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finest emotions. His delineations of human feeling and conduct are sometimes beyond life and nature, and bordering on the extravagant."

You are now presented with his affecting picture of

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"I had a husband once, who loved me: now
He ever wears a frown upon his brow,
And feeds his passion on a wanton's lip,
As bees, from laurel flowers, a poison sip;
But yet I can not hate. Oh! there were hours
When I could hang forever on his eye,
And Time, who stole with swiftness by,
Strew'd, as he hurried on, his path with flowers.
I loved him then-he loved me too. My heart
Still finds its fondness kindle, if he smile;
The memory of our loves will ne'er depart;
And though he often sting me with a dart,
Venom'd and barb'd, and waste upon the vile
Caresses which his babe and mine should share;
Though he should spurn me, I will calmly bear
His madness; and should sickness come, and lay
Its paralyzing hand upon him, then

I would, with kindness, all my wrongs repay,
Until the penitent should weep, and say
How injured, and how faithful I had been."

SECTION VIII.

(1.) J. G. C. BRAINERD, of Connecticut, died 1828. His collection of poems consists of articles written nastily for a weekly newspaper edited by him; yet, says Mr. Kettell, "these productions, so little elaborated, and written under various causes of enervation, are stamped with an originality, boldness, force, and pathos, illustrative of genius, not, perhaps, inferior to that of Burns, and certainly much resembling it in kind. No man ever thought his own thoughts more independently than he did."

Read his lines on

THE INDIAN SUMMER.

"What is there saddening in the autumn leaves?
Have they that 'green and yellow melancholy'
That the sweet poet spake of? Had he seen
Our variegated woods, when first the frost

Turns into beauty all October's charms

When the dread fever quits us-when the storms
Of the wild Equinox, with all its wet,
Has left the land, as the first deluge left it,
With a bright bow of many colors hung
Upon the forest tops-he had not sigh❜d.

The moon stays longest for the hunter now;
The trees cast down their fruitage, and the blithe
And busy squirrel hoards his winter store;
While man enjoys the breeze that sweeps along
The bright blue sky above him, and that bends
Magnificently all the forest's pride,

Or whispers through the evergreens, and asks,

What is there saddening in the autumn leaves?""

(2.) H. W. LONGFELLOW-Maine. The North American Review for 1844, among other remarks, furnishes the following, upon his poems. His great characteristic is that of addressing the moral nature through the imagination, of linking moral truth to intellectual beauty. The best literary artist is he who accommodates his diction to his subject. In this Longfellow is an artist. By learning "to labor and to wait," by steadily brooding over the chaos in which thought and emotion first appear to the mind, and giving shape and life to both before uttering them in words, he has obtained a singular mastery over expression. By this we do not mean that he has a large command of language. No fallacy is greater than that which confounds fluency with expression. Washerwomen, and boys at debating clubs, often display more fluency than Webster; but his words are to theirs as the rolling thunder to the patter of rain. Felicity, not fluency of language, is a merit.

Longfellow has a perfect command of that expression which results from restraining rather than cultivating fluency, and his manner is adapted to his theme. His words are often pictures of his thought. He selects with great delicacy and precision the exact phrase which best expresses or suggests his idea. He colors his style with the skill of a painter. In that higher department of his art, that of so combining his words and images that they make music to the soul as well as to the ear, and convey not only his feelings and thoughts, but also the very tone and condition of the soul in which they have being, he likewise exeels. In "Maidenhood" and "Endymion," this power is admirably displayed. In one of his best poems, "The Skelelon in Armor," he manages a difficult verse with great skill.

His felicity in addressing the moral nature of man may be discovered in the following lines:

"Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwreck'd brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again."

This is very different from merely saying that, if we follow the example of the great and good, we shall live a noble life, and that the record of our deeds and struggles will strengthen the breasts of those who come after us, to do and to suffer.

Longfellow's verse occupies a position half way between the poetry of actual life and the poetry of transcendentalism. Like all neutrals, he is liable to attack from the zealots of both parties; but it seems to us that he has hit the exact point, beyond which no poet can at present go, without being neglected or ridiculed. An air of repose, of quiet power, is around his compositions. In "The Spanish Student," the affluence of his imagination in images of grace, grandeur, and beauty, is most strikingly manifested.

SECTION IX.

JOHN G. WHITTIER (says the North American Review) is one of our most characteristic poets. Few excel him in warmth of temperament. There is a rush of passion in his verse, which sweeps every thing along with it. His fancy and imagination can hardly keep pace with their fiery companion. His vehement sensibility will not allow the inventive faculties to complete what they may have commenced. The stormy qualities of his mind, acting at the suggestions of conscience, produce a kind of military morality, which uses all the deadly arms of verbal warfare. His invective is merciless and undistinguishing; he almost screams with rage and indignation. Of late, he has somewhat pruned the rank luxuriance of his style. He has the soul of a great poet, and we should not be surprised if he attained the height of excellence in his art.

SECTION X.

ALFRED B. STREET, of Albany, editor of the Northern Light, is well entitled to a place among American poets, as will be apparent from his description of the Gray Forest Eagle.

THE GRAY FOREST EAGLE.

With storm-daring pinion and sun-gazing eye,
The Gray Forest Eagle is king of the sky!
Oh! little he loves the green valley of flowers,

Where sunshine and song cheer the bright summer hours,
For he hears in those haunts only music, and sees
But rippling of waters and waving of trees;
There the red-robin warbles, the honey-bee hums,
The timid quail whistles, the shy partridge drums;
And if those proud pinions, perchance, sweep along,
There's a shrouding of plumage, a hushing of song;
The sunlight falls stilly on leaf and on moss,

And there's naught but his shadow black gliding across;
But the dark, gloomy gorge, where down plunges the foam,
Of the fierce rock-lash'd torrent, he claims as his home;
There he blends his keen shriek with the roar of the flood,
And the many-voiced sounds of the blast-smitten wood;
From the fir's lofty summit, where morn hangs its wreath,
He views the mad waters white writhing beneath :
On a limb of that moss-bearded hemlock far down,
With bright azure mantle and gay mottled crown,
The kingfisher watches, while o'er him his foe,
The fierce hawk, sails circling, each moment more low;
Now poised are those pinions and pointed that beak,
His dread swoop is ready, when hark! with a shriek
His eyeballs red blazing, high bristling his crest,
His snake-like neck arch'd, talons drawn to his breast,
With the rush of the wind-gust, the glancing of light,
The Gray Forest Eagle shoots down in his flight;
One blow of those talons, one plunge of that neck,
The strong hawk hangs lifeless, a blood-dripping wreck;
And as dives the free kingfisher, dart-like on high
With his prey soars the eagle, and melts in the sky.

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The advanced age to which the eagle is supposed to attain is thus beautifully described :

Time whirls round his circle, his years roll away,
But the Gray Forest Eagle minds little his sway:

The child spurns its buds for youth's thorn-hidden bloom,
Seeks manhood's bright phantoms, finds age and a tomb;

But the eagle's eye dims not, his wing is unbow'd,
Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud!
The green tiny pine shrub points up from the moss,
The wren's foot would cover it, tripping across;
The beechnut down dropping would crush it beneath,

But 'tis warm'd with heaven's sunshine and fann'd by its breath,
The seasons fly past it, its head is on high,

Its thick branches challenge each mood of the sky;
On its rough bark the moss a green mantle creates,
And the deer from his antlers the velvet down grates;
Time withers its roots, it lifts sadly in air

A trunk dry and wasted, a top jagged and bare,
Till it rocks in the soft breeze, and crashes to earth,
Its brown fragments strewing the place of its birth.
The eagle has seen it up-struggling to sight,
He has seen it defying the storm in its might,

Then prostrate, soil-blended, with plants sprouting o'er,
But the Gray Forest Eagle is still as of yore.
His flaming eye dims not, his wing is unbow'd,
Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud!
He has seen from his eyrie the forest below,
In bud and in leaf, robed with crimson and snow,
The thickets, deep wolf-lairs, the high crag his throne,
And the shriek of the panther has answer'd his own.
He has seen the wild red man the lord of the shades,
And the smoke of his wigwams curl'd thick in the glades,
He has seen the proud forest melt breath-like away,
And the breast of the earth lying bare to the day:
He sees the green meadow-grass hiding the lair,
And his crag-throne spread naked to sun and to air;
And his shriek is now answer'd, while sweeping along,
By the low of the herd and the husbandman's song;
He has seen the wild red man swept off by his foes,

And he sees dome and roof where those smokes once aròse;
But his flaming eye dims not, his wing is unbow'd,
Still drinks he the sunshine, still scales he the cloud!
An emblem of Freedom, stern, haughty, and high,
Is the Gray Forest Eagle, that king of the sky!
It scorns the bright scenes, the gay places of earth-
By the mountain and torrent it springs into birth;
There, rock'd by the whirlwind, baptized in the foam,
It's guarded and cherish'd, and there is its home!

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SECTION XI.

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E. W. B. CANNING, of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, has not yet published a volume of poems, but has furnished many valuable contributions to American poetry, in the weekly periodicals of our state, giving

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