EROS.

As when, untaught and blind,

To the mute stone the pagan bows his knee,
Spirit of Love, phantom of my own mind,
So have I worshipped thee!

When first a laughing child,

I gazed on Nature with a wondering eye,
I learned of her, in calm and tempest wild,
This thirst for sympathy.

I saw the flowers appear,

And spread their petals out to meet the sun,
The dewdrops on their glistening leaves draw near
And mingle into one.

And if a harp was stirred

By the soft pulses of some wandering sound,
Attuned to the same key, then I have heard
Its chords untouched respond.

Fast through the vaulted sky,

Giving no sound or light, when storms were loud,
I saw the electric cloud in silence fly,
Seeking its sister cloud.

I saw the winds, and sea,

And all the hosts of heaven in bright array,
Governed by this sweet law of sympathy,
Roll on their destined way.

And then my spirit pined,

And, like the sea-shell for its parent sea, Moaned for those kindred souls it could not find, And panted to be free.

And then came wild Despair,

And laid her palsying hand upon my soul,
And her dread ministers were with her there-
The dagger and the bowl.

O God of life and light,

Ix full-orbed splendor now the queen of Night Among the stars walks in her pride of place, And now again we miss that flood of light

That overflowed the azure fields of space.

But though her brightness meets no more the gaze,
As in her wonted orbit she declines,
Yet not extinguished are her silver rays-

She shines in shadow, but not less she shines.

Soon will she rise again upon the sight,

Passing the darkened shape that bids her wane ; Then shall we see her, in unclouded light, Take her own place among the stars again.

ON A PICTURE OF HARVEY BIRCH. FROM COOPER'S "SPY."

I KNOW not if thy noble worth
My country's annals claim,
For in her brief, bright history
I have not read thy name.

I know not if thou e'er didst live,
Save in the vivid thought
Of him who chronicled thy life,
With silent suffering fraught.

Yet in thy history I see

Full many a great soul's lot, Who joins that martyr-army's ranks, That the world knoweth not;

Who can not weep "melodious tears"
For fame or sympathy,

But who in silence bear their doom
To suffer and to die;

For whom no poet's harp is struck,
No laurel wreath is twined;
Who pass unheard, unknown away,
And leave no trace behind;
Who, but for their unwavering trust
In Justice, Truth, and God.
Would faint upon their weary way,

And perish by the road.

Truth, Justice, God! oh, mighty faith,
To bear us up unharmed;

The gates of hell may not prevail
Against a soul so armed.

Go, ye sweet messengers,
To that dim-lighted room,

Where lettered wisdom from the walls
Sheds a delightful gloom;

Where sits in thought profound
One in the noon of life,

Whose flashing eye and fevered brow
Tell of the inward strife;

Who in those wells of lore
Seeks for the pearls of truth,
And to Ambition's fever dream
Gives his repose and youth.
To him, sweet ministers,
Ye shall a lesson teach;
Go in your fleeting loveliness,
More eloquent than speech.
Tell him in laurel wreaths

No perfume e'er is found,
And that upon a crown of thorns
Those leaves are ever bound.

Thoughts fresh as your own hues
Bear ye to that abode-
Speak of the sunshine and the sky,
Of Nature and of God.

SONNETS.

I. LOVE.

Go forth in life, oh, friend! not seeking love,
A mendicant that with imploring eye
And outstretched hand asks of the passers-by
The alms his strong necessities may move.
For such poor love, to pity near allied,

Thy generous spirit may not stoop and wait,
A suppliant whose prayer may be denied
Like a spurned beggar's at a palace-gate :
But thy heart's affluence lavish uncontrolled-
The largess of thy love give full and free,
As monarchs in their progress scatter gold;
And be thy heart like the exhaustless sea,
That must its wealth of cloud and dew bestow,
Though tributary streams or ebb or flow.

II. THE LAKE AND STAR.

THE mountain lake, o'ershadowed by the hills,
May still gaze heavenward on the evening star
Whose distant light its dark recesses fills,
Though boundless distance must divide them far;
Still may the lake the star's bright image bear,
Still may the star from its blue ether dome
Shower down its silver beams across the gloom,
And light the wave that wanders darkly there.
Star of my life! thus do I turn to thee

Amid the shadows that above me roll;
Thus from thy distant sphere thou shinest on me,
Thus does thine image float upon my soul,
Through the wide space that must our lives dissever
Far as the lake and star, ah me, for ever!

III. A REMEMBRANCE.

[storms:

NIGHT closes round me, and wild threatening forms
Clasp me with icy arms and chain me down,
And bind upon my brow a cypress crown
Dewy with tears, and Heaven frowns dark with
But the one glorious memory of thee
Rises upon my path to guide and bless,
The bright Shekinah of the wilderness-
The polar star upon a trackless sea,
The beaming Pharos of the unreached shore-
It spans the clouds that gather o'er my way,
The rainbow of my life's tempestuous day.
Oh, blessed thought! stay with me evermore,
And shed thy lustrous beams where midnight glooms,
As fragant lamps burned in the ancient tombs.

IV. THE SUN AND STREAM.

As some dark stream within a cavern's breast
Flows murmuring, moaning for the distant sun,
So ere I met thee, murmuring its unrest,
Did my life's current coldly, darkly run.
And as that stream beneath the sun's full gaze
Its separate course and life no more maintains,
But now absorbed, transfused far o'er the plains,
It floats etherealized in those warm rays,
So in the sunlight of thy fervid love
My heart, so long to earth's dark channels given,
Now soars all pain, all ill, all doubt above,
And breathes the ether of the upper heaven:
So thy high spirit holds and governs mine,
So is my life, my being lost in thine!

V. TO

AH no! my love knows no vain jealousy:
The rose that blooms and lives but in the sun,
Asks not what other flowers he shines upon,
If he but shine on her. Enough for me
Thus in thy light to dwell, and thus to share
The sunshine of thy smile with all things fair.
I know thou'rt vowed to Beauty, not to Love:
I would not stay thy footsteps from one shrine,
Nor would I bind thee by a sigh to mine.
For me I have no lingering wish to rove;
For though I worship all things fair, like thee,
Of outward grace, of soul-nobility,
Happier than thou, I find them all in one,
And I would worship at thy shrine alone!

VI. THE HONEY-BEE.

THE honey-bee that wanders all day long.
The field, the woodland, and the garden o'er,
To gather in his fragrant winter store,
Humming in calm content his quiet song,
Seeks not alone the rose's glowing breast,
The lily's dainty cup, the violet's lips-
But from all rank and noxious weeds he sips
The single drop of sweetness closely prest
Within the poison chalice. Thus if we

Seek only to draw forth the hidden sweet
In all the varied human flowers we meet,
In the wide garden of humanity,

And, like the bee, if home the spoil we bear, Hived in our hearts it turns the nectar there.

VII. ASPIRATION.

THE planted seed, consigned to common earth,
Disdains to moulder with the baser clay,
But rises up to meet the light of day,
Spreads all its leaves, and flowers, and tendrils forth;
And, bathed and ripened in the genial ray,
Pours out its perfume on the wandering gales,
Till in that fragrant breath its life exhales.
So this immortal germ within my breast
Would strive to pierce the dull, dark clod of sense;
With aspirations, winged and intense,
Would so stretch upward, in its tireless quest,
To meet the Central Soul, its source, its rest:
So in the fragrance of the immortal flower, [pour.
High thoughts and noble deeds, its life it would out-

VIII. TO THE SAVIOR.

OH thou who once on earth, beneath the weight
Of our mortality didst live and move,
The incarnation of profoundest love;
Who on the Cross that love didst consummate-
Whose deep and ample fulness could embrace
The poorest, meanest of our fallen race:'
How shall we e'er that boundless debt repay?
By long loud prayers in gorgeous temples said?
By rich oblations on thine altars laid?
Ah, no! not thus thou didst appoint the way:
When thou wast bowed our human wo beneath,
Then as a legacy thou didst bequeath
Earth's sorrowing children to our ministry—
And as we do to them, we do to thee.

JX. FAITH.

[sea,

SECURELY cabined in the ship below,
Through darkness and through storm I cross the
A pathless wilderness of waves to me:
But yet I do not fear, because I know

That he who guides the good ship o'er that waste Sees in the stars her shining pathway traced. Blindfold I walk this life's bewildering maze,

Up flinty steep, through frozen mountain pass, Through thornset barren and through deep morass, But strong in faith I tread the uneven ways, And bare my head unshrinking to the blast, Because my Father's arm is round me cast; And if the way seems rough, I only clasp The hand that leads me with a firmer grasp.

BONES IN THE DESERT. WHERE pilgrims seek the Prophet's tomb Across the Arabian waste, Upon the ever-shifting sands

A fearful path is traced.
Far up to the horizon's verge,
The traveller sees it rise-

A line of ghastly bones that bleach
Beneath those burning skies.
Across it, tempest and simoom

The desert-sands have strewed,
But still that line of spectral white
For ever is renewed.

For while along that burning track
The caravans move on,

Still do the way worn pilgrims fall
Ere yet the shrine be won.
There the tired camel lays him down
And shuts his gentle eyes;
And there the fiery rider droops,

Toward Mecca looks, and dies.
They fall unheeded from the ranks:

On sweeps the endless train; But there, to mark the desert path, Their whitening bones remain. As thus I read the mournful tale

Upon the traveller's page,

I thought how like the march of life
Is this sad pilgrimage.

For every heart hath some fair dream,
Some object unattained,
And far off in the distance lies

Some Mecca to be gained.

But beauty, manhood, love, and power,
Go in their morning down,

And longing eyes and outstretched arms
Tell of the goal unwon.
The mighty caravan of life

Above their dust may sweep,
Nor shout nor trampling feet shall break
The rest of those who sleep.

Oh, fountains that I have not reached,
That gush far off e'en now,
When shall I quench my spirit's thirst
Where your sweet waters flow!

Oh, Mecca of my lifelong dreams,
Cloud palaces that rise

In that far distance pierced by hope,
When will ye greet mine eyes!
The shadows lengthen toward the east
From the declining sun,

And the pilgrim, as ye still recede,
Sighs for the journey done!

CHRIST BETRAYED. EIGHTEEN hundred years agone Was that deed of darkness doneWas that sacred, thorn-crowned head To a shameful death betrayed, And Iscariot's traitor name Blazoned in eternal shame. Thou, disciple of our time, Follower of the faith sublime, Who with high and holy scorn Of that traitorous deed dost burn, Though the years may never more To our earth that form restore, The Christ-Spirit ever livesEver in thy heart he strives. When pale Misery mutely calls, When thy tempted brother falls, When thy gentle words may chain Hate, and Anger, and Disdain, Or thy loving smile impart Courage to some sinking heart: When within thy troubled breast Good and evil thoughts contest, Though unconscious thou may'st be, The Christ-Spirit strives with thee. When he trod the Holy Land, With his small disciple band, And the fated hour had come For that august martyrdomWhen the man, the human love, And the God within him stroveAs in Gethsemané he wept, They, the faithless watchers, slept : While for them he wept and prayed, One denied and one betrayed!

If to-day thou turn'st aside
In thy luxury and pride,
Wrapped within thyself and blind
To the sorrows of thy kind,
Thou a faithless watch dost keep-
Thou art one of those who sleep:
Or, if waking thou dost see
Nothing of Divinity

In our fallen, struggling race-
If in them thou seest no trace
Of a glory dimmed, not gone,
Of a Future to be won,
Of a Future, hopeful, high,
Thou, like Peter, dost deny :
But if, seeing, thou believest,
If the Evangel thou receivest,
Yet, if thou art bound to Sin,
False to the Ideal within,
Slave of Ease or slave of Gold,
Thou the Son of God hast sold!

THE WASTED FOUNTAINS..

"And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters; they came to the pits and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty."-Jeremiah xiv. 3.

WHEN the youthful fever of the soul

Is awakened in thee first,

And thou goest like Judah's children forth
To slake the burning thirst;

And when dry and wasted, like the springs

Sought by that little band,
Before thee in their emptiness

Life's broken cisterns stand;
When the golden fruits that tempted
Turn to ashes on the taste,
And thine early visions fade and pass
Like the mirage of the waste;
When faith darkens and hopes vanish
In the shade of coming years,
And the urn thou bearest is empty,

Or o'erflowing with thy tears;
Though the transient springs have failed thee,
Though the founts of youth are dried,
Wilt thou among the mouldering stones
In weariness abide ?

Wilt thou sit among the ruins,

With all words of cheer unspoken, Till the silver cord is loosened,

Till the golden bowl is broken? Up and onward! toward the east

Green oases thou shalt findStreams that rise from higher sources Than the pools thou leavest behind.

Life has import more inspiring

Than the fancies of thy youth;
It has hopes as high as heaven;
It has labor, it has truth;

It has wrongs that may be righted,
Noble deeds that may be done,
Its great battles are unfought,

Its great triumphs are unwon.

There is rising from its troubled deeps
A low, unceasing moan;

There are aching, there are breaking
Other hearts beside thine own.

From strong limbs that should be chainless,
There are fetters to unbind;

There are words to raise the fallen;

There is light to give the blind;

There are crushed and broken spirits
That electric thoughts may thrill;
Lofty dreams to be embodied

By the might of one strong will.
There are God and peace above thee:
Wilt thou languish in despair?
Tread thy griefs beneath thy feet,

Scale the walls of heaven by prayer

"Tis the key of the apostle

That opens heaven from below; "Tis the ladder of the patriarch, Whereon angels come and go!

PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS.

GREECE! hear that joyful sound!

A stranger's voice upon thy sacred hill,
Whose tones shall bid the slumbering nations round

Wake with convulsive thrill.

Athenians! gather there, he brings you words
Brighter than all your boasted lore affords.

He brings you news of One
Above Olympian Jove; One in whose light
Your gods shall fade like stars before the sun.
On your bewildered night
That UNKNOWN Gon of whom ye darkly dream
In all his burning radiance shall beam.

Behold, he bids you rise

From your dark worship round that idol shrine; He points to Him who reared your starry skies, And bade your Phœbus shine.

Lift up your souls from where in dust ye bow; That God of gods commands your homage now.

But, brighter tidings still!

He tells of One whose precious blood was spilt In lavish streams upon Judea's hill,

A ransom for your guilt;

Who triumphed o'er the grave, and broke its chain;
Who conquered Death and Hell, and rose again.

Sages of Greece! come near;
Spirits of daring thought and giant mould,
Ye questioners of Time and Nature, hear
Mysteries before untold!

Immortal life revealed! light for which ye
Have tasked in vain your proud philosophy.

Searchers for some First Cause

Through doubt and darkness-lo! he points to One
Where all your vaunted reason lost must pause,
Too vast to think upon:

That was from everlasting-that shall be
To everlasting still, eternally!

MISS EMILY CHUBBUCK, who under the graceful pseudonyme of Fanny Forester' became known as one of the most ingenious and brilliant female writers of the country, is a native of central New York; and after being thoroughly educated in the sciences suitable to her sex, and making herself familiar with the best literature by a loving and critical study of those authors who are the standards of thought and diction, she became a teacher in a female seminary at Utica, where she was residing when she made her first essays as a writer-some poetical contributions to the Knickerbocker Magazine, and several small volumes illustrative of practical religion, issued by the American Baptist Publication Society. Early in June, 1844, while visiting the city of New York, she wrote a hasty bagatelle for the New Mirror, then recently established by Gen. Morris and Mr. N. P. Willis, scarcely thinking or caring that it would for a moment receive their attention. But Mr. Willis's perception of beauty is instinctive: he saw at a glance that his correspondent was possessed of extreme cleverness-perhaps of genius-and his liberal but perfectly sincere applause led Miss Chubbuck to that career of literature which soon made her nom de plume as familiar as the names of the most popular authors. The first paper under the signature of "Fanny Forester" was published on the twenty-ninth of June in the New Mirror, and it was followed rapidly by all those sketches, essays, and poems, which, two years afterward, when she was on the eve of sailing for India, were reprinted under the title of Alderbrook.

In 1846, the missionary Judson-after a long career of usefulness and true glory in the East-returned to America, where he was received by the churches in a manner worthy of the greatness of his services to religion and civilization. "Fanny Forester," on account of impaired health, sought the genial climate of Philadelphia for the succeeding winter, and here he came to visit her and persuade her to write the mortal history of one who had joined the angels, leaving him

alone in the ship in which they had started together to revisit their native country. When the apostle of the Burmans described in sentences glowing with his fine enthusiasm, the condition of the missionary field, white with the harvests which so few were reaping, she kindled at the recital, and forgetting the bril liant prospects of success in letters, the dearest ties of home affections, determined to twine for the laurel which she cast aside, a wreath from these fields in the Orient, the grains in which should be stars to circle her brows for ever, and by their radiance to make more glorious the looked-for triumph of the Harvester of the world.

Early in the spring she returned to the home of her childhood, to bid a last farewell to all its inmates. Then she wrote-"My heart is heavy with sorrow. The cup at my lips is very bitter. Heaven help me! White hairs are bending in submissive grief, and age-dimmed eyes are dimmer with tears; young spirits have lost their joyousness, young lips forget to smile, and bounding hearts and bounding feet are stilled. Oh, the rending of ties, knitted at the first opening of the infant eye, and strengthened by numberless acts of love, is a sorrowful thing! To make the grave the only door to a meeting with those in whose bosoms we nestled, in whose hearts we trusted long before we knew how precious was such love and trust, brings with it an overpowering weight of solemnity. But a grave is yawning for each one of us; and is it much to choose whether we sever the tie that binds us here to-day, or lie down on the morrow? Ah, the 'weaver's shuttle' is flying; the flower of the grass' is withering; the space is almost measured ; the tale nearly told; the dark valley is close before us-- - tread we with care! My mother, we may neither of us close the other's darkened eyes, and fold the cold hands upon the bosom; we may neither of us watch the sod greening and withering above the other's ashes: but there are duties for us even more sacred than these. But a few steps, mother - difficult the path may be, but very bright