THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

Look on him-through his dungeon-grate,
Feebly and cold, the morning light
Comes stealing round him, dim and late,
As if it loathed the sight.
Reclining on his strawy bed,

His hand upholds his drooping head-
His bloodless cheek is seam'd and hard,
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;
And o'er his bony fingers flow
His long, dishevell'd locks of snow.

No grateful fire before him glows,-
And yet the winter's breath is chill:
And o'er his half-clad person goes
The frequent ague-thrill!
Silent-save ever and anon,

A sound, half-murmur and half-groan,
Forces apart the painful grip
Of the old sufferer's bearded lip:
O, sad and crushing is the fate
Of old age chain'd and desolate!

Just Gon! why lies that old man there?
A murderer shares his prison-bed,
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,
Gleam on him fierce and red;
And the rude oath and heartless jeer
Fall ever on his loathing ear,
And, or in wakefulness or sleep,
Nerve, flesh, and fibre thrill and creep,
Whene'er that ruffian's tossing limb,
Crimson'd with murder, touches him!

What has the gray-hair'd prisoner done?
Has murder stain'd his hands with gore?
Not so: his crime's a fouler one:

God made the old man poor!
For this he shares a felon's cell-
The fittest earthly type of hell!
For this-the boon for which he pour'd
His young blood on the invader's sword,
And counted light the fearful cost-
His blood-gain'd liberty is lost!

And so, for such a place of rest,

Old prisoner, pour'd thy blood as rain

On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest,
And Saratoga's plain?

Look forth, thou man of many scars,
Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars!
It must be joy, in sooth, to see
Yon monument* uprear'd to thee-
Piled granite and a prison-cell-
The land repays thy service well!

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,

And fling the starry banner out;

Shout Freedom!" till your lisping ones
Give back their cradle-shout:
Let boasted eloquence declaim

Of honour, liberty, and fame;

Still let the poet's strain be heard,
With "glory" for each second word,

Bunker Hill Monument.

And every thing with breath agree
To praise our glorious liberty!"
And when the patriot cannon jars

That prison's cold and gloomy wall,
And through its grates the stripes and stars
Rise on the wind, and fall-
Think ye that prisoner's aged ear
Rejoices in the general cheer!
Think ye his dim and failing eye
Is kindled at your pageantry?
Sorrowing of soul, and chain'd of limb,
What is your carnival to him?

Down with the law that binds him thus!
Unworthy freemen, let it find

No refuge from the withering curse
Of Gon and human kind!
Open the prisoner's living tomb,
And usher from its brooding gloom
The victims of your savage code,
To the free sun and air of GOD!
No longer dare as crime to brand
The chastening of the Almighty's hand!

THE MERRIMACK.

STREAM of my fathers! sweetly still
The sunset rays thy valley fill;
Pour'd slantwise down the long defile,
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile.

I see the winding Powow fold

The green hill in its belt of gold,
And, following down its wavy line,
Its sparkling waters blend with thine.
There's not a tree upon thy side,
Nor rock, which thy returning tide
As yet hath left abrupt and stark
Above thy evening water-mark;
No calm cove with its rocky hem,
No isle whose emerald swells begem
Thy broad, smooth current; not a sail
Bow'd to the freshening ocean-gale;
No small boat with its busy oars,
Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores;
Nor farm-house with its maple shade,
Or rigid poplar colonnade,

But lies distinct and full in sight,
Beneath this gush of sunset light.
Centuries ago, that harbour-bar,
Stretching its length of foam afar,
And Salisbury's beach of shining sand,
And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand,
Saw the adventurer's tiny sail

Flit, stooping from the eastern gale;
And o'er these woods and waters broke
The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak,
As brightly on the voyager's eye,
Weary of forest, sea, and sky,
Breaking the dull, continuous wood,
The Merrimack roll'd down his flood;
Mingling that clear, pellucid brook
Which channels vast Agioochook-
When spring-time's sun and shower unlock
The frozen fountains of the rock,

And more abundant waters given
From that pure lake, The Smile of Heaven,'
Tributes from vale and mountain side-
With ocean's dark, eternal tide!

On yonder rocky cape which braves
The stormy challenge of the waves,
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood,
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood,
Planting upon the topmost crag
The staff of England's battle-flag;
And, while from out its heavy fold
St. GEORGE's crimson cross unroll'd.
Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare,
And weapons brandishing in air,
He gave to that lone promontory
The sweetest name in all his story;
Of her-the flower of Islam's daughters,
Whose harems look on Stamboul's waters-
Who, when the chance of war had bound
The Moslem chain his limbs around,
Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain,
Soothed with her smiles his hours of pain,
And fondly to her youthful slave
A dearer gift than freedom gave.

But look! the yellow light no more
Streams down on wave and verdant shore;
And clearly on the calm air swells
The distant voice of twilight bells.
From ocean's bosom, white and thin
The mist comes slowly rolling in ;
Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim,
Amidst the sea-like vapour swim,
While yonder lonely coast-light set
Within its wave-wash'd minaret,
Half-quench'd, a beamless star and pale,
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil!
Vale of my fathers!-I have stood
Where Hudson roll'd his lordly flood;
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade
Along his frowning palisade;
Look'd down the Appalachian peak
On Juniata's silver streak;
Have seen along his valley gleam
The Mohawk's softly winding stream;
The setting sun, his axle red
Quench darkly in Potomac's bed;
The autumn's rainbow-tinted banner
Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna;
Yet, wheresoe'er his step might be,
Thy wandering child look'd back to thee!
Heard in his dreams thy river's sound
Of murmuring on its pebbly bound,
The unforgotten swell and roar
Of waves on thy familiar shore;
And seen amidst the curtain'd gloom
And quiet of my lonely room,
Thy sunset scenes before me pass;
As, in AGRIPPA's magic glass,
The loved and lost arose to view,
Remember'd groves in greenness grew;
And while the gazer lean'd to trace,
More near, some old familiar face,
He wept to find the vision flown-
A phantom and a dream alone!

ST. JOHN.*

"To the winds give our banner!
Bear homeward again!"
Cried the lord of Acadia,

Sir CHARLES of Estienne;
From the prow of his shallop
He gazed, as the sun,
From his bed in the ocean,
Stream'd up the St. John.
O'er the blue western waters
That shallop had pass'd,
Where the mists of Penobscot
Clung damp on her mast.
St. Saviourt had look'd

On the heretic sail,

As the songs of the Huguenot
Rose on the gale.

The pale, ghostly fathers
Remember'd her well,

And had cursed her while passing,
With taper and bell.

But the men of Mouhegan,+

Of Papists abhorr'd,
Had welcomed and feasted

The heretic lord.
They had loaded his shallop

With dun-fish and ball,
With stores for his larder,
And steel for his wall.
Pemequid, from her bastions
And turrets of stone,
Had welcomed his coming
With banner and gun.

The fierce rivalship of the two French officers, left by the death of RAZILLA in the possession of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, forms one of the most romantic passages in the history of the New World. CHARLES ST. ESTIENNE, inheriting from his father the title of Lord DE LA TOUR, whose seat was at the mouth of the St. John's river, was a Protestant; DE AULNEY CHARNISY, whose fortress was at the mouth of the Penobscot, or ancient Pentagoet, was a Catholic. The incentives of a false religious feeling, sectarian intolerance, and personal interest and ambition, conspired to render their feud bloody and unsparing. The Catholic was urged on by the Jesuits, who had found protection from Puritan gallows-ropes under his jurisdiction; the Huguenot still smarted under the recollection of his wrongs and persecutions in France. Both claimed to be champions of that cross from which went upward the holy petition of the Prince of Peace: "Father, forgive them." LA TOUR received aid in several instances from the Puritan colonies of Massachusetts. During one of his voyages for the purpose of obtaining arms and provisions for his establishment at St. John, his castle was attacked by DE AULNEY, and successfully defended by its highspirited mistress. A second attack, however, followed in the 4th mo., 1647. Lady LA TOUR defended her castle with a desperate perseverance. After a furious cannonade, DE AULNEY stormed the walls, and put the entire garrison to the sword. Lady LA TOUR languished a few days only in the hands of her inveterate enemy, and died of grief, greatly regretted by the colonists of Boston, to whom, as a devoted Protestant, she was well known. + The settlement of the Jesuits on the island of Mount Desert was called St. Saviour.

The isle of Mouhegan was one of the first settled on the coast of Maine. At this island Captain SMITH obtained, in 1614, eleven thousand beaver skins and forty thousand dry fish.

And the prayers of the elders

Had follow'd his way, As homeward he glided, Down Pentecost Bay. O! well sped LA TOUR! For, in peril and pain, His lady kept watch

For his coming again.

O'er the Isle of the Pheasant

The morning sun shone, On the plane trees which shaded

The shores of St. John.
"Now, why from yon battlements
Speaks not my love!
Why waves there no banner
My fortress above?"

Dark and wild, from his deck
ST. ESTIENNE gazed about,
On fire-wasted dwellings,

And silent redoubt;
From the low, shatter'd walls
Which the flame had o'errun,
There floated no banner,

There thunder'd no gun!

But, beneath the low arch

Of its doorway there stood

A pale priest of Rome,

In his cloak and his hood. With the bound of a lion,

LA TOUR sprang to land, On the throat of the Papist He fasten'd his hand.

"Speak, son of the Woman, Of scarlet and sin! What wolf has been prowling

My castle within?"
From the grasp of the soldier
The Jesuit broke,
Half in scorn, half in sorrow,
He smiled as he spoke:

"No wolf, Lord of Estienne,
Has ravaged thy hall,
But the men of DE AULNEY,
With fire, steel, and ball!
On an errand of mercy

I hitherward came,
While the walls of thy castle
Yet spouted with flame.

"Half-veil'd in the smoke-cloud,

Her hand grasp'd thy pennon, While her dark tresses sway'd

In the hot breath of cannon! But wo to the heretic,

Evermore wo!

When the son of the church
And the cross is his foe!

"In the track of the shell,
In the path of the ball,
DE AULNEY swept over

The breach of the wall! Steel to steel, gun to gun,

One moment-and then Alone stood the victor,

Alone with his men!

"Of its sturdy defenders, Thy lady alone

Saw the cross and the lilies

Float over St. John."

"Let the dastard look to it!" Cried fiery ESTIENNE, "Were DE AULNEY King Louis, I'd free her again!"

"Alas, for thy lady!

No service from thee

Is needed by her

Whom the Lord hath set free: Nine days, in stern silence, Her thraldom she bore, But the tenth morning came, And Death open'd her door!"

As if suddenly smitten

LA TOUR stagger'd back;
His hand grasp'd his sword-belt,
His forehead grew black.
He sprang on the deck

Of his shallop again:
"We cruise now for vengeance!
Give way!" cried ESTIENNE.
"Massachusetts shall hear

Of the Huguenot's wrong, And from island and creek-side Her fishers shall throng! Pentagoet shall rue

What its Papists have done, When its palisades echo

The Puritan's gun!"

O the loveliest of heavens
Hung tenderly o'er him
There were waves in the sunshine,
And green isles before him:
But a pale hand was beckoning

The Huguenot on;

And in blackness and ashes

Behind was St. John!

DOCTOR HOLMES is a son of the late Reverend ABIEL HOLMES, D. D., and was born at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, on the twenty-ninth day of August, 1809. He received his early education at the Phillips Exeter Academy, and entered Harvard University in 1825. On being graduated he commenced the study of the law, but relinquished it after one year's application, for the more congenial pursuit of medicine, to which he devoted himself with much ardour and industry. For the more successful prosecution of his studies, he visited Europe in the spring of 1833, passing the principal portion of his residence abroad at Paris, where he attended the hospitals, acquired an intimate knowledge of the language, and became personally acquainted with many of the most eminent physicians of France.

He returned to Boston near the close of the year 1835, and in the following spring commenced the practice of medicine in that city. In the autumn of the same year he delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, which was received with extraordinary and wellmerited applause. In 1838 he was elected Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the medical institution connected with Dartmouth College; but, on being married, two years afterward, he resigned that office, and has since devoted himself entirely to the duties of his profession.

The earlier poems of Doctor HOLMES appeared in "The Collegian." They were little less distinguished for correct and melodious versification than his more recent and most elaborate compositions. They attracted attention by their humour and originality, and were widely circulated and republished in contemporary periodicals. But a small portion of them have been printed under his proper signature.

In 1831 a small volume appeared in Boston, entitled "Illustrations of the Athenæum Gallery of Paintings," and composed of metrical pieces, chiefly satirical, written by Doctor HOLMES and EPES SARGENT. It embraced many of our author's best humorous verses, afterward included in the edition of his acknowledged works. His principal production, "Poetry, a Metrical Essay," was delivered before a literary society at Cambridge. It is in the heroic measure, and in its versification it is not surpassed by any poem written in this country.

"The Collegian" was a monthly miscellany published in 1830, by the undergraduates at Cambridge. Among the editors were HOLMES, the late WILLIAM H. SIMMONS, who will long be remembered for his admirable lectures on the great poets and orators of England, and JOHN O. SARGENT, Who distinguished himself as an able political writer in the long contest which resulted in the election of General HARRISON to the presidency, and is now engaged in the successful practice of the law in the city of New York.

It relates to the nature and developments of poetry,
which he regards as only expression. He says:
There breathes no being but has some pretence
To that fine instinct called poetic sense;
The rudest savage, roaming through the wild,
The simplest rustic, bending o'er his child,
The infant, listening to the warbling bird,
The mother, smiling at its half-formed word;
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land;
The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted chain,
Dreams of the palm-trees on his burning plain;
The hot-cheek'd reveller, tossing down the wine,
To join the chorus pealing "Auld lang syne;"
The gentle maid, whose azure eye grows dim,
While Heaven is listening to her evening hymn;
The jewel'd beauty, when her steps draw near
The circling dance and dazzling chandelier;
E'en trembling age, when spring's renewing air
Waves the thin ringlets of his silver'd hair;-
All, all are glowing with the inward flame,
Whose wider halo wreathes the poet's name,
While, unembalm'd, the silent dreamer dies,
His memory passing with his smiles and sighs!
The poet, he contends, is

He, whose thoughts differing not in shape, but dress,
What others feel, more fitly can express.

In another part of the essay he gives the following fine description of the different English

measures:

Poets, like painters, their machinery claim,
And verse bestows the varnish and the frame;
Our grating English, whose Teutonic jar
Shakes the rack'd axle of Art's rattling car,
Fits like Mosaic in the lines that gird
Fast in its place each many-angled word;
From Saxon lips ANACREON'S numbers glide,
As once they melted on the Teian tide,
And, fresh transfused, the Iliad thrills again
From Albion's cliffs as o'er Achaia's plain;
The proud heroic, with its pulse-like beat,
Rings like the cymbals clashing as they meet;
The sweet Spenserian, gathering as it flows,
Sweeps gently onward to its dying close,
Where waves on waves in long succession pour,
Till the ninth billow melts along the shore;
The lonely spirit of the mournful lay,
Which lives immortal in the verse of GRAY,
In sable plumage slowly drifts along,
On eagle pinion, through the air of song;
The glittering lyric bounds elastic by,
With flashing ringlets and exulting eye,
While every image, in her airy whirl,
Gleams like a diamond on a dancing girl!

For several years the attention of Doctor HOLMES, as I have before remarked, has been devoted to his professional business. He has obtained two or three prizes for dissertations on medical questions, and as a physician and as a lecturer on physiological subjects, he has become eminently popular in the city in which he resides. As a poet he has won an enduring reputation. He possesses a rich vein of humour, with learning and originality, and great skill as an artist.

THE CAMBRIDGE CHURCHYARD.

OUR ancient church! its lowly tower,
Beneath the loftier spire,

Is shadow'd when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire;
It sinks beyond the distant eye,

Long ere the glittering vane,
High wheeling in the western sky,
Has faded o'er the plain.

Like sentinel and nun, they keep

Their vigil on the green;

One seems to guard, and one to weep,
The dead that lie between;

And both roll out, so full and near,

Their music's mingling waves,

They shake the grass, whose pennon'd spear Leans on the narrow graves.

The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick beneath the line he reads,

They shade the sculptured stone;
The child unveils his cluster'd brow,
And ponders for a while
The graven willow's pendent bough,
Or rudest cherub's smile.

But what to them the dirge, the knell?

These were the mourner's share;
The sullen clang, whose heavy swell
Throbb'd through the beating air;
The rattling cord,--the rolling stone,--
The shelving sand that slid,
And, far beneath, with hollow tone

Rung on the coffin's lid.

The slumberer's mound grows fresh and green, Then slowly disappears;

The mosses creep, the gray stones lean,

Earth hides his date and years; But, long before the once-loved name Is sunk or worn away,

No lip the silent dust may claim,

That press'd the breathing clay. Go where the ancient pathway guides, See where our sires laid down

Their smiling babes, their cherish'd brides,

The patriarchs of the town;

Hast thou a tear for buried love?
A sigh for transient power?
All that a century left above,

Go, read it in an hour!

The Indian's shaft, the Briton's ball,
The sabre's thirsting edge,

The hot shell, shattering in its fall,

The bayonet's rending wedge,--
Here scatter'd death; yet seek the spot,
No trace thine eye can see,
No altar,--and they need it not

Who leave their children free!

Look where the turbid rain-drops stand
In many a chisell❜d square,

The knightly crest, the shield, the brand Of honour'd names were there; Alas! for every tear is dried

Those blazon'd tablets knew, Save when the icy marble's side

Drips with the evening dew.

Or gaze upon yon pillar'd stone,*
The empty urn of pride;
There stands the goblet and the sun,-
What need of more beside?
Where lives the memory of the dead?
Who made their tomb a toy?

Whose ashes press that nameless bed?
Go, ask the village boy!

Lean o'er the slender western wall,
Ye ever-roaming girls;
The breath that bids the blossom fall

May lift your floating curls,
To sweep the simple lines that tell

An exile'st date and doom; And sigh, for where his daughters dwell, They wreathe the stranger's tomb. And one amid these shades was born, Beneath this turf who lies, Once beaming as the summer's morn, That closed her gentle eyes; If sinless angels love as we,

Who stood thy grave beside,
Three seraph welcomes waited thee,
The daughter, sister, bride!

I wander'd to thy buried mound,
When earth was hid, below
The level of the glaring ground,

Choked to its gates with snow, And when with summer's flowery waves The lake of verdure roll'd,

As if a sultan's white-robed slaves

Had scatter'd pearls and gold.

Nay, the soft pinions of the air,

That lifts this trembling tone,
Its breath of love may almost bear,
To kiss thy funeral-stone;
And, now thy smiles have pass'd away,
For all the joy they gave,

May sweetest dews and warmest ray
Lie on thine early grave!

-

When damps beneath, and storms above,
Have bow'd these fragile towers,
Still o'er the graves yon locust-grove
Shall swing its orient flowers;
And I would ask no mouldering bust,
If o'er this humble line,
Which breathed a sigh o'er other's dust,
Might call a tear on mine.

*The tomb of the VASSALL family is marked by a freestone tablet, supported by five pillars, and bearing nothing but the sculptured reliefs of the goblet and the sun,-Fes Sol, which designated a powerful family, now almost forgotten.

The exile referred to in this stanza was a native of Honfleur, in Normandy.