Bright ising-stars the little beach was spangling, The hum-bird shook his sun-touched wings around, Where lichens made a carpet for his feet: Through the transparent waves, the ruddy minkle Shot up in glimmering sparks his red fin's tiny twinkle. There were dark cedars with loose mossy tresses, White powdered dog-trees, and stiff hollies flaunting, Gaudy as rustics in their May-day dresses, Blue pelloret from purple leaves upslanting The breeze fresh springing from the lips of morn, The winding of the merry locust's horn, The glad spring gushing from the rock's bare bo som: Sweet sights, sweet sounds, all sights, all sounds excelling, Oh! 'twas a ravishing spot formed for a poet's dwelling. And did I leave thy loveliness, to stand Again in the dull world of earthly blindness? Pained with the pressure of unfriendly hands, Sick of smooth looks, agued with icy kindness? Left I for this thy shades, where none intrude, To prison wandering thought and mar sweet solitude? Yet I will look upon thy face again, My own romantic Bronx, and it will be A face more pleasant than the face of men. And hear a voice long loved in thy wild minstrelsy. TO ENNUI-FROM THE CROAKEES. Avaunt! arch enemy of fun, My puppy's dead-Miss Rumour's breath I've read friend Noah's book quite through, I've swallowed Lady Morgan's too, I'm sick of General Jackson's toast, Nor do I care who rules the roast, And if the Battery were gone Let gilded guardsmen shake their toes, Let Mr. Hawkins "blow his nose" Insolvent laws, let Marshall break, In vain, for like a cruel cat Who poisons with his breath, ODE TO FORTUNE-FROM THE CROAKERS Fair lady with the bandaged eye! Alike thy kisses and thy kicks: Have cash to keep my duns at bay, Can choose between beefsteaks and ham, And drink Madeira every day. My station is the middle rank, My fortune just a competence- And bite my thumb at Mr. Bell.* My country-seat is Weehawk hill; My morning lounge is Eastburn's shop At Poppleton's I take my lunch; Niblo prepares my mutton chop, And Jennings makes my whiskey punch. When merry, I the hours amuse By squibbing bucktails, guards, and balls; And when I'm troubled with the blues Damn Clinton and abuse canals: TO CROAKER, JUNIOR-FROM THE CROAKERS.. Your hand, my dear Junior! we are all in a flame But why should we do so! 'tis false what they tell, As a pair of Prime's mouse-colored ponies. Fun, prosper the union-smile, Fate, on its birth; The sheriff. THE AMERICAN FLAG-FROM THE CROAKERS. When Freedom, from her mountain height, And set the stars of glory there! Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, When stride the warriors of the storm, Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall; And cowering foes shall shrink beneath, And all thy hues were born in heaven! For ever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us? With freedom's soil beneath our feet, And freedom's banner streaming o'er us?* sions-it is said there were some earlier-was published in a New York paper, in 1809, when he was fourteen.* At the age of eighteen, in 1813, he came to New York, and entered the banking-house of Jacob Barker, with which he was associated for many years, subsequently performing the duties of a book-keeper in the pri vate office of John Jacob Astor. Not long after the decease of that eminent millionaire, he retired to his birth-place, where he has since resided. It is said that Halleck's first appearance in print was in the columns of Holt's Columbian, New York, where, in 1813, a poem appeared, with the signature of "A Connecticut Farmer's Boy," which the editor introduced with the remark, that he did not credit that authorship"the verses were too good to be original!" + At this time too, Halleck belonged to "Swartwout's gallant corps, the Iron Grays," as he afterwards wrote in "Fanny," and stimulated their patriotism by a glowing Ode. THE IRON GRAYS. We twine the wreath of honor And shall we to the Iron Grays For o'er our bleeding country Ne'er lowered a darker storm, When first their banner waved in air, And the battle-drum beat long and loud, Though still bright gleam their bayonets, Far distant yet is England's host, Yet not in vain they flew to arms; That many a gallant heart must bleed Guards of a nation's destiny! The angel smile of beauty What heart but bounds to feel? Her tears shall bid the flowers be green Notice in New York Mirror, Jan. 26, 1828. + Biographical Art. on Halleck, by Mr. James Lawson, in South Lit. Mess., 1843. Tread on the path of duty, Band of the patriot brave, Prepared to rush, at honor's call, To glory or the grave." Nor bid your flag again be furled Till the battle-drum has ceased to beat, Halleck, however, gained his first celebrity in literature as a town wit, one of the producers, in connexion with his friend Drake, of the poetical squibs which appeared in the columns of the Evening Post in 1819, with the signature Croaker & Co., when they quizzed Cobbett, Dr. Mitchill, the politicians of Tammany, the editors, aldermen, and small theatrical characters of the day, in poetical epistles to Edmund Simpson, Esq., manager of the theatre, and other vehicles of simple fun and well aimed satire. If these had nothing more to bring them into notice than their local allusion, they would have been forgotten, as hundreds of series of the kind have been; but their keen wit and finely moulded poetical phraseology have preserved them; and were it not for some delicacy in the avowed authorship and publication of verses filled with personalities, they would be an indispensable part of the volume which contains the collection of the poet's writings. As it is, several specimens of them are there, as of the simply poetical effusions-" The World is Bright before Thee," "There is an Evening Twilight of the Heart;" and of the lighter pieces, "Domestic Peace." The rest will undoubtedly be in request, and be some day accompanied by learned prose annotations from civic history. As we have mentioned a number of these poems usually assigned to Drake as their author, we may add the titles of some of the others understood to be from the pen of Halleck. Among them are "The Forum," a picture of a literary debating society, to which the public were admitted, which had for its supporters some of the political celebrities of the city; "To Simon, a kick at a fashionable folly which reigns among the sons and daughters of the higher order, in the renowned city of Gotham, at this present writing;" Simon being a black caterer of fashionable entertainments Prince of pastry cooks, Oysters and ham, and cold heat's tongue, Pupil of Mitchill's cookery books, And bosom friend of old and young; several highly humorous epistles "To Edmund Simpson, Esq., Manager of the Theatre," in one of which he advises that stage director, if he would secure a profitable season, to disband his old company and employ the political actors at Albany, from the boards of the state legislature. Halleck's lines "To Twilight," one of his earliest poems, appeared in the Erening Post of October, 1818. The next year, when the Croakers had made a reputation for themselves, the little poem was reprinted by the editor Coleman, with the following introduction :-" We republish the following beautiful lines from our own files of October last, for the three following reasons: first, because they deserve it for their intrinsic .nerit; they are the inspirations of poetry itself. Second, because they were injured in their first publication by a typographical error and lastly, because they show that our correspondent Croaker (whose we have just discovered they are) no less resembles P. Pindar in his elegiac than in his humor and satiric vein." Several of the Croakers appeared in the National Advocate published by Noah, and there are several longer pieces in the author's volume, as "The Recorder," and the lines "To Walter Bowne," which, though not numbered with the Croakers, have their general characteristics. Fanny, which grew out of the success of the Croakers, was published in 1821. It is a satirical squib in Don Juan measure, at the fashionable literary and political enthusiasms of the day. The story which is the vehicle for this pleasantry, is simply the emergence of a belle from low birth and fortune to an elysium of fashionable prosperity, when the bubble bursts in bankruptcy. Like everything of the kind, which has the good fortune to be both personal and poetic, it made its hit. It owed its permanent success, of course, to its felicitous execution, in the happiest of musical verses. The edition was soon exhausted; it was not reprinted, and copies were circulated, fairly copied out in manuscript, though a stray copy now and then, from a bookseller, who re-published the poem in Glasgow, helped to keep alive the tradition of its humor. The authorship was for a long while unacknowledged. In 1839 it was published by the Harpers, in a volume, with a few poems of similar charac ter, collected by the author, and is now included in the standard edition of his writings. In 1822 Halleck visited England and the Continent, of which tour we have a reminiscence in the poet's "Alnwick Castle." In 1825, and subsequently, he was a contributor to Bryant's periodicals, the New York Review, and U.S. Review, where his Marco Bozzaris and Burns first appeared. A collection of these and other poems was published in a volume in 1827. They were reprinted, in other editions, by the Harpers; the Appletons, with illustrations by Weir, in 1847; and by Redfield, with additions to the poem "Connecticut," in 1852. The characteristic of Halleck's poetry is its music; its perfection of versification, whether embalming a trifle of the hour or expressing a vigorous manly eloquence, a true lyric fire and healthy sentiment. Though of an old school of English literature, and fastidiously cultivated with a thorough knowledge of the author's predecessors, the poetry of Halleck is strictly original. In some of his poems he appears to have been led by dislike to even the suspicion of sentimentality, to fasten a ludicrous termination to a serious emotion; but this is more dangerous to his imitators than injurious to his own powers. In Connecticut, which appears to be indebted to a happy idea struck out by Brainard, in his New Year's verse on the same theme, his subtle humor has happily blended the two qualities. For separate examples the reader may consult his "Field of the Grounded Arms," his 66 Burns," and his "Fanny." TO *** The world is bright before thee, To Nature's morning hour, There is a song of sorrow, And youth's warm promise o'er. Float on a summer sea; Though Time thy bloom is stealing, There's still beyond his art The wild-flower wreath of feeling, The sunbeam of the heart. Green be the turf above thee, Will tears the cold turf steep. It should be mine to braid it And feel I cannot now. While memory bids me weep thee, That mourns a man like thee. MARCO POZZARIS. At midnight, in his guarded tent, The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power: In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror; In dreams his song of triumph heard: At midnight, in the forest shades, Heroes in heart and hand. There had the Persian's thousands stood, And now there breathed that haunted air An hour passed on-the Turk awoke; To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, "Strike-till the last armed foe expires; They fought-like brave men, long and well; His few surviving comrades saw Then saw in death his eyelids close Like flowers at set of sun. Come to the bridal chamber, Denth! Come to the mother's, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible-the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; Of agony, are thine. But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, The thanks of millions yet to be. Of sky and stars to prisoned men: To the world-seeking Genoese, Greece nurtured in her glory's time, She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, The heartless luxury of the tomb |