ENGLISH SCENERY.

THE Woods and vales of England!—is there not
A magic and a marvel in their names?
Is there not music in the memory

Of their old glory?—is there not a sound,
As of some watchword, that recalls at night
All that gave light and wonder to the day?
In these soft words, that breathe of loveliness,
And summon to the spirit scenes that rose
Rich on its raptured vision, as the eye
Hung like a tranced thing above the page
That genius had made golden with its glow-
The page of noble story-of high towers,
And castled halls, envista'd like the line
Of heroes and great hearts, that centuries
Had led before their hearths in dim array-
Of lake and lawn, and gray and cloudy tree,
That rock'd with banner'd foliage to the storm
Above the walls it shadow'd, and whose leaves,
Rustling in gather'd music to the winds,
Seem'd voiced as with the sound of many seas!
The woods and vales of England! O, the founts,
The living founts of memory! how they break
And gush upon my stirr'd heart as I gaze!
I hear the shout of reapers, the far low
Of herds upon the banks, the distant bark
Of the tired dog, stretch'd at some cottage door,
The echo of the axe, mid forest swung,
And the loud laugh, drowning the faint halloo.
Land of our fathers! though 'tis ours to roam
A land upon whose bosom thou mightst lie,
Like infant on its mother's-though 't is ours
To gaze upon a nobler heritage

Than thou couldst e'er unshadow to thy sons,-
Though ours to linger upon fount and sky,
Wilder, and peopled with great spirits, who
Walk with a deeper majesty than thine,—
Yet, as our father-land, O, who shall tell
The lone, mysterious energy which calls
Upon our sinking spirits to walk forth
Amid thy wood and mount, where every hill
Is eloquent with beauty, and the tale
And song of centuries, the cloudless years
When fairies walk'd thy valleys, and the turf
Rung to their tiny footsteps, and quick flowers
Sprang with the lifting grass on which they trod-
When all the landscape murmur'd to its rills,
And joy with hope slept in its leafy bowers!

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 ravine 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 The hoary mantle of the dying year, [throws 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!

THE BUGLE.

O! WILD, enchanting horn! Whose music up the deep and dewy air Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there, Till a new melody is born

Wake, wake again, the night

Is bending from her throne of beauty down,
With still stars burning on her azure crown,
Intense and eloquently bright.

Night, at its pulseless noon!

When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long Barks at the melancholy moon.

Hark! how it sweeps away,

Soaring and dying on the silent sky,

As if some sprite of sound went wandering by, With lone halloo and roundelay!

Swell, swell in glory out!

Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, And my stirr'd spirit hears thee with a start As boyhood's old remember'd shout.

O! have ye heard that peal,

From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements, Or from the guarded field and warrior tents, Like some near breath around you steal?

Or have ye in the roar

Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle's clamour, to the skies,
Where wings and tempests never soar?
Go, go-no other sound,
No music that of air or earth is born,
Can match the mighty music of that horn,
On midnight's fathomless profound!

GRENVILLE MELLEN was the third son of the late Chief Justice PRENTISS MELLEN, LL. D., of Maine, and was born in the town of Biddeford, in that state, on the nineteenth day of June, 1799. He was educated at Harvard College, and after leaving that seminary became a law-student in the office of his father, who had before that time removed to Portland. Soon after being admitted to the bar, he was married, and commenced the practice of his profession at North Yarmouth, a pleasant village near his native town. Within three years-in October, 1828-his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, died, and his only child followed her to the grave in the succeeding spring. From this time his character was changed. He had before been an ambitious and a happy man. The remainder of his life was clouded with melancholy.

I believe Mr. MELLEN did not become known as a writer until he was about twenty-five years old. He was then one of the contributors to the Cambridge "United States Literary Gazette." In the early part of 1827, he published a satire entitled 66 Our Chronicle of Twenty-six," and two years afterward, "Glad Tales and Sad Tales," a collection of prose sketches, which had previously been printed in the periodicals. "The Martyr's Triumph, Buried Valley, and other Poems," appeared in 1834. The principal poem in this volume is founded on the history of Saint Alban, the first Christian martyr in England. It is in the measure of the 66 Faery Queene," and has some creditable passages; but, as a whole, it hardly rises above mediocrity. In the "Buried Valley" he describes the remarkable avalanche near the Notch in the White Mountains, by which the Willey family were destroyed, many years ago. In a poem entitled "The Rest of Empires," in the same collection, he laments the custom of the elder bards to immortalize the deeds of conquerors alone, and contrasts their prostitution of the influence of poetry with the nobler uses to which it is applied in later days, in the following lines, which are characteristic of his best manner :

"We have been taught, in oracles of old,

Of the enskied divinity of song;

That Poetry and Music, hand in hand,

Came in the light of inspiration forth,

And claim'd alliance with the rolling heavens.

And were those peerless bards, whose strains have come In an undying echo to the world,

Whose numbers floated round the Grecian isles,

And made melodious all the hills of Rome,

Were they inspired ?-Alas, for Poetry!
That her great ministers, in early time,
Sung for the brave alone-and bade the soul
Battle for heaven in the ranks of war!
It was the treason of the godlike art
That pointed glory to the sword and spear,
And left the heart to moulder in its mail!

It was the menial service of the bard-
It was the basest bondage of his powers,
In later times to consecrate a feast,
And sing of gallantry in hall and bower,
To courtly knights and ladies.

"But other times have strung new lyres again,
And other music greets us. Poetry
Comes robed in smiles, and, in low breathing sounds,
Takes counsel, like a friend, in our still hours,
And points us to the stars-the waneless stars-
That whisper an hereafter to our souls.
It breathes upon our spirits a rich balm,
And, with its tender tones and melody,
Draws mercy from the warrior-and proclaims
A morn of bright and universal love

To those who journey with us through the vale;
It points to moral greatness-deeds of mind,
And the high struggles, worthy of a man.
Have we no minstrels in our echoing halls,
No wild CADWALLON, with his wilder strain,
Pouring his war-songs upon helmed ears?
We have sounds stealing from the far retreats
Of the bright company of gifted men,
Who pour their mellow music round our age,
And point us to our duties and our hearts;
The poet's constellation beams around-
A pensive CowPER lives in all his lines,
And MILTON hymns us on to hope and heaven!"*

After spending five or six years in Boston, Mr. MELLEN removed to New York, where he resided nearly all the remainder of his life. He wrote much for the literary magazines, and edited several works for his friend, Mr. COLMAN, the publisher. In 1839, he established a Monthly Miscellany, but it was abandoned after the publication of a few numbers. His health had been declining for several years; his disease finally assumed the form of consumption, and he made a voyage to Cuba, in the summer of 1840, in the hope that he would derive advantage from a change of climate, and the sea air. He was disappointed; and learning of the death of his father, in the following spring, he returned to New York, where he died, on the fifth of September, 1841.

Mr. MELLEN was a gentle-hearted, amiable man, social in his feelings, and patient and resigned in the long period of physical suffering which preceded his death. As a poet, he enjoyed a higher reputation in his lifetime than his works will preserve. They are without vigour of thought or language, and are often dreamy, mystic, and unintelligible. In his writings there is no evidence of creative genius; no original, clear, and manly thought; no spirited and natural descriptions of life or nature; no humour, no pathos, no passion; nothing that appeals to the common sympathies of mankind. The little poem entitled “ The Bu gle," although it whispers whence it stole its spoils," is probably superior to any thing else he wrote. It is free from the affectations and unmeaning epithets which distinguish nearly all his works.

ENGLISH SCENERY.

THE Woods and vales of England!-is there not
A magic and a marvel in their names?
Is there not music in the memory

Of their old glory?—is there not a sound,
As of some watchword, that recalls at night
All that gave light and wonder to the day?
In these soft words, that breathe of loveliness,
And summon to the spirit scenes that rose
Rich on its raptured vision, as the eye
Hung like a tranced thing above the page
That genius had made golden with its glow-
The page of noble story-of high towers,
And castled halls, envista'd like the line
Of heroes and great hearts, that centuries
Had led before their hearths in dim array-
Of lake and lawn, and gray and cloudy tree,
That rock'd with banner'd foliage to the storm
Above the walls it shadow'd, and whose leaves,
Rustling in gather'd music to the winds,
Seem'd voiced as with the sound of many seas!
The woods and vales of England! O, the founts,
The living founts of memory! how they break
And gush upon my stirr'd heart as I gaze!
I hear the shout of reapers, the far low
Of herds upon the banks, the distant bark
Of the tired dog, stretch'd at some cottage door,
The echo of the axe, mid forest swung,
And the loud laugh, drowning the faint halloo.

Land of our fathers! though 'tis ours to roam
A land upon whose bosom thou mightst lie,
Like infant on its mother's-though 't is ours
To gaze upon a nobler heritage

Than thou couldst e'er unshadow to thy sons,-
Though ours to linger upon fount and sky,
Wilder, and peopled with great spirits, who
Walk with a deeper majesty than thine,—
Yet, as our father-land, O, who shall tell
The lone, mysterious energy which calls
Upon our sinking spirits to walk forth
Amid thy wood and mount, where every hill
Is eloquent with beauty, and the tale

And song of centuries, the cloudless years
When fairies walk'd thy valleys, and the turf
Rung to their tiny footsteps, and quick flowers
Sprang with the lifting grass on which they trod-
When all the landscape murmur'd to its rills,
And joy with hope slept in its leafy bowers!

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 ravine 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 The hoary mantle of the dying year, [throws 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!

THE BUGLE.

O! WILD, enchanting horn! Whose music up the deep and dewy air Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there, Till a new melody is born

Wake, wake again, the night

Is bending from her throne of beauty down,
With still stars burning on her azure crown,
Intense and eloquently bright.

Night, at its pulseless noon!

When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long Barks at the melancholy moon.

Hark! how it sweeps away,

Soaring and dying on the silent sky,

As if some sprite of sound went wandering by, With lone halloo and roundelay!

Swell, swell in glory out!

Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, And my stirr'd spirit hears thee with a start As boyhood's old remember'd shout.

O! have ye heard that peal, From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements, Or from the guarded field and warrior tents, Like some near breath around you steal?

Or have ye in the roar

Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise,
Shriller than eagle's clamour, to the skies,
Where wings and tempests never soar?
Go, go-no other sound,

No music that of air or earth is born,
Can match the mighty music of that horn,
On midnight's fathomless profound!

ON SEEING AN EAGLE PASS NEAR ME IN AUTUMN TWILIGHT.

SAIL on, thou lone, imperial bird,

Of quenchless eye and tireless wing;
How is thy distant coming heard,

As the night's breezes round thee ring!
Thy course was 'gainst the burning sun
In his extremest glory. How!
Is thy unequall'd daring done,

Thou stoop'st to earth so lowly now?
Or hast thou left thy rocking dome,
Thy roaring crag, thy lightning pine,
To find some secret, meaner home,
Less stormy and unsafe than thine?
Else why thy dusky pinions bend

So closely to this shadowy world,
And round thy searching glances send,
As wishing thy broad pens were furl'd?

Yet lonely is thy shatter'd nest,

Thy eyry desolate, though high;

And lonely thou, alike at rest,

Or soaring in the upper sky.
The golden light that bathes thy plumes
On thine interminable flight,

Falls cheerless on earth's desert tombs,
And makes the north's ice-mountains bright.

So come the eagle-hearted down,

So come the high and proud to earth,
When life's night-gathering tempests frown
Over their glory and their mirth:
So quails the mind's undying eye,

That bore, unveil'd, fame's noontide sun;
So man seeks solitude, to die,

His high place left, his triumphs done.

So, round the residence of power,

A cold and joyless lustre shines, And on life's pinnacles will lower

Clouds, dark as bathe the eagle's pines. But, O, the mellow light that pours

From God's pure throne-the light that saves! It warms the spirit as it soars,

And sheds deep radiance round our graves.

THE TRUE GLORY OF AMERICA.

ITALIA'S vales and fountains,
Though beautiful ye be,

I love my soaring mountains

And forests more than ye; And though a dreamy greatness rise From out your cloudy years, Like hills on distant stormy skies,

Seem dim through Nature's tears, Still, tell me not of years of old,

Of ancient heart and clime; Ours is the land and age of gold, And ours the hallow'd time!

The jewell'd crown and sceptre
Of Greece have pass'd away;
And none, of all who wept her,
Could bid her splendour stay.
The world has shaken with the tread
Of iron-sandall'd crime-
And, lo! o'ershadowing all the dead,

The conqueror stalks sublime!
Then ask I not for crown and plume

To nod above my land;

The victor's footsteps point to doom,
Graves open round his hand!
Rome! with thy pillar'd palaces,
And sculptured heroes all,
Snatch'd, in their warm, triumphal days,
To Art's high festival;

Rome! with thy giant sons of power,
Whose pathway was on thrones,
Who built their kingdoms of an hour
On yet unburied bones,—

I would not have my land like thee,
So lofty-yet so cold!

Be hers a lowlier majesty,

In yet a nobler mould.

Thy marbles-works of wonder!
In thy victorious days,
Whose lips did seem to sunder

Before the astonish'd gaze;
When statue glared on statue there,
The living on the dead,—
And men as silent pilgrims were

Before some sainted head!
O, not for faultless marbles yet
Would I the light forego
That beams when other lights have set,
And Art herself lies low!

O, ours a holier hope shall be
Than consecrated bust,
Some loftier mean of memory

To snatch us from the dust.
And ours a sterner art than this,

Shall fix our image here,The spirit's mould of lovelinessA nobler BELVIDERE!

Then let them bind with bloomless flowers The busts and urns of old,

A fairer heritage be ours,

A sacrifice less cold!

Give honour to the great and good,
And wreathe the living brow,
Kindling with Virtue's mantling blood,
And pay the tribute now!

So, when the good and great go down,
Their statues shall arise,

To crowd those temples of our own,
Our fadeless memories!

And when the sculptured marble falls,
And Art goes in to die,
Our forms shall live in holier halls,
The Pantheon of the sky!

GEORGE HILL is known to the public, only through his writings. From native diffidence, or some eccentricity of character, he appears to have shunned all contact with society. He was once married; "but how his marriage was brought about," writes one of his friends to me, "is an unravelled mystery; for he never spoke to a dozen ladies in his life."

He is a native of Guilford, on Long Island Sound, near New Haven. He was admitted to Yale College in his fifteenth year, and, when he graduated, took the Berkleian prize, as the best classic. He was subsequently attached to the navy, as Professor of Mathematics; and visited in this capacity the Mediterranean, its storied islands, and classic shores. After his return, he was appointed librarian to the State Department, at Washington:

a situation which he at length resigned on account of ill health, and was appointed Consul of the United States for the south-western portion of Asia Minor. The climate disagreeing with him, he returned to Washington; and is now attached again to one of the bureaus in the Department of State.

The style of his poetry is severe, and sometimes so elliptical as to embarrass his meaning; this is especially true of his more elaborate production, "The Ruins of Athens," written in the Spenserian stanza. He is most successful in his lyrics, where he has more freedom, without a loss of energy. His "Titania," a dramatic piece, is perhaps the most original of his productions. It is wild and fanciful, and graced with images of much beauty and freshness.

FROM "THE RUINS OF ATHENS."

THE daylight fades o'er old Cyllene's hill, And broad and dun the mountain shadows fall; The stars are up and sparkling, as if still Smiling upon their altars; but the tall, Dark cypress, gently, as a mourner, bendsWet with the drops of evening as with tearsAlike o'er shrine and worshipper, and blends, All dim and lonely, with the wrecks of years, As of a world gone by no coming morning cheers. There sits the queen of temples-gray and lone. She, like the last of an imperial line, Has seen her sister structures, one by one, To Time their gods and worshippers resign; And the stars twinkle through the weeds that twine Their roofless capitals; and, through the night, Heard the hoarse drum and the exploding mine, The clash of arms and hymns of uncouth rite, From their dismantled shrines the guardian powers affright.

Go! thou from whose forsaken heart are reft The ties of home; and, where a dwelling-place Not Jove himself the elements have left, The grass-grown, undefined arena pace! [hear Look on its rent, though tower-like shafts, and The loud winds thunder in their aged face; Then slowly turn thine eye, where moulders near A CESAR'S arch, and the blue depth of space Vaults like a sepulchre the wrecks of a past race.

Is it not better with the Eremite,

Where the weeds rustle o'er his airy cave, Perch'd on their summit, through the long, still night

To sit and watch their shadows slowly wave

While oft some fragment, sapp'd by dull decay,
In thunder breaks the silence, and the fowl
Of Ruin hoots-and turn in scorn away
Of all man builds, time levels, and the cowl
Awards her moping sage in common with the owl?

Or, where the palm, at twilight's holy hour,
By THESEUS' fane her lonely vigil keeps:
Gone are her sisters of the leaf and flower,
With them the living crop earth sows and reaps,
But these revive not: the weed with them sleeps,
But clothes herself in beauty from their clay,
And leaves them to their slumber; o'er them

weeps

Vainly the Spring her quickening dews away, And Love as vainly mourns, and mourns, alas! for aye.

Or, more remote, on Nature's haunts intrude, Where, since creation, she has slept on flowers, Wet with the noonday forest-dew, and woo'd By untamed choristers in unpruned bowers: By pathless thicket, rock that time-worn towers O'er dells untrodden by the hunter, piled Ere by its shadow measured were the hours To human eye, the rampart of the wild, Whose banner is the cloud, by carnage undefiled. The weary spirit that forsaken plods The world's wide wilderness, a home may find Here, mid the dwellings of long-banish'd gods, And thoughts they bring, the mourners of the

mind;

The spectres that no spell has power to bind, The loved, but lost, whose soul's life is in ours, As incense in sepulchral urns, enshrined, The sense of blighted or of wasted powers, The hopes whose promised fruits have perish'd with their flowers.