the backward ground,
And at Death in the forward distance!

No more will the sombre pall of Fate
Like a mantle around them gather;
They have gone, ere Affection grew desolate,
Or Hope's garland began to wither:
And they sleep like stars in the upper air,
When the skies of evening are deep and fair;
There's a halo of peace where their ashes lie,
As the ambient night-winds are hurrying by.

III.

They are blest in death!-for no bitter care
Will the fevered brow be flushing:
They departed while Being was bright and fair,
While the Fountains of Feeling were gushing;
Then let them sleep "in their lowly bed;"

Let Hope be amidst our sorrow;

There is peace in the Night of the Early Dead-
It will yield to a glorious morrow!

They will rice like buds from the glebe of spring,
When the young birds play on the changeful wing;
They faded ere sin could beguile the breast;
They will wake in the regions of Endless Rest!

DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN.

Young mother, he is gone!

His dimpled cheek no more will touch thy breast;
No more the music-tone

Float from his lips, to thine all fondly press'd;
His smile and happy laugh are lost to thee:
Earth must his mother and his pillow be.

His was the morning hour,

And he had pass'd in beauty from the day,
A bud, not yet a flower,

Torn, in its sweetness, from the parent spray;
The death-wind swept him to his soft repose,
As frost, in spring-time, blights the early rose.

Never on earth again

Will his rich accents charm thy listening ear,
Like some Æolian strain,

Breathing at eventide serene and clear;
His voice is choked in dust, and on his eyes
The unbroken seal of peace and silence lies.

And from thy yearning heart,

Whose inmost core was warm with love for him,
A gladness must depart,

And those kind eyes with many tears be dim;
While lonely memories, an unceasing train,
Will turn the raptures of the past to pain.

Yet, mourner, while the day

Rolls like the darkness of a funeral by,
And hope forbids one ray

To stream athwart the grief-discolor'd sky,
There breaks upon thy sorrow's evening gloom
A trembling lustre from beyond the tomb.

"Tis from the better land!

There, bathed in radiance that around them springs,
Thy loved one's wings expand;

As with the choiring cherubim he sings,
And all the glory of that GoD can see,

Who said, on earth, to children, "Come to me."

Mother, thy child is bless'd;

And though his presence may be lost to thee,
And vacant leave thy breast,

And miss'd, a sweet load from thy parent knee;
Though tones familiar from thine ear have pass'd,
Thou'lt meet thy first-born with his LORD at last.

GRENVILLE MELLEN, 1799-1841.

GRENVILLE MELLEN, the son of the late Chief Justice Prentiss Mellen, LL. D., of Maine, was born in the town of Biddeford, in that State, on the 19th of June, 1799, and graduated at Harvard University in 1818. He entered the profession of the law, but, finding it not suited to his feelings, abandoned it, as others before and since have done, for the more congenial attractions of poetry and general literature. He resided five or six years in Boston, and afterwards in New York. His health had always been rather delicate, and in 1840, in hopes of deriving advantage from a milder climate, he made a voyage to Cuba. But he was not benefited materially by the change, and learning, the next spring, of the death of his father, he returned home, and died in New York on the 5th September, 1841.

Mr. Mellen wrote for various magazines and periodicals. In 1827, he published "Our Chronicle of Twenty-Six," a satire; and in 1829,

"Glad Tales and Sad Tales," a volume in prose, from his contributions to the periodicals. "The Martyr's Triumph, Buried Valley, and other Poems," appeared in 1834. The first named poem is founded on the history of Saint Alban, the first Christian martyr in England. In the "Buried Valley," he describes the terrible avalanche at the Notch in the White Mountains, in 1826, by which the Willey family was destroyed.

Of the merits of Grenville Mellen's poetry, a living critic' thus speaks: "There is in these poems no unusual sublimity to awaken surprise-no extreme pathos to communicate the luxury of grief-no chivalrous narrative to stir the blood to adventure-no high-painted ardor in love to make us enraptured with beauty. Yet we were charmed; for we love purity of sentiment, and we found it; we love amiability of heart, and here we could perceive it in every stanza. The muse of Mellen delights in the beauties, not in the deformities of nature; she is more inclined to celebrate the virtues than denounce the vices of man."

THE MARTYR.

Not yet, not yet the martyr dies. He sees
His triumph on its way. He hears the crashi
Of the loud thunder round his enemies,

And dim through tears of blood he sees it dash

His dwelling and its idols. Joy to him!

The Lord-the Lord hath spoken from the sky!

The loftier glories on his eyeballs swim!

He hears the trumpet of Eternity!

Calling his spirit home-a clarion voice on high!

Yet, yet one moment linger! Who are they
That sweep far off along the quivering air?

It is God's bright, immortal company

The martyr pilgrim and his band are there!
Shadows with golden crowns and sounding lyres,
And the white royal robes are issuing out,

And beckon upwards through the wreathing fires,
The blazing pathway compassing about,

With radiant heads unveiled, and anthems joyful shout!

He sees, he hears! upon his dying gaze,

Forth from the throng one bright-haired angel near,
Stoops his red pinion through the mantling blaze-
It is the Heaven-triumphing wanderer!

'American Quarterly Review, xxii. 195.

"I come-we meet again !"-the martyr cries,

And smiles of deathless glory round him play: Then on that flaming cross he bows-and dies! His ashes eddy on the sinking day,

While through the roaring oak his spirit wings its way!

FROM "THE BRIDAL."

Young beauty at the altar! Ye may go
And rifle earth of all its loveliness,
And of all things created hither bring
The rosiest and the richest-but, alas!
The world is all too poor to rival this!

Ye summon nothing from the place of dreams,
The orient realm of fancy, that can cope,
In all its passionate devotedness,

With this chaste, silent picture of the heart!
Youth, bud-encircling youth, and purity,

Yielding their bloom and fragrance up in tears.

MOUNT WASHINGTON.

Mount of the clouds, on whose Olympian height
The tall rocks brighten in the ether air,
And spirits from the skies come down at night,
To chant immortal songs to freedom there!

Thine is the rock of other regions; where

The world of life, which blooms so far below,
Sweeps a wide waste: no gladdening scenes appear,
Save where, with silvery flash, the waters flow
Beneath the far-off mountain, distant, calm, and slow.
Thine is the summit where the clouds repose,

Or eddying wildly round thy cliffs are borne;
When Tempest mounts his rushing car, and throws
His billowy mist amid the thunder's home!
Far down the deep ravines the whirlwinds come,
And bow the forests as they sweep along;
While, roaring deeply from their rocky womb,
The storms come forth, and, hurrying darkly on,
Amid the echoing peaks the revelry prolong!

And when the tumult of the air is fled,

And quench'd in silence all the tempest flame, There come the dim forms of the mighty dead, Around the steep which bears the hero's name;

The stars look down upon them; and the same
Pale orb that glistens o'er his distant grave
Gleams on the summit that enshrines his fame,

And lights the cold tear of the glorious brave,
The richest, purest tear that memory ever gave!

Mount of the clouds! when winter round thee throws
The hoary mantle of the dying year,
Sublime amid thy canopy of snows,

Thy towers in bright magnificence appear! 'Tis then we view thee with a chilling fear,

Till summer robes thee in her tints of blue; When, lo! in soften'd grandeur far, yet clear,

Thy battlements stand clothed in Heaven's own hue, To swell as Freedom's home on man's unbounded view!

CONSCIENCE.

Voice of the viewless spirit! that hast rung
Through the still chambers of the human heart,

Since our first parents in sweet Eden sung

Their low lament in tears-thou voice, that art
Around us and above us, sounding on

With a perpetual echo, 'tis on thee,
The ministry sublime to wake and warn!-
Full of that high and wondrous Deity,

That call'd existence out from Chaos' lonely sea!

Voice that art heard through every age and clime,
Commanding like a trumpet every ear

That lends no heeding to the sounds of Time,
Seal'd up, for aye, from cradle to the bier!
That fallest, like a watchman's through the night,
Round those who sit in joy and those who weep,
Yet startling all men with thy tones of might-
O voice, that dwellest in the hallowed deep
Of our own bosom's silence-eloquent in sleep!

That comest in the clearness of thy power,
Amid the crashing battle's wild uproar,
Stern as at peaceful midnight's leaden hour;
That talkest by the ocean's bellowing shore,
When surge meets surge in revelry, and lifts
Its booming voice above the weltering sea;
That risest loudly mid the roaring cliffs,

And o'er the deep-mouth'd thunder goest free,
E'en as the silver tones of quiet infancy!

Spirit of God! what sovereignty is thine!
Thine is no homage of the bended knee;
Thou hast of vassalage no human sign;

Yet monarchs hold no royal rule like thee!