I KNOW that none can smile like thee,
But there is one, a gentler one,
Whose heart, though young and wild it be,
Would ne'er have done, as thine has done.
When we were left alone to-day,
curious eye was fled,
And all that love could look or say,
We might have look'd, we might have said;
Would she have felt me trembling press,
Nor trembling press to me again?
Would she have had the power to bless,
Yet want the heart to bless me then?
Her tresses too, as soft as thine-
Would she have idly paus'd to twine
Their scatter'd locks, with cold delay,
While oh! such minutes pass'd away,
As heaven has made for those who love,
For those who love, and long to steal
What none but hearts of ice feprove,
What none but hearts of fire can feel!
Go, go—an age of vulgar years
May now be pin'd, be sigh'd away,
Before one blessed hour appears,
Like that which we have lost to-day!
THE HONOURABLE W. R. SPENCER.
FROM BUFFALO, UPON LAKE ERIE.
NEC VENIT AD DUROS MUSA VOCATA GETAS.
Ovid. ex Ponto, Lib. i. Ep. 5.
THOU oft hast told me of the fairy hours
Thy heart has number'd, in those classic bowers, Where fancy sees the ghost of ancient wit 'Mid cowls and cardinals profanely flit,
And pagan spirits, by the Pope unlaid,
Haunt every stream and sing through every shade!
There still the bard, who, (if his numbers be
His tongue's light echo,) must have talk'd like thee,
The courtly bard, from whom thy mind has caught
Those playful, sunshine holidays of thought,
In which the soul with easy bask reclines,
Gay without toil and resting while she shines!
There still he roves, and laughing loves to see
How modern monks with ancient rakes agree;
How mitres hang, where ivy wreaths might twine,
And heathen Massic's damn'd for stronger wine!
There too are all those wandering souls of song,
With whom thy spirit hath commun'd so long,
Whose rarest gems are, every instant, hung
By memory's magic on thy sparkling tongue.
But here, alas! by Erie's stormy lake,
As, far from thee, my lonely course I take,
No bright remembrance o'er the fancy plays,
No classic dream, no star of other days
Has left that visionary glory here,
That relic of its light, so soft, so dear,
Which gilds and hallows even the rudest scene, The humblest shed, where genius once has been!
All that creation's varying mass assumes
Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms;
Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow,
Bright lakes expand and conquering1 rivers flow;
Mind, mind alone, without whose quickening ray,
The world's a wilderness and man but clay,
Mind, mind alone, in barren, still repose,
Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows!
Take christians, mohawks, democrats and all
From the rude wig-wam to the congress-hall,
From man the savage, whether slav'd or free,
To man the civiliz'd, less tame than he!
'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife
Betwixt half-polish'd and half-barbarous life;
Where every ill the ancient world can brew
Is mix'd with every grossness of the new;
Where all corrupts, though little can entice,
And nothing's known of luxury, but its vice!
This epithet was suggested by Charlevoix's striking description of the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi. "I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much of the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waves to the opposite shore without mixing them: afterwards it gives its colour to the Mississippi, which it never loses again, but carries quite down to the sea." Letter xxvii.
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