The vow, it is spoken all pure from the heart, That must not be broken till life shall depart.

Hark! 'mid the gay clangor that compassed their car,
Loud accents in anger come mingling afar!
The foe's on the border! his weapons resound
Where the lines in disorder unguarded are found!

As wakes the good shepherd, the watchful and bold, When the ounce or the leopard is seen near the fold, So rises already the chief in his mail,

Chauncy Hare Townshend.

A graduate of Cambridge University, England, Townshend (1803-1860) wrote verses early in life. He studied for the Church, and his convictions took the form of Universalism. In 1839 he published "Facts in Mesmerism," one of the best and most philosophical works on the subject. In his Preface he says: "I have scarcely conversed with one person of education in Germany who was not able to detail to me some interesting fact relating to mesmerism which had been personally witnessed and authenticated." In 1851 appeared his "Sermons in

"Son, husband, and brother! arise to the strife!
For sister and mother, for children and wife!
O'er hill and o'er hollow, o'er mountain and plain,
Up, true men, and follow! let dastards remain !"

Farrah! to the battle!-they form into line;— The shields, how they rattle! the spears, how they

shine!

Soon, soon shall the foeman his treachery rue:On, burgher and yeoman! to die or to do!

The eve is declining in lone Malahide;
The maidens are twining fresh wreaths for the bride;
She marks them unheeding; her heart is afar,
Where the clansmen are bleeding for her in the war.

Hark! loud from the mountain-'tis victory's cry!
O'er woodland and fountain it rings to the sky!
The foe has retreated! he flees to the shore;
The spoiler's defeated-the combat is o'er!

With foreheads unruffled the conquerors come;-
But why have they muffled the lance and the drum?
What form do they carry aloft on his shield?
And where does he tarry, the lord of the field?

Ye saw him at morning-how gallant and gay!
In bridal adorning, the star of the day:
Now weep for the lover-his triumph is sped;
His hope, it is over-the chieftain is dead!

But, oh! for the maiden who mourns for that chief,
With heart overladen and broken with grief!
She sinks on the meadow-in one morning tide
A wife and a widow, a maid and a bride!

Ye maidens attending, forbear to condole!
Your comfort is rending the depths of her soul.
True-true, 'twas a story for ages of pride,-
He died in his glory-but, oh! he has died!

his literary executor.

"JUDGE NOT."-MATT. vii. 1.

FROM SERMONS IN SONNETS."

Judge not, because thou canst not judge aright.
Not much thou know'st thyself; yet better far
Than thou know'st others!-Language is at war
With purposes; appearances must fight
'Gainst real inward feelings. All is slight
To give a picture of the things that are.
Feel'st thou not friends who blame thee ever jar
With truth, nor on thy soul's true ulcer bite?
Feel'st thou not utterly that nothing can
Convey thy being to another's breast?
Then how shalt thou explore thy fellow-man?
Rather let Christ's great wisdom be confessed,
Who taxed rash judgment as this world's worst
leaven,

And the worst temper for the courts of heaven.

"WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED, THAT CALL NOT THOU COMMON."-ACTS x. 15.

FROM "SERMONS IN SONNETS."

Behold men's judgments! Common and unclean
We call whatever with our pride doth jar,
Though from one God and Father all things are.
Behold men's judgments! The deep truth unseen,
Rash we decide what mere externals mean.
Know'st thou, while thy proud eye is closed afar,
In what mean worm God may illume a star?
Know'st thou where his great Spirit dwells serene?
Thou dost not. What thy pride may worthless deem,
Ay, tainted with pollution, may become,
Raised from the dust, the fairest, loveliest home,
Where radiant Deity can shrine its beam;
May be redeemed from Nature's common blót,
Ay, though perhaps thy very self be not!

"HIS BANNER OVER ME WAS LOVE."

CANT. ii. 4.

FROM SERMONS IN SONNETS."

He who loves best knows most. Then why should I
Let my tired thoughts so far, so restless, run,
In quest of knowledge underneath the sun,
Or round about the wide-encircling sky?
Nor earth nor heaven is read by scrutiny!
But touch me with a Saviour's love divine,
I pierce at once to wisdom's inner shrine,
And my soul seeth all things like an eye.
Then have I treasures, which to fence and heed
Makes weakness bold, and folly wisdom-strung,
As doves are valorous to guard their young,
And larks are wary from their nests to lead.
Is there a riddle, and resolved you need it?
Love-only love—and you are sure to read it!

"IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS."--ST. JOHN xiv. 2.

FROM "SERMONS IN SONNETS."

Ye orbs that tremble through infinity,

And are ye, then, linked only with our eyes, Dissevered from our thoughts, our smiles, our sighs,

Our hopes and dreams of being yet to be?
Oh, if all nature be a harmony

(As sure it is), why in those solemn skies
Should ye our vision mock, like glittering lies
To man all unrelated? Must I see
Your glories only as a tinselled waste?
If so, I half despise your spectacle!
But if I deem that ye form eras vast,
And do, by mighty revolutions, tell
Time to intelligent existences,
Awe-struck, I do assist at your solemnities!

ON POETRY.

With thine compared, O sovereign Poesy,
Thy sister Arts' divided powers how faint!
For each combines her attributes in thee,
Whose voice is music, and whose words can paint.

MAY.

FROM THE MONTHS."

Oh, darling of the year,-delicious May!
If poet-love have painted thee too bright,
'Tis that men gaze on thee with dazzled sight,
Brimful of ecstasy! Thy true array
Lies beyond language! Who would wish away
The few soft tears that in thine eyes of light
Tremble; or waving shades indefinite
Which o'er thy green and lustrous mantle play?
Who, that e'er wandered in thy hawthorn glades,
Or stood beneath thy orchard's bloomy shades,
But felt how blessed the bosom which thou greetest ? ̧
For thou art Spring indeed! to thee belong
The earliest rose, the nightingale's first song,
All first-fruits of sweet things;—and first are sweet-
est.

CONCLUDING SONNET.

Man-the external world-the changeful year-
Together make a perfect harmony.

To all the soul's great wards a mighty key
The Seasons are, and apt in their career
To stir and modulate our Hope and Fear,
And ever lift our dim humanity
Nearer to Heaven! At seed-time anxiously
Dull lips are moved in prayer, and harvest cheer
Breeds even in churls thanksgiving! Winter bare
That shuts the earth, doth open wide the hand
And heart of man! The tempests of the air
Have spiritual missions, over sea and land
Moulding events! Beneath the meanest clod
Stirs Will and Wisdom: -everywhere is God!

AN EVENING THOUGHT.

Reflected in the lake, I love

To mark the star of evening glow; So tranquil in the heaven above, So restless on the wave below!

Thus heavenly hope is all serene;
But earthly hope-how bright soe'er-
Still fluctuates o'er this changing scene,
As false and fleeting as 'tis fair!

Rufus Dawes.

AMERICAN.

Dawes (1803-1856) was a native of Boston, one of a family of sixteen. His father, Thomas Dawes, was a judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and author of a poem entitled "The Law given on Mount Si nai." Rufus entered Harvard College in 1820, but left in

consequence of some boyish irregularity. He studied law, but never practised his profession. In 1830 he published a volume of poems, and subsequently "Nix's Mate," a novel. He was connected for some years with the newspaper press in New York. He married a sister of C. P. Cranch, the poet-artist.

TO GENEVIEVE.

I'll rob the hyacinth and rose,

I'll search the cowslip's fragrant cell, Nor spare the breath that daily blows Her incense from the asphodel.

And these shall breathe thy gentle name,-
Sweet Naiad of the sacred stream,
Where, musing, first I caught the flame

That Passion kindles in his dream.

Thy soul of Music broke the spell

That bound my lyre's neglected strings;

Attuned its silent echo's shell,

And loosed again his airy wings.

Ah! long had beanty's eyes in vain Diffused their radiant light divine; Alas! it never woke a strain,

Till inspiration breathed from thine.

Thus vainly did the stars at night

O'er Memuon's lyre their watch prolong, When naught but bright Aurora's light Could wake its silence into song.

LOVE UNCHANGEABLE.

Yes, still I love thee! Time, who sets
His signet on my brow,

And dims my sunken eye, forgets
The heart he could not bow;-
Where love that cannot perish grows
For one, alas! that little knows

How love may sometimes last;
Like sunshine wasting in the skies
When clouds are overcast.

The dew-drop hanging o'er the rose
Within its robe of light,
Can never tonch a leaf that blows
Though seeming to the sight;
And yet it still will linger there
Like hopeless love without despair,

A snow-drop in the sun! A moment finely exquisite, Alas! but only one.

I would not have thy married heart Think momently of me;

Nor would I tear the chords apart

That bind me so to thee.

No! while my thoughts seem pure and mild, As dew upon the roses wild,

I would not have thee know

The stream that seems to thee so still
Has such a tide below!

Enough, that in delicious dreams

I see thee and forget:

Enough, that when the morning beams

I feel my eyelids wet!

Yet could I hope, when Time shall fall The darkness for creation's pall,

To meet thee and to love,

I would not shrink from aught below, Nor ask for more above!

James Clarence Mangan.

Mangan was born in Dublin in 1803, and died there in 1849. He had to struggle with poverty, and at fifteen got a situation in a scrivener's office, where he remained seven years, and then became a solicitor's clerk for three years. His situation was distasteful, and he says: "In seeking to escape from this misery, I had laid the foundation of that evil habit which has proved to be my ruin." He became an opium-eater. In spite of his wild habits, he attained great proficiency in a knowledge of languages. He died in a state of destitution in a public hospital. His translations from the German were published in 1845, under the title of "Anthologia Germanica." An edition of his poems, with a biographical introduction by John Mitchel, was published in 1870, in New York.

THE MARINER'S BRIDE.

Look, mother! the mariner's rowing
His galley adown the tide ;
I'll go where the mariner's going,
And be the mariner's bride!

I saw him one day through the wicket,
I opened the gate, and we met-
As a bird in the fowler's net,
Was I caught in my own green thicket.
Oh, mother, my tears are flowing,

I've lost my maidenly pride

A name to waken lightning thought,

And fire the soul of him who reads, This tells above.

Napoleon sinks to-day before

The ungilded shrine, the single soul Of Washington;

Truth's name alone shall man adore, Long as the waves of time shall roll Henceforward on!

George Henry Calvert.

AMERICAN.

A native of Prince George's County, Md., Calvert, born 1803, was a great-grandson of Lord Baltimore, and also a descendant on the mother's side from the painter Rubens. He was educated partly at Harvard, and partly at Göttingen, where he acquired his taste for German literature. He edited at one time the Baltimore American, but in 1843 removed to Newport, R. I. He has published "Count Julian, a Tragedy," " Ellen, a Poem," and is the author of numerous prose works, criticisms, essays, and translations, showing extensive literary and philosophical culture.

el. A collection of his poems, with a memoir, appeared in 1851. He died in his forty-seventh year, at Frankfort, from an accidental prick on his finger, got while dissecting.

TO SEA!

To sea to sea! the calm is o'er,
The wanton water leaps in sport,
And rattles down the pebbly shore:
The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,
And unseen mermaids' pearly song
Comes bubbling up, the weeds among.
Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar:
To sea! to sea! The calm is o'er.

To sea! to sea! our white-winged bark Shall billowing cleave its watery way, And with its shadow, fleet and dark,

Break the caved Triton's azure day, Like mountain eagle soaring light O'er antelopes on Alpine height! The anchor heaves! The ship swings free! Our sails swell full! To sea! to sea!

ON THE FIFTY-FIFTH SONNET OF SHAK

SPEARE.'

The soul leaps up to hear this mighty sound
Of Shakspeare triumphing. With glistening eye
Forward he sent his spirit to espy
Time's gratitude, and catch the far rebound
Of fame from worlds unpeopled yet; and, crowned
With brightening light through all futurity,
His image to behold up-reaching high,
'Mong the world's benefactors most renowned.
Like to the ecstasy, by man unnamed,
The spheral music doth to gods impart,

Was the deep joy that thou hast here proclaimed
Thy song's eternal echo gave thy heart.

Oh, the world thanks thee that thou'st let us see Thou knew'st how great thou wast, how prized to be!

Thomas Lovell Beddoes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

AMERICAN.

More generally known as a free and subtle thinker and an essayist, somewhat after the manner of Montaigne, than as a writer of verse, Emerson has shown that the poetical gift is his in abounding measure. He is a true artist in words, at the same time that he disdains all the arts that would make style compensate for the absence of earnest, profound thought, presented with no particle of tinsel or of superfluous drapery. He impresses us with his absolute sincerity in aiming less at perfect consistency than at fidelity to his own mood; his own uppermost convictions. His forte is rather introspective than dramatic. In a letter to Henry Ware (1838) he wrote: "I could not possibly give you one of the 'arguments' on which any doctrine of mine stands; for I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortals."

Born in Boston in 1803, the son of an excellent clergyman, Emerson graduated at Harvard, became a minister of a Unitarian church, withdrew from it in 1832, and, after passing a year or two in Europe, devoted himself thenceforward almost exclusively to literature and lect

1 See page 30.

difficult to deduce from his writings his exact opinions as to the destiny of man after this life; but according to the declaration of his friend and townsman, A. B. Alcott, his views as late as 1879 inclined to theism and belief in a conscious Orderer of the Universe. His career has been that of a pure-hearted, independent thinker, wed