The moon, the flowers, the blossoming tree, Wake the minstrel's lyre, they are brighter than we."

The flowers shed their fragrance, the moonbeams their light,

Over scenes never veiled by your drap'ry of white; But the clime where I first saw your downy flakes fall,

My own native clime is far dearer than all.

Oh! fair, when ye clothed in their wintry mail,
The elms that o'ershadow my home in the vale,
Like warriors they looked, as they bowed in the
storm,

With the tossing plume and the towering form.

Ye fade, ye melt-I feel the warm breath

Of the redolent South o'er the desolate heath-
But tell me, ye vanishing pearls, where ye dwell,
When the dew-drops of Summer bespangle the

dell?

"We fade, we melt into crystalline spheres-
We weep, for we pass through a valley of tears;
But onward to glory-away to the sky-
In the hollow of God's own hand we lie."

SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.

MRS. WHITMAN is a daughter of Mr. Nicholas Power, of Providence, a direct descendant of a follower of Roger Williams in his banishment. She was married at an early age to Mr. John Winslow Whitman, a descendant of Governor Winslow, with whom she removed to Boston, where her husband practised law with eminent success. He was soon after attacked by a disease which in a brief period closed his life. His widow returned to her native city of Providence, where she has since resided.

Larah Helen Whitman

Mrs. Whitman published in 1853 Hours of Life and Other Poems, a few of which are translations from the German. She is also the author of three ballads founded on the fairy stories of the Golden Ball, the Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, portions of which are from the pen of her sister, Miss Anna Marsh Power; and of several elaborate critical articles on German and other authors of modern Europe, in the chief languages of which she is a proficient.

Mrs. Whitman's volume of poems is a book of a rare passionate beauty, marked by fine mental characteristics. The chief poem, "Hours of Life," is a picture of the soul in its progress through time, and its search out of disappointment and experience for peace and security. Its learned philosophical spirit is not less remarkable than its tenderness and spiritual melody.

The volume also contains numerous descriptions of scenery and poems of sentiment, in which passion is intimately blended with nature. Several of these are devoted to the memory of the late Edgar A. Poe, whose wild poetic creations and melancholy career have awakened in the author's mind a peculiar sympathy and imaginative in

terest.

O'erwearied with life's restless change
From extacy to agony,

Its fleeting pleasures born to die,
The mirage of its phantasie,
Its worn and melancholy range
Of hopes that could no more estrange
The married heart of memory,

Doomed, while we drain life's perfumed wine,
For the dull Lethean wave to pine,
And, for each thrill of joy, to know
Despair's slow pulse or sorrow's throe-
I sought some central truth to span
These wide extremes of good and ill-
I longed with one bold glance to scan
Life's perfect sphere,-to rend at will
The gloom of Erebus,-dread zone—
Coiled like a serpent round the throne
Of heaven, the realm where Justice veils
Her heart and holds her even scales,-
Where awful Nemesis awaits

The doomed, by Pluto's iron gates.

In the long noon-tide of my sorrow,
I questioned of the eternal morrow;
I gazed in sullen awe

Far through the illimitable gloom
Down-deepening like the swift mælstroom,
The doubting soul to draw

Into eternal solitudes,

Where unrelenting silence broods
Around the throne of Law.

I questioned the dim chronicle
Of ages gone before-

I listened for the triumph songs
That rang from shore to shore,

Where the heroes and the conquerors wrought The mighty deeds of yore

Where the foot-prints of the martyrs

Had bathed the earth in gore,

And the war-horns of the warriors

Were heard from shore to shore.

Their blood on desert plains was shed-
Their voices on the wind had filed-
They were the drear and shadowy DEAD!
Still, through the storied past, I sought
An answer to my sleepless thought;
In the cloisters old and hoary
Of the medieval time-
In the rude ancestral story
Of the ancient Runic rhyme.

I paused on Grecian plains, to trace
Some remnant of a mightier race,
Serene in sorrow and in strife,
Calm conquerors of Death and Life,
Types of the god-like forms that shone
Upon the sculptured Parthenon.

But still, as when Prometheus bare
From heaven the fiery dart,

I saw the "vulture passions" tear
The proud Caucasian heart-
The war of destiny with will
Still conquered, yet conflicting still.

I heard loud Hallelujas
From Israel's golden lyre,

And I sought their great Jehovah
In the cloud and in the fire.

I lingered by the stream that flowed "Fast by the oracle of God"—

I bowed, its sacred wave to sip

Its borders, and its palms that threw Aloft their waving coronal,

Were blistered by a poison dew.
Serener elements I sought,
Sublimer altitudes of thought,

The truth Saint John and Plato saw,
The mystic light, the inward law;
The Logos ever found and lost,
The aureola of the Ghost.

I hailed its faint auroral beam

In many a Poet's delphic dream,

On many a shrine where faith's pure flame
Through fable's gorgeous oriel came.
Around the altars of the god,
In holy passion hushed, I trod,
Where once the mighty voice of Jove
Rang through Dodona's haunted grove.
No more the dove with sable plumes*
Swept through the forest's gorgeous glooms;
The shrines were desolate and cold,
Their peans hushed, their story told,
In long, inglorious silence lost,
Like fiery tongues of Pentecost.
No more did music's golden surge
The mortal in immortal merge:
High canticles of joy and praise
Died with the dream of other days;
I only heard the Mænad's wail,

That shriek that made the orient pale:
Evohe!-ah evohe!

The mystic burden of a woe

Whose dark enigma none may know; †
The primal curse-the primal throe.
Evohe!-ah-evohe!

Nature shuddered at the cry
Of that ancient agony.

Still the fabled Python bound me-
Still the serpent coil enwound me—
Still I heard the Mænad's cry,
Evohe!-ah-evohe!

*

Wearied with man's discordant creed,
I sought on Nature's page to read
Life's history, ere yet she shrined
Her essence in the incarnate mind;
Intent her secret laws to trace

In primal solitudes of space,
From her first, faint atomic throes,
To where her orbéd splendor glows
In the vast, silent spheres that roll
For ever towards their unknown goal.

I turned from dull alchemic lore
With starry Chaldeans to soar,
And sought, on fancy's wing, to roam
That glorious galaxy of light

Where mingling stars, like drifting foam,

"The priestesses of Dodona assert that two black pigeons flew from Thebes in Egypt; one of which settled in Lybia, the other among themselves: which latter, resting on a beechtree, declared with a human voice that here was to be the oracle of Jove."-Herodotus. Book II. ch. 52.

+"The Monads, in their wild incantations, carried serpents in their hands, and with frantic gestures, cried out Eva! Eva! Epiphanius thinks that this invocation related to the mother of mankind; but I am inclined to believe that it was the word Epha or Opha, rendered by the Greeks, Ophis, a serpent. I take Abaddon to have been the name of the same ophite God whose worship has so long infected the world. The learned Heinsius makes Abaddon the same as the serpent Python."Jacob Bryant's Analysis of Ancient Mythology.

While Manads cry aloud Evoe, Evoe!
That voice that is contagion to the world.
Shelley's Prometheus.

Melt on the solemn shores of night;
But still the surging glory chased
The dark through night's chaotic waste,
And still, within its deepening voids,
Crumbled the burning asteroids.

Long gloating on that hollow gloom,
Methought that in some vast mælstroom,
The stars were hurrying to their doom,-
Bubbles upon life's boundless sea,
Swift meteors of eternity,

Pale sparks of mystic fire, that fall
From God's unwaning coronal.

Is there, I asked, a living woe

In all those burning orbs that glow
Through the blue ether?-do they share
Our dim world's anguish and despair-
In their vast or bits do they fly
From some avenging destiny—
And shall their wild eyes pale beneath
The dread anathema of Death?

Our own fair earth-shall she too drift,
For ever shrouded in a weft

Of stormy clouds, that surge and swirl
Around her in her dizzy whirl :—
For ever shall a shadow fall
Backward from her golden wall,
Its dark cone stretching, ghast and grey,
Into outer glooms away?--

From the sad, unsated quest

Of knowledge, how I longed to rest
On her green and silent breast!

I languished for the dews of death
My fevered heart to steep,
The heavy, honey-dews of death,
The calm and dreamless sleep.

I left my fruitless lore apart,
And leaned my ear on Nature's heart,
To hear, far from life's busy throng,
The chime of her sweet undersong.
She pressed her balmy lips to mine,
She bathed me in her sylvan springs ;
And still, by many a rural shrine,
She taught me sweet and holy things.
I felt her breath my temples fan,

I learned her temperate laws to scan,
My soul, of hers, became a conscious part;
Her beauty melted through my inmost heart.

Still I languished for the word

Her sweet lips had never spoken,
Still, from the pale shadow-land,
There came nor voice nor token;
No accent of the Holy Ghost
Whispered of the loved and lost;
No bright wanderer came to tell
If, in worlds beyond the grave,
Life, love, and beauty, dwell.

A holy light began to stream
Athwart the cloud-rifts, like a dream
Of heaven; and lo! a pale, sweet face,
Of mournful grandeur and imperial grace-
A face whose mystic sadness seemed to borrow
Immortal beauty from that mortal sorrow-
Looked on me; and a voice of solemn cheer
Uttered its sweet evangels on my ear;
The open secrets of that eldest lore
That seems less to reveal than to restore.

"Pluck thou the Life-tree's golden fruit,
Nor seek to bare its sacred root;
Live, and in life's perennial faith
Renounce the heresy of death:

Believe, and every sweet accord
Of being, to thine ear restored,
Shall sound articulate and clear;
Perfected love shall banish fear,
Knowledge and wisdom shall approve
The divine synthesis of love."
"Royally the lilies grow
On the grassy leas,
Basking in the sun and dew,
Swinging in the breeze.

Doth the wild-fowl need a chart
Through the illimitable air?
Heaven lies folded in my heart;
Seek the truth that slumbers there;
Thou art Truth's eternal heir."

"Let the shadows come and go;

Let the stormy north wind blow:
Death's dark valley cannot bind thee
In its dread abode;

There the Morning Star shall find thee,
There the living God.

Sin and sorrow cannot hide thee--
Death and hell cannot divide thee

From the love of God."

In the mystic agony
On the Mount of Calvary,

The Saviour with his dying eyes
Beheld the groves of Paradise.

“Then weep not by the charnel stone
Nor veil thine eyelids from the sun.
Upward, through the death-dark glides,
The spirit on resurgent tides
Of light and glory on its way:
Wilt thou by the cerements stay?-
Thou the risen Christ shalt see
In redeemed Humanity.
Though mourners at the portal wept,
And angels lingered where it slept,
The soul but tarried for a night,
Then plumed its wings for loftier flight."
"Is thy heart so lonely?-Lo,
Ready to share thy joy and woe,
Poor wanderers tarry at thy gate,
The way-worn and the desolate,
And angels at thy threshold wait:
Would'st thou love's holiest guerdon win-
Arise, and let the stranger in."

"The friend whom not thy fickle will,
But the deep heart within thee, still
Yearneth to fold to its embrace,

Shall seek thee through the realms of space.
Keep the image Nature sealed
On thy heart, by love annealed,
Keep thy faith serene and pure;
Her royal promises are sure,

Her sweet betrothals shall endure."
"Hope thou all things and believe;
And, in child-like trust, achieve
The simplest mandates of the soul,
The simplest good, the nearest goal;
Move but the waters and their pulse
The broad oce in shall convulse."
"When love shall reconcile the will
Love's mystic sorrow to fulfil,
Its fiery baptism to share,—
The burden of its cross to bear,-
Earth shall to equilibrium tend,
Ellipses shall to circles bend,
And life's long agony shall end."

"Then pluck the Life-tree's golden fruit,
No blight can reach its sacred root.

E'en though every blossom fell
Into Hades, one by one,

Love is deeper far than Hell-
Shadows cannot quench the sun."
"Can the child-heart promise more
Than the father hath in store?-

The blind shall see-the dead shall live;
Can the man-child forfeit more
Than the father can forgive?

The Dragon, from his empire driven,
No more shall find his place in Heaven,
"Till e'en the Serpent power approve
The divine potency of love."
"Guard thy faith with holy care,—
Mystic virtues slumber there;
"Tis the lamp within the soul
Holding genii in control:
Faith shall walk the stormy water-
In the unequal strife prevail-
Nor, when comes the dread avatar
From its fiery splendors quail.
Faith shall triumph o'er the grave,
Love shall bless the life it gave."

THE TRAILING ARBUTUS.

There's a flower that grows by the greenwood tree,
In its desolate beauty more dear to me,
Than all that bask in the noontide beam
Through the long, bright summer by fount and
stream.

Like a pure hope, nursed beneath sorrow's wing,
Its timid buds from the cold moss spring,
Their delicate hues like the pink sea-shell,
Or the shaded blush of the hyacinth's bell,
Their breath more sweet than the faint perfume
That breathes from the bridal orange-bloom.

It is not found by the garden wall,

It wreathes no brow in the festal hall,
But it dwells in the depths of the shadowy wood,
And shines, like a star, in the solitude.
Never did numbers its name prolong,
Ne'er hath it floated on wings of song,
Bard and minstrel have passed it by,
And left it, in silence and shade, to die.
But with joy to its cradle the wild-bees come,
And praise its beauty with drony hum,
And children love, in the season of spring,
To watch for its earliest blossoming.

In the dewy morn of an April day,
When the traveller lingers along the way,
When the sod is sprinkled with tender green
Where rivulets water the earth, unseen,
When the floating fringe on the maple's crest
Rivals the tulip's crimson vest,

And the budding leaves of the birch-trees throw
A trembling shade on the turf below,
When my flower awakes from its dreamy rest
And yields its lips to the sweet south-west,
Then, in those beautiful days of spring,
With hearts as light as the wild-bird's wing,
Flinging their tasks and their toys aside,
Gay little groups through the wood-paths glide,
Peeping and peering among the trees

As they scent its breath on the passing breeze,
Hunting about, among lichens grey,

And the tangled mosses beside the way,

Till they catch the glance of its quiet eye,
Like light that breaks through a cloudy sky.

For me, sweet blossom, thy tendrils cling
Round my heart of hearts, as in childhood's spring,
And thy breath, as it floats on the wandering air,
Wakes all the music o. memory there.
Thou recallest the time when, a fearless child.

I roved all day through the wood-walks wild,.
Seeking thy blossoms by bank and brae'
Wherever the snow-drifts had melted away.
Now as I linger, 'mid crowds alone,
Haunted by echoes of music flown,
When the shadows deepen around my way
And the light of reason but leads astray,
When affections, nurtured with fondest care
In the trusting heart, become traitors there,
When, weary of all that the world bestows,
I turn to nature for calm repose,
How fain my spirit, in some far glen,
Would fold her wings, 'mid thy flowers again!

A ETILL DAY IN AUTUMN.

I love to wander through the woodlands hoary,
In the soft gloom of an autumnal day,
When Summer gathers up her robes of glory

And, like a dream of beauty, glides away.
How through each loved, familiar path she lingers,
Serenely smiling through the golden mist,
Tinting the wild grape with her dewy fingers,
Till the cool emerald turns to amethyst,-
Kindling the faint stars of the hazel, shining

To light the gloom of Autumn's mouldering halls, With hoary plumes the clematis entwining,

Where, o'er the rock, her withered garland falls. Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning

Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled, Till the slant sunbeams through their fringes raining,

Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.

The moist winds breathe of crispèd leaves and flow

ers,

In the damp hollows of the woodland sown, Mingling the freshness of autumnal showers

With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown. Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow, Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground, With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow, The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound. Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brooding Like a fond lover loth to say farewell; Or, with shut wings, through silken folds intruding, Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell. The little birds upon the hillside lonely,

Flit noiselessly along from spray to spray, Silent as a sweet, wandering thought, that only Shows its bright wings and softly glides away. The scentless flowers, in the warm sunlight dreaming,

Forget to breathe their fulness of delight,And through the tranced woods soft airs are streaming,

Still as the dew-fall of the summer night.
So, in my heart, a sweet, unwonted feeling
Stirs, like the wind in ocean's hollow shell,
Through all its secret chambers sadly stealing,
Yet finds no words its mystic charm to tell.

BLOOMS NO MORE.

Oh primavera, gioventù dell' anno, Bella madre di fiori,

Tu torni ben, ma teco

Non tornano i sereni

E fortunati di delle mie gioie.

GUARINI

I dread to see the summer sun Come glowing up the sky, And early pansies, one by one, Opening the violet eye.

Again the fair azalia bows

Beneath her snowy crest;
In yonder hedge the hawthorn blows,
The robin builds her nest;

The tulips lift their proud tiàrs,
The lilac waves her plumes;
And, peeping through my lattice bars,
The rose-acacia blooms.

But she can bloom on earth no more,
Whose early doom I mourn;
Nor Spring nor Summer can restore
Our flower, untimely shorn.
She was our morning glory,
Our primrose, pure and pale,
Our little mountain daisy,
Our lily of the vale.
Now dim as folded violets,

Her eyes of dewy light;
And her rosy lips have mournfully
Breathed out their last good-night.
'Tis therefore that I dread to see
The glowing Summer sun;
And the balmy blossoms on the tree,
Unfolding one by one.

HENRY REED.

HENRY REED, the late Professor of Literature and Moral Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, whose sudden death among the passengers of the steamer Arctic cast a shade over the intelligent circle in which he moved, belonged to an old and honored family in the state. His grandfather was Joseph Reed, the President of Pennsylvania, the secretary and confidant of Washington, and the incorruptible patriot, whose memorable answer to a munificent proposal of bribery and corruption from the British commissioners in 1778, is among the oft-repeated anecdotes of the Revolution :-"I am not worth purchasing, but, such as I am, the king of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it."

*

The wife of this honored lawyer and civilian also holds a place in the memoirs of the Revolution. Esther de Berdt, as she appears from the correspondence and numerous anecdotes in the biography prepared by her grandson, the subject of this notice, was a lady of marked strength of character and refined disposition. She was the daughter of Dennis de Berdt, a London merchant much connected with American affairs, and the predecessor of Dr. Franklin as agent or the Province of Massachusetts. Having become acquainted with Mr. Reed in the society of Americans in which her father moved, she became his wife under circumstances of mournful interest, after the death of her parent, when removing to America she encountered the struggle of the Revolution, sustaining her family with great fortitude during the necessary absence of her husband on public duties. After acting well her part of a mother in America in those troublous times, and receiving the congratulations of Washington, she died in Philadelphia before the contest was closed, in 1780. The memoir by her grandson is a touching and delicate tribute to her memory,

The Life of Esther De Berdt, afterwards Esther Reed, of Pennsylvania. Privately printed. Philadelphia: C. Sherman, Printer, 1853.

Herry Peed

Henry Reed was born in Philadelphia, July 11, 1808. He received his early education in the classical school of James Ross, a highly esteemed teacher of his day in Philadelphia. Passing to the University of Pennsylvania, he attained his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1825. He then pursued the study of the law in the office of John Sargent, and was admitted to the bar in 1829. After a short interval, he was, in the year 1831, elected Assistant Professor of English Literature in his University, and shortly after Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy. In 1835 he was elected Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. It was on a leave of absence from these college duties, that, in the spring of 1854, he left America for a summer visit to Europe, a pilgrimage which he had long meditated; and it was on his return in the ill-fated Arctic that he perished in the wreck of that vessel, September 27 of the same year. He had thus passed onehalf of his entire period of life in the literary duties of his college, as professor.

When we add to these few dates, Professor Reed's marriage in 1834 to Elizabeth White Bronson, a grand-daughter of Bishop White, we have completed the external record of his life, save in the few publications which he gave to the world. A diligent scholar, and of a thoroughbred cultivation in the best schools of English literature and criticism, of unwearied habits of industry, he would probably, as life advanced, have further served his country by new offerings of the fruits of his mental discipline and studies.

The chief compositions of Professor Reed were several courses of lectures which he delivered to the public at the University of Pennsylvania, and of which a collection has been published since his death, by his brother, Mr. William B. Reed, with the title, Lectures on English Literature, from Chaucer to Tennyson. The tastes, mental habits, and associations of the writer, are fully exhibited in these productions, which cover many topics of moral and social philosophy, besides the criticism of particular authors. As a scholar and thinker, Mr. Reed belonged to a school of English writers

who received their first impulses from the genius of Wordsworth and Coleridge. It is characterized by its sound conservatism, reverential spirit, and patient philosophical investigation. He was early brought into communication with Wordsworth, whom he assisted by the supervision and arrangement of an American edition of his poems. The preface to this work, and an elaborate article in the New York Review, of January, 1839, which appeared from his pen, show his devotion to this master of modern poetry. After the death of the poet, he superintended the publication of the American edition of the memoirs by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth.

With the Coleridge family, he maintained a similar correspondence and intimate relation. A memoir which he prepared of Sara Coleridge for the Literary World, though brief, was so carefully and characteristically executed, that it appeared not long after reprinted entire among te obituaries of the Gentleman's Magazine.

A passage, referring to his foreign tour, from the personal introductory notice prefixed to the Lectures, will exhibit this relation to his English friends.

No American, visiting the Old World as a private citizen, ever received a kinder or more discriminating welcome. The last months of his life were pure sunshine. Before he landed in England, his friends, the family of Dr. Arnold, whom he had only known by correspondence, came on board the ship to receive him; and his earliest and latest hours of European sojourn were passed under the roof of the great poet whose memory he most revered, and whose writings had interwoven themselves with his intellectual and moral being. "I do not know," he said in one of his letters to his family," what I have ever done to deserve all this kindness." And so it was throughout. In England he was at home in every sense; and scenes, which to the eye were strange, seemed familiar by association and study. His letters to America were expressions of grateful delight at what he saw and heard in the land of his forefathers, and at the respectful kindness with which he was everywhere greeted: and yet of earnest and loyal yearning to the land of his birth -his home, his family, and friends. It is no violation of good taste here to enumerate some of the friends for whose kind welcome Mr. Reed was so much indebted; I may mention the Wordsworths, Southeys, Coleridges, and Arnolds, Lord Mahon, Mr. Baring, Mr. Aubrey De Vere, Mr. Babbage, Mr. Henry Taylor, and Mr. Thackeray-names, one and all, associated with the highest literary or political

distinction.

He visited the Continent, and went, by the ordinary route, through France and Switzerland, as far south as Milan and Venice, returning by the Tyrol to Inspruck and Munich, and thence down the Rhine to Holland. But his last associations were with the cloisters of Canterbury (that spot, to my eye, of matchless beauty), the garden vales of Devonshire, the valley of the Wye, and the glades of Rydal. His latest memory of this earth was of beautiful England in her summer garb of verdure. The last words he ever wrote were in a letter of the 20th

September to his venerable friend, Mrs. Wordsworth, thanking her and his English friends generally for all she and they had done for him.

Professor Reed edited several books in con

No, 290, Aug. 21, 1852.